THE WORST ENEMY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20860, 12 August 1942, Page 3

THE WORST ENEMY

FLIES IN THE DESERT N.Z. TROOPS’ ORDEAL LITTLE REAL ACTIVITY (By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright.) (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent ) (9 a.m.) CAIRO, Aug. 11. The lull on the Alamein front continues, but yesterday and every day from the first light to dusk, the New Zealanders are fighting a battle against the most relentless enemy they have met. Two weeks of static warfare have brought a plague of millions of flies which defy traps, nets, and poisons to make the summer desert campaign the most trying life imaginable.

Spray-guns and fly-swats are the front-line weapons and in the forward areas it is uncommon to see a truck or bivouac tent without white netting under its camouflage. Traps made of old petrol, potato, and fruit tins kill thousands of flies daily. Now in its seventh week for the New Zealanders this campaign has been probably the hardest our troops have known. Living conditions from the outset were of the hardest, but always the troops accepted them cheerfully. A South Island infantry battalion’s cook, telling me about the issue of fresh meat that had arrived, said with a dry smile: “I knew there was something fresh coming up. You cculd see flies coming over the horizon before, the. .ration, truck;” His advice was to drink, my cup of tea off his bench. “You need both hands free to kill these man-eaters,” he said, Morale Not Shaken Day after day of inactivity is something new for the New Zealand fighting battalions, but it cannot shake their morale. I found machinegunners playing the old favourite game of battleships. One gunner, his face and steel helmet under a flynet, was marking on a battered envelope the shots shouted to him by his partner in a trench about 30yds. away. An indignant voice called out: “I can’t hear you,” when a shell-burst nearby blotted out an all important shot at the paper battleship. Shot after shot whistled over, but the machine-gunners went on with their game.

So it is all along the groups of slit trenches and gun-pits that form our front line. Infantrymen sit smoking or reading awaiting their chance for action. Although the shallow scattered slit trenches on this front in no way resemble the front lines of the last war, the forward areas are becoming so familiar that they are known by names similar to those famous in France and Palestine. The tracks to the line are called Willis street and Queen street. Further back, where movement is beyond the range of the enemy’s observation posts, there are sand-bagged dug-outs, trucks, and offices dug feet deep into the ground. Close Watch on Enemy

With the line between the coast and the Kattara depression shortened by the recent actions and the consequent possibility of forces being massed rapidly at any point, the enemy’s movements are being watched even more closely than usual. Patrolling planes watch his day activities and at night patrols and listening posts creep out after information. As the narrow strip of rio-man’s-land becomes ever more familiar to the men on either side of its lines of barbed-wire, night patrols become more difficult. The enemy, particularly the Italians, who are warned regularly to beware of the New Zealanders, at night shoot out flares and spray the ground with machine-gun fire at the slightest movement. But still the patrols go out and seldom return without information.