N.Z. TROOPS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIX, Issue 21958, 9 May 1941, Page 9

N.Z. TROOPS

Battle Value Proved Not Beaten By Luftwaffe (N.Z.E.F Official Netos Service.) CAIRO, May 6. They had looked the Nazi war machine in the face and knew they could master it. They were convinced that their battle value against the Germans was tenfold in spite of a fortnight of steady withdrawal before constant dive-bombing by the powerful Luftwaffe and harassing machine-gun fire. The men of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force who returned to the Middle East from Greece do not consider they were beaten by German airmen. In fact, there is a sense of satisfaction and exhilaration in their bearing. They say the Luftwaffe came over in waves of from 24 to 79 ’planes at regular intervals of about a quarter of an hour. If troops halted for only 10 minutes they dug themselves into the ground. These slit trenches were protection against everything except a direct hit by a bomb. An artillery battery attacked by 27 dive-bombers for nearly an hour did not suffer one casualty, although a bomb landed about two yards from the trench and showered its occupants with earth. It seemed no use firing at these planes with Bren guns. If the bullets did reach the target they were actually deflected from the fuselage, at once discounting tales of ersatz armourplating. Toward the end of the retreat it was found far wiser not to fire on German planes and thus betray the positions of the troops. In fact, so unrestricted was the work of the Luftwaffe that there is at least one instance of three Messerschmitts intently chasing a single dispatch rider along a flat road. A padre with the New Zealand fighting unit conducted church parade for a few men gathered together In a hollow on Easter Sunday. Less than 10 minutes after the conclusion of the service the artillery members of the congregation rushed back to their guns to open fire on the Germans. On Anzac Day the same padre sat with a unit in an olive grove alongside a bridge. The unit was bombed from dawn to dusk, but did not lose one man.

A humorous situation occurred when the padre, while counting nearly 60 bomb craters at the side of the road along which they were travelling, glanced to the rear of a light truck and saw three diving Messerschmitts. His batman driver and a Greek passenger instantly dived to the right of the road, the driver landing in the mud and water of the ditch, and the Greek on top of him. The padre jumped to the right of the road. He saw the empty truck coming straight at him and sprang aside just in time. His two companions emerged from the mud, the Greek still clasping the padre’s jersey to his breast.

“Yon Silly Fool” A New Zealander on point duty at a bridge of particular strategic importance, doing his best to get traffic across before it had to be blown up, had hurried several brigades across when yet another motor column loomed on the horizon. He shouted and gesticulated until the vehicles were only 200 or 300 yards away, when an officer rushed up to him and cried, "Come on; you silly fool. They’re Germans.” In the battle of Greece the Maoris proved themselves really first-class fighting men. The Greeks called them “happy warriors” because they displayed so much enthusiasm for their work, but the Germans must have thought them demons from Hell, with all the ferocity of expression at their command and no doubt, fiendish war cries and the flashing of the whites of their eyes. Having first succeeded in getting too close to the enemy to permit the effective use of the Tommygun they made a bayonet charge, before which not even German shock troops could stand their ground. The Germans turned and ran. They disappeared from sight. General Freyberg was seen with his men on the beaches of Greece, asking after their welfare. He stood in the open while the Huns were shelling all round. When the traffic on the road became too congested the general dismounted from his car and took lip point duty at a crossroad for a while.

Splendid Work The New Zealand artillery were in the front line until the infantry units were able to take up fresh positions. The gunners stood by their blistering weapons all day, without food or sleep, and moved back to new positions at night. When their guns had to be abandoned they were worn out ana were spiked. The exhausted men still trudged back on foot when there was no available transport, sometimes jolting against passing vehicles. The embarkation was carried out without a hitch. A gunner who reached the beach with only the clothes he stood in marched straight on to a pontoon which had been run up to the shore and was conveyed almost immediately to a cruiser, aboard which he found a cup of cocoa awaiting him. The Navy was splendid but some New Zealanders had equal praise for the “Tommies,” whose stubbornness and fighting qualities rivalled those of the best troops of the Empire. Had they been told that reinforcements had arrived and that they were to turn back they would have unhesitatingly faced the German advance. So much and more can be said against the Berlin radio lies that Britain had left the Australians and New Zealanders in the lurch while English regiments were rushed to safety "in another glorious withdrawal.” Some New Zealand, troops came down to the beach in the dark of night and were lined up. Embarkation officers went along and chopped off groups of 50 at a time, saying this party in that barge.” Aboard the transport, the last to leave from the beach, the commander came into the lounge and said “it is now 3 o clock gentlemen, and I have to leave. On the same boat the commander on the bridge watched a plane dive and release a bomb. He observed where it would fall and swung the helm hard over to starboard. The ship reeled and the bomb missed by five yards,, shaking the vessel from stem to stern.