ITALIAN WIRE CUT

Southland Times, Issue 24600, 24 November 1941, Page 6

ITALIAN WIRE CUT

New Zealand Troops Enter Libya

(Official War Correspondent) INSIDE LIBYA, November 19. New Zealand sappers gaily tore huge hunks out of Italy’s one-time eastern frontier wire to let our motor columns stream into Libya last night. As 1 write this we are still roaming unmolested across the broad shingle plains of the former no man’s land.

With the kind of Fascist extravagance that runs to the erection of impressive monuments to doubtful glories, Italy long ago marked her border with Egypt, not by an imaginary line, but by a thick and costly wall of tangled barbed-wire. Like a super rabbit fence it stretches, sand-chocked and rusty, from Solium across plateau, uphill and down dale, far into the south. In the face of our historic trek it was the most minor of inconveniences. Our engineers severed the tangled meshes in several places, dragged the wire away behind the lorries and left a gap hundreds of yards wide through which we rumbled at the dead of night. BIG GUNS THUNDER

At last we were within earshot of the war. The big guns were thundering across the frontier last night and today we saw our first enemy planes—only a brace which our anti-aircraft guns

sent squirming between white shellpuffs in the blue sky as they fled homewards across us. But we lost count of the British planes flying back and forth over us all day after the numbers had reached at least 100. Today is worth remembering. First, here we are in Libya starting qur second foreign expedition and starting it on the right foot. Second, here .in black and white is the first realization of our most optimistic hopes for air and land support—planes in the sky and tanks on the' ground. Today we were able to switch our eyes from a swarm of Hurricanes to five heavy tanks and we know where there are more—lots more. Already the air offensive we expected has opened with thrilling figures for enemy planes destroyed in the air and on the ground. INSIDE LIBYA, November 20. As we enter the second day in enemy territory I cannot help emphasizing again the unique nature of the circumstances and outlook of the men around me. I have never before sensed such a confident, almost exuberant, atmosphere. There may be grim days immediately before us, but just now as we enter the battleground and the enemy lines we feel as the German soldiers must have felt entering Greece. Even if this almost unreal sense of security were to end tomorrow it has had a wonderful moral effect on the New Zealanders. Their trigger fingers grow itchier every day.

Can you guess how the men around me passed the time early this morning before the cooks yelled “Come and get it.” They played football. In battledrcss and greatcoats they scrummed, tackled and kicked until the cold stiffness left their limbs. Their shouts and laughter reminded me of a suburban sports ground on a Saturday afternoon, but the noise was punctuated by the boom of field guns.

Suddenly the footballs rolled to a standstill and men became barrackers on the sidelines of a grimmer arena. A lone German plane had come droning overhead. Then 20 British, fighters appeared flying westwards. Our hopes of seeing the combat were so strong that they burst into words. Men pointed excitedly, yelling to the distant British planes: “Get that Jerry. He is just above you.” As if they really did hear four fighters broke away and chased the now retreating German into the distance.