STRANGE INTIMACIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25562, 15 June 1944, Page 4

STRANGE INTIMACIES

FIGHTING IN CASSINO RUNS DEATH TO THE UNWARY Repatriated and escaped prisoners of war, men with guerrilla experience under Marshal Tito in Jugoslavia, veterans of the early campaigns of the 2nd N.Z.E.F., airmen from India, and members of armoured and infantry units from the fighting in Cassino, were among the New Zealand soldiers, sailors, and airmen who arrived home recently. Their battle and operational experiences ranged over every theatre of war except the South Pacific—in England, .Greece, and the Balkans, Italy and the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, India-Burma, and the Netherlands Indies.

The strange intimacies of the battle front among the shattered ruins of Cassino were spoken of by many. Pinned down under artillery fire, and for the Germans at least, by air bombardment, many of the front-line troops lived for days within talking distance of their foes. One man who returned wounded in- the arm and chest was actually brought to his own dressing station by German medical orderlies who considered it easier to do this than to carry him behind their own lines. Germans Borrow Stretchers

Another man told of the German orae.jies who walked into a New Zealand casualty clearing station and requested the loan of stretchers to move their wounded. The New Zealanders granted the loan, and some hours later the Germans returned them, with thanks. By tacit consent hostilities stopped while billies were boiled in German' and New Zealand houses only a few yards ’apart, and the fight was resumed after both sides had eaten.

It was a grim game. The returned men preferred to remember the lighter sides of it, but there was deadly work with grenade, tommy-gun, and knife among the bomb-blasted buildings. Always close up to the enemy, at times sharing different rooms of the same house, our men were on no picnic, and death came quickly to the unwary. At night it was worse, when the first indication of the presence of hostile patrols was usually the flash and roar of a grenade or the stammer of a sub-machine-gun. Often the dead remained unburied where they fell, and our men claimed stoutly that the German paratroopers opposing them were drugged before going into action. The paratroopers were big and tough, they said. Some were boys of 18 and 19. the remainder veterans of 40-plus, with the middle groups strangely absent, but they were all big men and fighters. When they were captured they appeared to go to pieces, but there was no sign of any such weakness while they were on the job, and their capture was no easy matter. Infantrymen Critical

The infantrymen in particular were highly critical of the bombing of Cassino. When it was over, the infantry went in, and the enemy were waiting. Our armour was unable to pass the piles of rubble and huge .-craters which represented most of Cassino. All believed in the famous tunnel, but had no direct evidence of it. Airmen from India are looking forward to the Japanese receiving a severe drubbing in Burma. They feel the time is overdue for it, but not far away now. “I do not know anything in particular about it,” said one of them. “ but our air superiority is increasing steadily and has been for some time. As for the British and Indian ground troops there, they have had to play a waiting game for a long time, and new they are beginning to get at the Japanese with something like a fair break and they will be tough to stop.”