SEE IT THROUGH

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 66, Issue 5598, 29 March 1943, Page 6

SEE IT THROUGH

N.Z. DIVISION IN AFRICA QUESTION OF RETURN “This life is no fun: sometimes it is pretty awful, but we somehow or other manage to make the best of it,” writes an artillery sergeant in the New Zealand Division in North Africa, to a Wellington friend. “I have made some wonderful friends here, friends I will value all my life. We are just one big family, with our squabbles and fears, our good times and our bad.” “You ask me when I am coming heme,” he continues. “Well, there are times when we ask one another that, but frankly I can’t see the New Zealand Division coming back till the war is finished. Please do not think I am boasting, but I think that the division is rated very high by the British authorities and, no doubt, by Rommel himself. Of course the Italians loathe us. We have seen some pretty torrid actions, and have benefited by experience, till now we seem to have cut through miles of red tape (which smothers an army) and get on with the job we are here for. Now we learn the essentials, and all the flounces are cut out. We have seen new units arrive here after months of training in other countries, but lacking actual experience—there is only one school, and that is the hard one of actual campaigning.” Having been detained in Cairo with an attack of jaundice the writer, on recovering, had to catch up w with his battery’, so he rattled off to Alexandria and on to Mersa Matruh in a railway train without Westinghouse brakes. From Mersa the journey was continued in goods trucks, 22 men to a truck, jon to Tobruk.

“We arrived there after a sleepless night, unloaded again, and were directed to a transit camp to which we were told to carry our gear,” he writes. “This gear consists of all our worldly goods—bed and blankets and ground sheet, valise full of clothing, haversack with mess tin, shaving gear, odds and ends, water bottle, great coat, tin hat and gas mask, and, to cap the lot, a biwie tent for tw’o men. We had a case of rations also, so you can imagine it was not possible to make it on one trip, so we left our beds, tents and rations, hoping that the trucks would pick them up and bring them on.” ABANDONED ENEMY EQUIPMENT After a wretched four days in Tobruk, where the water was salt, and men were offering 10s for a bottle of beer without result, they moved on again across the desert, and were amazed at the quantity of enemy equipment that was being gathered up, sorted, and piled away for future use. Out of one Italian parachute the boys made good handkerchiefs, while Maoris got some fun out of a box of Italian flares they found near the parachute. Near these heaps of stuff were numerous graves, with wooden crosses, hurriedly stuck in the sand, sometimes hung with the head soldier’s hat or rifle.

“On our first night out from Tobruk we camped near an enemy water point and tasted good clear sparkling spring water again,” he goes on. “We were now entering Syrenaica, and were coming into the green country*, which looked like Greece or New Zealand. Near Barce we came down the side of a large range of mountains, and could see a great valley of well-kept green fields and farms, with white houses built by* Mussolini for his colonisers. It seemed such a pity that these people who had all this could not be satisfied with it, but must try to grab Abyssinia and Egy’pt, and now they have lost all. We stayed in one of the houses that night, quite a nice little place, with a livingroom with big fireplace, and three other rooms, and a barn at the back for the stock. We lit a large fire and cooked our tea and sat round the fire yarning. “Benghazi was our next stop. It certainly’ has been battered, but must have been a nice place, with palm trees growing along the centre of the main streets, and nice white buildings. “Christmas Eve broke fine, and we loaded up once more. ' It is bitterly cold at this time of the year. We were all half frozen waiting for the billy to boil so as to have some tea, when the fire collapsed and over went the lot. It rained on Christmas night, and. of course, the tents leaked, so we had a damp Christmas after all. Christmas dinner was not too appetising, bully beef and biscuits. Then on

we went to Adgedabia, where we joined our own transport and got back to the boys, exactly a fortnight after leaving Maadi.”