N.Z. DIVISION ON MOVE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 14 April 1945, Page 2

N.Z. DIVISION ON MOVE

EXHILARATING EXPERIENCE • Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) Divisional H.Q., Apl. 10. After nearly four months’ stagnation of patrols, pickets and artillery duels along the line of the Senio River, it was an exhilarating experience to-day to see the New Zealand Division on the move again after last night’s assault crossing of the river by infantry. And only when one saw every road crammed with traffic of all kinds from jeeps and motor cycles to armoured cars, tanks and self propelled guns, was it possible to appreciate the weight of material which had been assembled to make this push final and decisive. In bright morning sunshine and notwithstanding the clouds of fine choking dust which billowed along the roads, Kiwis riding on all manner of vehicles smiled, joked and waved cheery greetings as they rolled towards, and over what for so long had been enemy territory. A spirit of optimism and advance was in the air and groups of German prisoners plodding in the opposite direction towards captivity increased that feeling. When I had crossed one of the Bailey bridges erected last night by engineers it was easy to see how hurriedly the enemy had abandoned forward positions when yesterday’s terrific air and artillery bombardment started. Rifles, mortars, ammunition, clothes and equipment of all kinds lay scattered along the base of the stopbank of tl l river, below dugouts and machine-gun emplacements from which the enemy had dominated the river. Here and there huddled corpses showed where some had been too slow to take shelter. MAORI’S FINE A Maori private delightedly examining a German automatic rifle he had found hastily gathered a few magazines for it when his sergeant recalled him to their Bren carrier and although his foraging had been cut short, a broad smile showed how pleased he was to add yet another weapon to the varied armoury of his battalion. All around was evidence of the intensity and accuracy of the bombing and shelling which preceded the advance. Every few yards along the roadside and in the neighbouring fields were shellholes and bomb craters. Houses lay in ruins, mere shapeless piles of rubble, and delicate blossom-laden branches of fruit trees razed, torn and jagged stumps in the air where vicious splinters from exploding shells had cut through them. In a grassy field bordered by newbudding grapevines, I joined an infantry battalion mounted in armoured troop carriers, waiting to advance on a neighbouring village where an advance party was already operating. On the order to go the heavy vehicles, loaded with men in full battle order, ground away on their tracks across the fields to a road where once again familiar dust clouds rose to obscure and almost suffocate.

VILLAGE ABANDONED A little short of the village contact with the leading elements provided information that it had just been abandoned by the enemy, but that streets and houses were being comb/d for possible rearguards or deserters. Shortly down the road came two New Zealand privates with eight submissive representatives of the "master race,” who had chosen to hide when their company withdrew during the night and give. themselves up rather than face another such ordeal as they went through yesterday. In the village itself not one house I saw was undamaged. Most were in a state of more or less complete ruin, but already within half an hour of the arrival of the first New Zealand troops, a few civilians, dazed and semi-hysteri-cal were emerging from cellars and dugouts where they had spent the most part of four or five months, culminating in the terrors of yesterday’s bombardment, of which the German occupation of the village brought them a full share. Poking about among the wreckage of their homes for anything they might salvage, they were quick to respond to any greeting, but many of them were obviously unsure of their new situation and cast occasional apprehensive or suspicious glances at the few soldiers who remained in the village. Habits"' of months, when, as one man told me they were never free from German thieving parties, are not easily broken. As I left shortly afterwards the troops had already moved on in pursuit of the retreating enemy. The village had ceased to have military importance and was henceforward a problem for the Italians themselves and the Allied Military Government.