SCARS OF BATTLE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 79, Issue 24217, 7 March 1942, Page 8

SCARS OF BATTLE

SIM KEZEGH TO-DAY TRIBUTE TO GALLANT FORCE GRAVES OF NEW ZEALANDERS (N.Z.E.F, Official War Correspondent) CAIRO, Mar. 3 On an escarpment commanding a view of the whole ol' the surrounding country at Sidi Kezegh stands a blockhouse which was formerly the desert home of an unknown Italian. It was the scene of probably the most desperate action in the New Zeu landers' Libyan campaign. Ihi tiered by Royal Air Force bombs and by -New Zealand 25-pounders, it is to-day a shattered wreck.

This despatch was written with a typewriter perched on an ammunition box. The driver's chair from a German truck was used as a seat. On the wall was a strip of wood from a benzine case. Printed on it in blue pencil were the words: "A tribute to the officers and men of the 26th Battalion, Second N.Z.E.F., who were killed in action taking tins blockhouse on November 23, 1941. ' The author was wrong in his date, but it matters little; this simple tribute to a gallant fighting battalion will probably remain in the shattered blockhouse when this war is only a memory.

Unfaltering Advance Opposed by an enemy well dug-in and equipped with every known firearm, the battalion, led by its All Black commander, Lieutenant-Colonel J. 11. Page, advanced unfalteringly against a heavy curtain of enemy fire. In they went with the bayonet to rout the Hun and capture the blockhouse, a vital point essential to the New Zealanders' task of creating a corridor to Tobruk. They were subjected to a terrific hammering, but gained their objective. Their losses were heavy.

On the Sidi Rezegh battlefields today can be seen the slit trenches in which men were pinned for two days while the enemy crashed artillery and mortar fire at the New Zealanders' headquarters ceaselessly from dawn to dusk, and the areas where two of our brigades attacked with bayonets to take Sidi "Vzegh and Bel Hamid Ed Duda, linking up with the men of the Tobruk garrison. On the Sidi Rezegh aerodrome were 19 Axis fighters stripped of all equipment of any value. They had been caught on the ground hy our Bren carriers in the heat of the battle. The carriers crashed the tails of the machines, rendering them useless. Where History Was Made

Just south of the blockhouse there are 12 Italian tanks, wrecked by gunfire. Alongside are Italian graves. Not far away members of a South African graves unit are looking after New Zealand graves, making neat, but barren, desert cemeteries.

Recovery sections of our armoured divisions and tank brigades are now at work in the desert, dragging our battered tanks away and sending them back behind the lines for repairs so that they can be sent back to crack at Rommel's panzers again. This is Sidi Rezegh, where two brigades of gallant New Zealanders smashed and routed Rommel's positional troops, forced the corridor to Tobruk, and made history.