DESERT PIRATES

Grey River Argus, 15 February 1941, Page 6

DESERT PIRATES

N.Z. FORCES IN EGYPT

Remarkable Exploits

STORY OF MONTHS JUST ■i v u.^ E y^ LED -

-j ('Received 14, 5.5 p.m.) ’(From Official' War Correspondent— N'.Z.E.F. in- the Middle East). . ■ CAIRO. February 13. ■ AcnosSv thousand of miles of litUie.known, ahd. dften-unmapped, enemy -territory, New Zealanders, for seven .months;‘have: been helping to write :a rhost amazing chapter of the story of the war in l North Africa. Officers ’and men specially chosen from cav- ; al'ry and rhachine-gun units have formed the nucleus of motorised patrols which have been sv/ooping and darting in swift trucks throughout the length and breadth of Libya like; modern outlaws, and whose work has had an extremely important bearing on the success of the British advance along the coastal belt. Long before this main push began, Italian forces at wells, forts and aerodromes in the Libyan interior were rudely,- but mysteriously, shaken from a sense of security by the first daring raids our desert pirates. Only to-day is the story revealed of how, for months past, the enemy has been kept on the alert, and made to expend petrol, aircraft and' transport, in protecting desert garrisons, land- how phantom motor columns hdve fallen on'-supply columns, shelled and captured isolated forts, blown up dumps, and 1 burned aircraft on the ground. The activities' of these patrols, which form an organisation called the Long Range Desert Group, gave the New Zealanders in the Middle East the first real opportunity to prove themselves in warfare. This long-range desert group has been commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Famad, an explorer of the Libyan Desert, who was formerly a British official in the Egyptian Survey Department. and a member of the Palestine Department of Antiquities. Prior to the first main expedition, in September, a vanguard British force, comprising one British and five New Zealand officers, in' two light cars, crossed a sandy waste,

travelled two hundred miles westward of Kufra and Benghazi, and returned after days in the desert, studyingv wheelmarks and extracting a wealth of information by other means.

While fellow members of the Expeditionary Force vainly awaited the taste of battle, the New Zealand officers and men in this long-range desert group were meeting action aplenty. Often, through sandstorms and extremes of heat and cold, patrols to which they belonged, covered half a million truck miles in pioneering a new form of military operation. Guided by the navigating genius and experience of three Englishmen over desert wastes, marked on maps as impassable or unmarked at all, they appeared at one place, then at another, or at several points at once, —sometimes near the Egy-1 | ptian frontier, sometimes a thousand * miles away in the west. They struck swift blows and vanished, before the - baffled'' enemy could assess their striking. fpi*ce, and they touched Chad and Sudan' as they ranged far and wide. Patrols were twice caught in the open desert, and were, bombed for over an hour by three aircraft,, but skilful manoeuvring of trucks helped them to escape unharmed In the first main expedition, three columns of trucks, crawled through two hundred. miles of towering sand dunes in September. As the first military force ever to cross the “Great Sand Sea,’’ the New Zealanders rapidly adapted themselves to the weird dune country, although, on the first day, trie trucks floundered’ helplessly axle-deep in almost liquid sand, and one or two of the drivers were' confused by a blinding yellow glare, fell over the brink of a huge dune, rolling over and over for a hundred feet, but were unharmed. Soon the drivers were able to tackle any obstacle confidently. The next defensive weapon which the desert thrust against them was a muffling' blanket of blinding sand. For three days the temperature rose so high, that more than one man became delirious, and the ground' was strewn with dead and dying birds; Separating on thousand-mile reconnaissance's' the patrols were given up as los't, owing to a gabled wireless message, but, after an. absence of amonth. three bands of bearded and unwashed; but exultant, young ruffians reached Cairo with a batch of Italian' prisoners and several bags of documents,, While examining northern roads leading to Kufra, one patrol had cfereered down on a thorough-1 fare- in broad daylight and held up a column of lorries in' the sty>. of highwaymen. The haul included of-1 ficial mail; giving all enemy disposi-j tions in the inner desert area. The second patrol had contacted Free French outposts- in Chad. The third destroyed an enemy bomber and a large patrol and bomb dump at Uweinat, near the Sudan border. During other expeditions in the autumn of 1940, a patrol returning from a minelaying trip appeared suddenly before the gate of Augila, a fort'.nr Northern Libya, and. seized a sentry before he had' completed his Fasbrit sahite. Three poiht-blank shells drove the astonished garrison out the back door, enabling armaments to be removed at leisure Then the raiders disappeared into the desert. Simultaneously, six hundred miles further south, another patrol drove a Uweinat garrison’ up a mountainside, leaving ,a dozen enemy casualties With the. tide of battle in full flood in- the.-nor.th,, as Imperial Forces pressed’ along the coastline, one New Zealand patrol, and another of English Guardsmen were sent out on Christmas Eve on one of the strangest wartime journeys ever undertak

en, their object being to cross Libya' from end to ’end; and raid posts-twelve-hundred miles from their base, maintaining secrecy. by avoiding all wells, and navigating a route through unexpToi’ed” cb'unthy all the why.

They made a rendezvous among wild northern foothills in Tibesti Mountains on the Chad-Libya border, with a dozen French troops, and' this combined raiding party took a long northward. detOtifto South-western Libya. Ivlurzuk, a most important town in

he area, ,w'as taken-' by surprise. A few Italian soldiers passed on the outskirts, and raised the hands in the Fascist Salute, while a group of troops, called to attention at the gate Of a great mud fort, were quickly disposed of. While a Guardsman patrol set the fort ablaze the New Zealanders and French attacked and-occupied, a landing ground. The force proceeded- to a neighbouring town, Traghen, whose inhabitants marched out in a- body to surrender with drums, beating and banners flying. Two more bases were attacked, and casualties were; inflicted on the enemy before the patrols turned towards French territory and home. Every man- chosen for the longrange desert group- is jealous of the privilege; - and' Would not change pla r 6es-- if! wtfh any man in any army.” K?an’y rr; fiave distinguished themselves by'cbbrage- and initiative, and so far two cavalry men, Sutherland and Willcox, as recently announced, have won; military decorations, which were the first awarded to the N.Z.E.F. The casualties have been remarkably light. The achievements of the patrols are all the more praiseworthy because of the. extraordinary difficult country over which they operated The ‘“real desert” only begins two hundred miles south of the Libyan coastline. No rain falls in decades. Oases are hundreds of miles apart Intervening country is lifeless. Tilted plateaus and thousand-foot cliffs alternate with limitless plains and depressions,' while' in places parallel rows of dunes reaching four hundred feet high, run from horizon to horizon, forming, vast and almost impenetratable seas of yellow sand. Such a dunefleld is the “Great Sand Sea,” eight hundred miles long and 150 miles wide, lying along the Egyptian frontier like a natural barrier. Its presence, together with Italian barbed wire and fortifications, and protection afforded by enormous distances, absence of water, and fierce summer heat, made enemy garrisons seem secure against attack. On the other hand, the British saw a distinct menace, both by land and air, tc Uppei- Egypt and to communication'.; with the Sudan, so -it was decided they must know what was happening behind the sand barrier. General Wavell called together three Englishmen who had formerly made a hobby of exploring the Libyan Desert, and within six weeks officers and mail had been drawn from "the New Zealand force and the Royal Armoured; Corps to form patrols, each of which, with its own mapping, navigation medical supply, and' repair facilities, was an army in miniature.— Then, for weeks at a time, they disappeared over the western... on swift, mj'sterious forays and reconnaissances. The effect on the enemy is now 1 known tn have beem cWSiderable, for it stopped al] normal traffic along desert routes after the first raid, and allowed no movement from oasis to oasis without escort guns and aircraft. All garrisons ’in the Libyan interior were heavily reinforced in men and materiwhilb daily air patrols were organised’ over a vast area. Prolonged uncertainty* moreover, put the nerves of the, enemy, garrisons on edge. By December, the main purpose of the r ..patrols in Eastern Libya had: been achieved in that the attenUoA, Of, the enemy,, had been appreciably , distracted from the decisive battle, area .in. the north. It was therefore...decided to stjr lip sleepy garrisons in far-away South-western Libya,?,where, since the French armistice, ...t-he enemy-, undoubtedly felt secure. They co-operated there with the Free French forces, whose successes have been announced lately