"TWO GRAND SHOWS"

Hutt News, Volume 15, Issue 22, 29 October 1941, Page 8

"TWO GRAND SHOWS"

WESTERN DESERT, Sept. 29. We daw two grand shows hert yesterday. In nature they were poles apart—one Intensely real, the spectacle-of more British planes than we had ever seen in the desert before massing for a daylight attack; the other purely fictitious, a Hollywood film programme in surroundings that could not have been stranger. We counted a great number of aircraft in the sky at noon. The fighters appeared first, three great droves of them, manoeuvring in a wiue circle to take battle formation above, behind and around the fast American-built bombers which came droning out of the east in perfect threes. The whole huge sky force circled for height and then flew westwards and out of our sight. The noise in the sky was the deep-throated roar and rumble that is the sound of weight in numbers — the sound which, in our most hardpressed days, we thought must be the prerogative of the Germans. Long before this is printed a communique will most likely have told of bombs dropped on ships, dumps and stores at Benghazi or Tripoli and of troops and transport columns! machine-gunned on the roads. It

will not matter if the communique Is short and laconic, for that will mean that these mass raids are no mere, novelty. Heartening signs like this—more troops; more guns, more planes— are all around us. As dusk fell yesterday ahd we gathered under the sky for a ' padre's evening service, heayy bombers lifted off the desert bhe -by-oiie and flew past us, perhaps to : clinch by moonlight the bperatio«B bdjgun a few hours, earlier by the d'aylight raiders.

And by. the time the enemy had 'sthrted his lame attempt at reprisals that night—dull, spasmodic rumbles and flashes fctr in the wfest told us about It—we were absorbed in our second show. We sat on the cold sand and watched the most famous of Hollywood's movie detectives unravel a thrilling murder mystery on a screen flung from the side of an Army truck.

Desert talkies are a new Y.M.C.A. service made possible by the contributions of the New Zealand people to patriotic funds. They have already proved themselves a complete success. The equipment is so easily portable that the programmes can be brought right to each unit's door.

Provision of entertainments in the field must be the most extraordinary of tho non-strategical changes we have found on our return to the desert. The N.Z.E.F. is perhaps better off In this respect than any other formstltth, for apart from the Y.te.C.A. cinema unit there is another 1,. which is run-by the padres and,tin addition thpre is:rthe force's own -!tfKfwl Concert jßajrtjr;;,') which intendx tto make regula®; visits,. FootbWl-isin the air.agkih, too, In the Weatisr'n Pesert. Ground* are the bi|a difficulty, but . it will be overcome- just as it was-sAast year, wire feU*ed fattie fcs rieri'buir f -; ■ •■, , L ,, , It/should ;ii?e thought, however, kliiU lfc>efog'pliiced on entertainment and recreations at this etagfe of the career of the N.Z.fc.F. These are days of seriouß training tinder, the conditions pecth liar to the Western Desert. There are bftttl« exercises and motorised, treks ffttifoirt feVtojr day.