ACCURATE FIRE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 137, 12 May 1941, Page 7

ACCURATE FIRE

NEW ZEALAND GUNNERS. COSTLY DELAY TO ENEMY. (From the Official War Correspondent with, the - N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, May 9. May 3. —New Zealand gunners fighting detensive actions along the withdrawal routes through Greece stood up unflinchingly to all the destructive power the Germans could muster. It was in the courage, accuracy and versatility ol our artillery that the enemy met his most costly delays, suffered ins heaviest casualties and lost his best opportunities to overrun the retiring lorces. He expressed ins respect lor tuem in efforts irom the air and the land to wipe them out with a violence beyond conception. But our guns kept bring.

I'he stories which were written in the countless thousands ol shells pumped into German troop concentrations, tank lorces and motor columns ! at ranges from several miles to a lew [ hundred yards are such classics of coolness and endurance that 1 would lind them hard to appreciate if 1 had pot seen some of our gunners in action with my own eyes. The manner in wh.ch i first saw gun crews in the pass to Servia left unshaken and undeterred by furious air blitzes became a commonplace spectacle. In other and hotter battles our gunners ignored air action completely m their deadly concentration on enemy movements attempted under cover of this bombing ami strafing.

Methodical and highly accurate shelling across the Olympus Passes cost the enemy dearly in the few days between the time first contact was made and the start of the hectic week of withdrawal. Advanced columns were scattered and shattered whenever they appeared within range. One lield regiment laying deiensi.e tire through a blanket of mist learned afterward that it had been the cause of great discomfort to two German battalions.

Such comparatively orthodox operations reached an abrupt end ior many gun crews on the day withdrawal was ordered. A Line running roughly from Elissoii to tne railway pass near the sea became the scene of what must have been the most extraordinary ar- | tiilerv stand made in any war. Hen°. all tiie rules for normal conditions went by the board as field guns fought at point-blank range, rushed from place to place and switched from target to target with a mobility and speed expected only of far lighter weapons. ! One battery was in action almost a whole afternoon with nothing between the guns and the enemy, j “Our targets were anything on feet. I wheels or tracks and we opened on | everything that moved,” a troop commander told me. “The boys had the time of their lives and they were al>solutely grand. ‘Jerry - plastered them with bombs and bullets but they always bobbed up again asking, ‘What do we shoot next:-' 1 ” HAVOC IN RIVER. Many were the times when the targets were so close that the guns were tired over open sights and one destroyed a tank at only 100 yards. i?omej times the observation posts were merely trees within hail of the guns, j When the Germans began to push I troops across the river in rubber boats 'a New Zealand officer went forward | in a wireless truck watching the operation and relaying information so j quickly and exactly that boatload after ; boatload was blown out of the water, j Most of this action was the sort of | guerrilla warfare in which the New j Zealanders excelled. That it greatly perturbed the enemy was shown by the : fact that not only did the Luftwaffe i constantly hunt gun positions, but. also [ German artillery, mortar and machineigun fire swept "along the hillcrests in | a systematic search for observation posts. A few days later Thermopylae Tass became the hottest corner in Greece when more than 100 guns, mostly manned by New Zealanders, blazed for 15 hours at enemy forces trying to push beyond Lamia. Three thousand rounds, at a conservative estimate, were falling into every known centre of German activity. Our shells drove off working parties trying to rebuild a demolished bridge, silenced enemy guns and caught troops and armoured columns in a terrific barrage. German casualties and equipment losses must have been huge, and the i enemy suffered considerable delay at ; a vital period in the withdrawal. Be- | lore the guns ceased firing thousands more British troops were well on the road to safety. An indication of the extent of the damage done was given by the fact that three field guns playing an antitank role alone accounted for 12 tanks in only 90 minutes. A sergeant-major at one gun said: “We got our chance at dusk, after being shelled, bombed and machine-gunned. Our three guns were covering a stretch of winding road when 12 tanks attempted to pass along it. Not one got through despite a speed of 30 miles an hour. One gun alone stopped seven tanks. The others cleaned up the remaining five. We got each broadside on at point-blank range by waiting till its nose appeared in the gun sights. My crew had the pleasure of gaining a direct hit and the tank seemed to disappear in the air.”