STRANGE VOYAGE

New Zealand Herald, Volume 80, Issue 24759, 6 December 1943, Page 2

STRANGE VOYAGE

STOKMS AND MINES medical unit on schooner (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent) SOMEWHERE IN ITALY, Nov. 14 Of all the thousands of New Zealanders now in Italy the only men who found any excitement in the Mediterranean crossing were those who usually least expect it—some of the staff of our convalescent depot. For 16 days this group, two medical corps officers and 12 men of the depot stall", lived on the open deck of an -, Italian schooner. They sheltered at Malta, Sicily, and the southern tip of Italy during fierce storms, they were blown off their course to within a few miles of the enemy-occupied Adriatic coast, and they sailed for days alongside and between Italian minefields. Forced to Run lor Malta Within a few hours after they left the North African coast had weather forced them to run for Malta-, where, for three days they waited for the storm to end. On the first fine day the schooner crossed to Catania, Sicily, where again storms caused a delay of several days. Then, with an Italian crew under an Italian naval officer, the vessel headed for the Italian mainland. Hardly had the voyage been resumed when yet another violent storm forced the schooner to shelter at Cretone, in the southern tip of Italy, for four days. "Then our troubles really started," one of the New Zealand medical officers said when interviewed. "Our course took us outside minefields. The accuracy of the navigation equipment was affected by a large gun turret theltalians had added to the ship and we knew that later, somehow, we had to find small openings through the minefields to reach the coast again. However, there was some , comfort in that the Italian skipper knew the coast thoroughly and had helped in laying the minefields. Testing Italian Gun "All was well until one morning; 1 awoke to find we had been blown off the course and were only 12 miles from the Albanian coast. Somehow we got back on the course again and by what seemed to us to be just sheer good luck we got through the minefields to the Italian coast." Although the only shelter they had through, the storms was what they rigged on the decks, the New Zealanders said they found a lighter side to this strange voyage. One New Zealand gunner repaired an Italian antiaircraft gun and decided to test it. "The first I knew of this," said the officer in charge of the New Zealanders, "was when I heard a loud explosion and saw the Italian skipper waving his arms and rushing toward me with a big piece of the mechanism. of the gun." The schooner was one of several built by the Italians early in the war and now used by the Allies.