FIRST TIME IN ACTION
WHAT SOLDIER FEELS LIKE What does it feel like to go into action for the first time? A soldier returned to New Zealand from the Middle East answered this way: “It’s always easier the first time because you don’t know what to expect.” When the New Zealanders moved up to Sidi Rezegh in November, 1941, his comrades and he did not know the real push had started till they got up to the enemy wire. They had been working up to the push by a series of manoeuvres. “A man without fear.” This soldier so described the late Colonel J. M. Allen, who was M.P. for Hauraki before we went overseas. He saw Colonel Allen, on Crete, even carting water and provisions to platoons which were dug-in and could not move out for supplies. “No other army gets rations either in the field, in hospital, or at base camps as we do,” said an N.C.O. It was common knowledge, he said, that the principal meal of the day served to New Zealanders was equivalent to what some other troops got in two days.
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Bibliographic details
Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20804, 6 June 1942, Page 5
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187FIRST TIME IN ACTION Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20804, 6 June 1942, Page 5
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