WOUNDED NEAR TOBRUK

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22185, 31 January 1942, Page 4

WOUNDED NEAR TOBRUK

Incidents In Campaign Eltham Soldier’s Story The story leading up to his arrival in hospital 16 days after being wounded in the Libyan campaign, after a 200-mile trip by ambulance and a 30-hour journey by a hospital train, is vividly told by an Eltham soldier in a letter to his parents. “it was good to get there,” writes Private H. J. (Peter) Taylor, son of Mr and Mrs H. Taylor, Eltham, referring to his arrival in hospital. “My clothes had not been off me for more than a month and I had not washed tor more than that time, so you can guess how I felt when they put me in clean pyjamas and a comfortable bed. It was great. It was the first bed I had been in since leaving home.” Private Taylor said he was hit in a third attack made a few miles from Tobruk. From where he lay wounded he heard the Germans putting up a heavy barrage of mortar and machinegun fire. “Then I heard our boys say: ‘There they come!’ and our guns opened up,” he wrote. “It seemed hours before I heard them give another shout as the Germans broke and ran.” With the coming of dawn, Private Taylor said: “I raised myself and there were our boys, having breakfast as if nothing had happened." Private Taylor was then transported by lorry behind the lines to a New Zealand casualty clearing station. The same night the Germans captured the hospital. They did not look at the wounded. “For the next three days, while the battle raged around us, both the German and New Zealand doctors used the hospital,” stated Private Taylor. “Then the Germans left and the Italians took oVer,” he continued. “The first thing they did was to put their big guns under the Red Cross flag. The German doctor went over and made them shift them. Then they took nearly all our water and for four days we had only a third of a cup a day.” The subsequent victory of our troops and their arrival after the Italians had “cleared out” the night before was followed by the journey to hospital already described. Private Taylor also tells of how the Italians, when their range was found by our artillery, wished to surrender “But our own boys could do nothing and soon a German officer came and made them go back to their guns,” he states.