IMPRESSIVE JOURNEY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 10 August 1942, Page 5

IMPRESSIVE JOURNEY

FROM BARRACK SQUARE TO FRONT LINE CONTRASTING EXPERIENCES DESCRIBED (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F. > El Alamein, Aug. 8. .Within one day I travelled from the parade grounds of New Zealand base camp to trenches and gunpils in the New Zealanders’ sector of the front line. Eight hours ago I saw men training on the barrack square and heard them firing on rifle ranges. The shots I can hear now as the sun sinks towards the straight grey horizon are being fired at Germans a few hundred yards beyond our front line wire. Of the many journeys we have made along the road that stretches across the sand dunes between the Nile Valley and the Western Desert, this has been the shortest and easily the most impressive. It has been a day of amazing contrasts. From the big city where business goes on every day just as we have seen it in the last two summers, we have travelled less than 200 miles to the desert populated for miles by thousands of Empire troops who live in trenches and trucks. | A truck that was in the streets of Cairo this morning is now dug in to protect it from a possible bomb blast or shell splinters. The easy atmosphere of people walking to work has changed to the electric tension of the front line with planes overhead and occasional shellbursls. To a New Zealander returning to the front an even more impressive feature of the journey is the contrast betweer the trip now and the flying four-daj trek we made from Syria to Mersa Matruh to enter the campaign. Al the way along the route we passec hundreds of trucks returning from the battle. Now the tide has turned and between the Nile and the El Alamein line there is a constant flow of tanks, guns and trucks. Huge supply lines that once stretched from Benghazi to Tobruk are now working at top speed across the country where a few months ago the only inhabitants we saw were Bedouins who ran to the road to sell their eggs. From supply points hundreds of trucks go out across the desert every day with food and ammunition for men at the front. Shorter solid roads cut through the sand by bulldozers lined with wire netting have replaced the old tracks which wound across the desert between patches of higher and more solid ground. Three weeks ago we followed the ground by telephon i wires and compass bearings to travel by a route which is to-day a wide rough highway. The journey from the main road to the New Zealand sector of the line is like watching the plan of an army field organisation. A huge scheme of supply points, transport lines and dressing stations unfolds as you go forward. Thick clouds of dust as fine as talc rise from the wheels of a continuous procession of vehicles of war—everything from immense tank transporters to American jeeps. Every day is the same, as more and more tanks, guns and men reinforce the line.