N.Z. Expeditionary Force in Egypt.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4486, 24 September 1940, Page 3

N.Z. Expeditionary Force in Egypt.

(N.Z.E.F, Official News Service)-

Egypt, Aug. 7. “Moving day” is an occasion which practice has made perfect in the case of members of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in. Egypt The precisely limed and smoothly executed departures of special detachments for duty in the Western Desert have acted almost as advanced courses in evacuation and the regulation of motorised convoys. The movement away from the training camp near Cairo of a party which actually took up its assignment dm the desert some days before Italy entered the war, was marked by scenes of activity which were to become familiar during the following weeks. Although this assignment had been planned well in advance as an emergency measure, little was known, of it by the men selected until they were instructed one afternoon to prepare •for a move which might be made at the briefest notice. The order to move came perhaps sooner than roost of them had anticipated. That same evening they were called on parade—some of them summoned from the camp cinema, which was as far from their tents as thov had been allowed to go. Their departure had been fixed for daybreak they were told, and there must be no delay. Sixteen hours after the initial warning notice had been given, a long convoy of trucks and motor cycles slipped out of the just stirring camp in the grey light of the early morning. The final hours of darkness had seen blankets rolled and stowed in Lorries, breakfast eaten by yellow lamplight and the men leave their tent flines with “packs up” and ready to depart, Farewell shouts from other early risers followed them as the stillness was broken by .the rumble of vehicles moving out towards the west. Swiftly and without incident the party covered the hundreds of miles which lay between the camp and its war station. It settled cruicklv into its special task and was well established by the time operations of the Egypto-Libyan border had begun as a result of Italy’S' declaration of war.