WHY MILLIONS ARE WANTED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 79, 2 October 1944, Page 2

WHY MILLIONS ARE WANTED

COST OF A NEW ZEALAND BARRAGE (Special to “Mail”) Wellington, This Day. “Thte money must be found” is a phrase frequently used by advocates of the Victory Loan. If its significance is not fully realised this is unfortunate because the statement has to be made in deadly earnest. War is costly, more costly because expensive equipment and supplies of ammunition have reduced the New Zealand casualty rate to half the proportions of the last war. In one vivid example the Minister of Rehabilitation, Mr C. F. Skinner, pictured last night how war loan millions can be spent on lives saved and actions won. “You might be interested,” he said, “in working out what a modern barrage costs and the barrage most likely to interest New Zealanders is the one that was laid down at El Alamein on the night of October 23, 1942, when the boys attacked Miteiriya Ridge. This was the initial assault that paved the way for .the breakthrough that spelled doom for the Afrika Korps and for Rommel’s panzers in Northern Africa. “That night we went in under a barrage by 815 of our 25 pounders. There were lots of other guns but let us take only the 25-pounders. The action last 24 hours and in that time each gun fired a thousand rounds. Just imagine it—Bls,ooo rounds or 15,000 tons of 25-pounder ammunition in one single action 'in one single day. Each of those shots cost £3 7s when landed in Alexandria, almost £3.500,000 in New Zealand currency for the ammunition of one type of gun alone. We must add the cost of transport over miles of rough desert all done at night so that the enemy would have no warning of the impending attack. Fifty thousand allons of petrol and dozens of tyres were used in delivering this ammunition to those camouflaged pits behind our hidden guns. The life of a truck engine in the desert is 6000 miles so I wonder what that memorable barrage did really cost?” Mr Skinner also discussed another war task which must be financed by the Victory Loans. “Give me the money,” he said, “to carry out our trade training schemes, our educational bursaries and the many other rehabilitation schemes that are paid for out of these loans. Our responsibility does not cease with the cessation of hostilities. We still have our boys 1o re-establish in civil life and this cannot be done without money, lots of it.”