SOUTH OF EL AGHEILA

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 24, 28 December 1942, Page 5

SOUTH OF EL AGHEILA

NEW ZEALANDERS’ JOURNEY.

(Official War Correspondent.)

NOFILIA, Dec. 19. “You’ve time to boil up. Pass it on.” Good news this, for we’ve been travelling since the first light. Word is passed down the columns. We spring to the ground from transports, stretch ourselves, swing a swift glance around the familiar scene—just desert again—and go about the serious business of making tea. It is another halt on another day much like the one before.

It seems a long time since breakfast, cooked the previous afternoon and kept fairly warm in a hotbox. It had been too dark then to light fires and this is a very secret move—hundreds of miles of desert away south of El Agheila and beyond. Rotten country, we had been told, and till now thought impassable. Well, we’ve covered a lot already and seen worse. We make the most of this halt. We missed lunch yesterday, we remember. A blue flag is up at the head of the column and we clamber aboard again. It is still cold though it is 10 o’clock, but not as cold as when we started. ' Rain was falling then. Jf we stop long enough next time we’ll air our blankets. NO SIGN OF GERMAN PLANES; We rumble on. There’s nothing to sie —not even a patch of scrub. Those chaps in ii jeep have rigged up a ground sheet to protect themselves from the cold wind. There’s no dust, so that the Hun won’t sight us easily. Anyway, we haven’t seen any of his planes yet, but the R.A.h, has been about. There seem to be thousands of trucks, guns, tanks, and 13ron carriers spread out over the desert as far as we can see. The noise is just like distant thunder.

This country is moro interesting; there’s a cluster of sandhills on the horizon. Wo’ve halted again, and its lunch this time. Bully beef again—but there’s still some bread left. We’ll be back on biscuits again soon. 'We’re away again, but it’s slow going now. We’ve almost stopped and all columns arc closing in. A bulldozer is at work widening a gap it has made in some soft sand. There’s a great wadi ahead. Provosts have marked off big drops with lines of stones, but it’s bad enough Where we are going down. It’s like foliow-the-lcader down a water; chute. We are down and it is an enormous wadi, “oddly shaped but very wide and flat. We would have been a good target for the Ilun planes there. We arc climbing out of the wadi, winding in and out between great boulders. The sun is getting low, but we've covered nearly lOC miles to-day. We have spread out on the flat at last and have halted. They arc calling back: “We bed down here. Pass it back.” It will have a long way to go to the roar. Better put up a bivouac, as there is a heavy dew even if there’s no rain. There will be a hot meal soon. There is no need for a slit trench yet—anyway, digging looks hard. We have had a good meal and there’s nothing to do except go to. bed. We are told there’s another first-light start tomorrow morning. Plashes away in the north are very brilliant. Some say it is our troops shelling along the roadway and others that it is the R.A.F. bombing. Perhaps it is only lightning. We can’t hear anything.