FIGHTING PATROLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25661, 9 October 1944, Page 2

FIGHTING PATROLS

NEW ZEALANDERS IN ACTION NIGHT RAIDS ON ENEMY (Official War* Correspondent, N.Z.E.F., Adriatic Coast) Oct. 5. “ During the night there were intermittent periods of calm.” This was the phrase used by a New Zealand officer to describe conditions last night in his battalion’s sector on the Adriatic front, where close-quarter fighting by night patrols and heavy shelling and mortaring by both sides have been the main activity since our advance was halted on the line of the Fiumecino River by bad weather. Almost every night is the same story. Patrols go out from dusk onwards to probe the enemy defences, test his strength at various points, inflict damage, and, if possible, bring back prisoners for identification. For, although the front is at the moment static, the enemy must be given no rest, and as his policy in this respect is very much the same as ours, there is no lack of activity. The experience of one patrol sent out last night by a motor battalion is characteristic of what is happening along the whole front. Just before nightfall the patrol made its way cautiously to the river, now running about knee-deep between stopbanks, cast about for a good crossing place, and* found one below a dam which gave cover from at least one direction. Silently the men crept down the bank and piled across the river, the surface of which might at any moment have been whipped by a vicious burst from one of the Spandau guns on the far bank. But none came and, satisfied they had not been seen, the patrol moved forward in the light of the newly-risen moon and began the ascent of the bank on the enemy side of the river.

They had gone only a short distance when they came across the first sign that the Germans had defensive positions in the immediate vicinity—a communication trench between two dugouts some distance apart. Creeping along the trench to one of the dugouts, the patrol officer called to the occupants, if any, to come out and surrender. Covered by the officer’s tommy-gun, two Germans emerged—one a youth of 19, obviously very, much scared, and the other soldier a more experienced man. Silently the party moved oil' along the trench, but, just as they reached the second dug-out, the older prisoner dived into it. When the New Zealand officer called to him to come out, the answer was a pistol bullet that whistled close. . There was an effective way of dealing with a situation of this kind, so the officer reached for a grenade, but before he could toss it into the dugout someone inside had thrown one which burst in the trench with a shattering roar. It wounded the officer sufficiently to prevent him from taking any further part. Another man in the patrol went forward, grenade in hand, and after it had exploded he called again on the occupants to surrender. Not a sound came from the dug-out. For good measure the New Zealander sprayed the place with tommygun bullets. Once again there was no answer when he called so, satisfied that the job was finished, the patrol moved off with its prisoner, recrossed the river and returned to our lines. This is the sort of thing the infantrymen are doing every night, and their casualties are not always so light. It is a job that requires stamina. •