FULL DAY SHOW

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 24 June 1943, Page 2

FULL DAY SHOW

THE KING AT TRIPOLI DISPLAY BY EIGHTH ARMY CIVILIANS EXCLUDED FROM STREETS (Rec. 11.5 a.m.) Rugby, June 23. The King, after leaving Malta, visited Tripoli. A delayed dispatch says the Bth Army put on a full-day show for him on Monday. It was most impressive in the display of might and numbers, but even more impressive as a demonstration of Empire solidarity and co-operation. Among the troops the King s*w on the day-long tour were English, South Africans. New Zealanders, Sudanese, Indians, Mauritians, Palestinians, Basoutlanders, East Africans, Swazis, also Free French and American Air Force units who had been fighting with the desert forces. A Free French motor launch had the honour of bringing the King ashore at Tripoli.

General Montgomery greeted him, and the King inspected guards of honour drawn up on the dock. Waiting to meet him were the Grand Mufti and the Chief Rabbi of Tripolitania and the chief matrons of the three branches of the Empire troops’ nursing services. The Grand Mufti and the Chief Rabbi were the only civilians the King saw all day. All civilians had been carefully excluded from the streets along the route and houses were shuttered, while soldiers armed with tommy gun. 3 patrolled the rooftops and roadsides in a careful precaution for the King’s safety in former Axis territory. The King’s caravan proceeded along miles of asphalt softening in the blazing sun, across vast stretches of sand and brush. Outside an enormous field hospital were convalescent patients and nurses cheering the King’s passage, and ’in the shade of the hospital wall a long line of hospital beds containing patients unable to stand who insisted on being allowed to see the King. \ His Majesty broke an arduous day’s travel in the hpt sun for morning tea at a roadside canteen, and had lunch at Army headquarters mess. The afternoon was again devoted to an inspection of Eighth Army, units, including Free French, who fought so valiantly across the desert with General Montgomery’s men. The King had tea with the “cherrypickers,” the Eleventh Hussars, who vied with the Derbyshire Yeomanry tor the honour of being the first in Tunis. The Eleventh Hussars was the first regiment of which the King was Colonel-in-Chief.—B.O.W.