IN FOUR LANDINGS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25386, 18 November 1943, Page 5

IN FOUR LANDINGS

NEW ZEALAND TELEGRAPHIST DIEPPE CONSIDERED WORST (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent) (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, Nov. 16. Dieppe, Oran, Sicily, Messina—a Christchurch telegraphist, R. D. Mitchell, has taken part in all these landings. He rates Dieppe as “the worst of the lot,” with Sjcily taking second place. In Sicily he went ashore with the Eighth Army at Marina Davola. Mitchell said: “We went in just before dawn. It was my job to help to arrange for signals back from the beach to 1 the ships. As we went in, coastal battteries fired at us, but put shells over our stern. There was also an Italian using a machine gun, but firing six feet above our heads. The army soon fixed him, and once we landed things were not so bad. We soon got the signals working, and stayed there for about a week. “ When we crossed the Straits of Messina to Reggio,” he said, “I went with the Canadians. We started a quarter of an hour before a creeping barrage stopped. Gun flashes lit up everything just like daylight. We sat in landing craft, occasionally sipping rum and listening to shells screech overhead. We met no opposition when we landed. In fact, the Italians had already bundled up their belongings ready to be marched off to prison camps, but many found that they had to stay and help to clear up the beaches in order to get tanks and trucks ashore. We did not see any Germans, but they worried us with mortar fire for a while. I spent a month in Italy, later going to Taranto. I was with working parties helping to open the beaches in order to get in supplies. That was before the ports were’opened up.” Mitchell is now in England, and with him are Telegraphists W. J. Smyth (Ruatoria) and S. F. Speed (Auckland).