WHERE COURAGE BLOOMED

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22215, 7 March 1942, Page 4

WHERE COURAGE BLOOMED

A Blockhouse At Sidi Rezegh Tribute To a Gallant Battalion 'From the Official War Correspondent ttith Hip m7,F F ) SIDI REZEGH, Feb. 28. On an escarpment which commands a view of the whole of the surrounding country at Sidi Rezegh stands a blockhouse, formerly the desert home of an unknown Italian. It is just a blockhouse in the desert, but it was the scene of probably the most desperate action throughout the whole of the New Zealanders' Libyan campaign. Battered from the air by bombs of the R.A.F., pounded by New Zealand 25-pounders, the blockhouse to-day is a shattered wreck. I write this dispatch among the debris with my typewriter perched on an ammunition box, with the drivers chair from a German truck for a seat. Above me on the inside wall is a strip of wood from a benzine case. Printed on it in blue pencil and in letterings of perfect formation are these words: “A tribute to the officers and men of the 26th Battalion, Second N.Z.E.F., who were killed in action, taking this blockhouse on November 23. 1941.” Whoever the author was, he was wrong in his date, but it matters little. This simple tribute to a gallant fighting battalion will probably remain in the shattered blockhouse in the middle of the Libyan desert when this war is only a memory.

Opposed by an enemy well dug in and equipped with every known firearm, the fearless 26th Battalion led by its All Black Battalion Commander, Lieut.Colonel J. R. Page, advanced unfalteringly against a heavy curtain of enemy fire. It was here that another All Black, a captain, although badly wounded, rallied his men and urged them on. He was killed as the attack went forward. Into this hail of fire went the battalion with the bayonet to rout the Germans and capture the blockhouse, a vital point essential to the success of the New Zealanders’ task of creating a corridor to Tobruk. They were subjected to a terrific hammering, but they brilliantly gained their objective. Their losses were heavy. To-day I have been all over the Sidi Rezegh battlefields. I saw again the slit trench in which I was pinned for two days when the enemy stood on Point 175 crashing artillery and mortar fire at the New Zealand headquarters ceaselessly from dawn to dusk. I saw again the areas over which two gallant New Zealand Brigades attacked at night with the bayonet to take Sidi Rezegh and Bel Hamid Ed Duda, thus to link up with the men of the Tobruk garrison. On the Sidi Rezegh aerodrome were 19 Axis fighters stripped of every piece of equipment of any value. They had been caught on the ground by our Bren carriers during the height of the Sidi Rezegh battle. The Bren carriers with machine-guns spitting charged across the aerodrome and crashed into the tail of each plane to wreck the tail and render the machines useless. On the escarpment and down on the flats was evidence of terrific tank battles. In one area just south of the blockhouse there were 12 Italian tanks wrecked by gunfire. Alongside were Italian graves. Now recovery sections of our armoured divisions and tank brigades are at work in the desert, dragging our battered tanks away and sending them back behind the lines for repairs so they can be sent back to crack at Rommel’s panzers again. Not far from the blockhouse I came across members of a South African graves unit. They were looking after New Zealand graves, making neat but barren desert cemeteries. They were lifting hastily-buried dead and placing them carefully in planned, neatly laid-out cemeteries. I looked at the names on small woolen crosses. There were men with whom I went through the ranks in the first weeks of the war. There were officers with whom I had trained. This is Sidi Rezegh, where two brigades of gallant New Zealanders smashed and routed Rommel’s posttional troops, forced the corridor to Tobruk ana made imperishable history’.