TANKS IN MINE DUMP

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22473, 7 January 1943, Page 3

TANKS IN MINE DUMP

Attack By German

Bombers

Exciting Experience

How a regiment of New Zealand tank supporting infantry in a night attack stopped in the middle of a dump of engineers’ stores, including 18.00*0 mines, when German divebombers came over and dropped parachute flares, is told by an officer of the regiment in a letter to his parents in Canterbury. He says that the incident was all in the day’s work, but comments that if a splinter had hit the dump it would have set just about an “all-time high” in explosions.

“We had one particularly terrifying night during the last enemy attack in September.” says the officer. “We had to move right up behind the infantry during a night attack so as to be ready at dawn to push right through them, and to exploit any success whicn they might gain. The German is a strange fellow and he always does his best to make things as frightening as possible. He is a great believer in the ‘war of nerves.’

“On this particular night I left our position at 2 a.m. with the whole regiment and prepared to move across a piece of open ground, and get in behind one of our infantry’ brigades. Tne attack had started before we oe ;an to move, and there was a terrific amount of shelling, mortar, and ma-chine-gun fire coming our way. However, we felt pretty safe inside our Honey tanks. “Then the bombers came over. They started by dropping parachute flares. These burst in the air and spread out into five brilliant white lights which float down very slowly under large parachutes. They are regular arc lights and make the surroundings as bright as daylight, lighting up everything within a radius of about a mile as clearly as though it were daylight.

“Our tanks felt the size of haystacks. and we immediately ’froze' on the ground, hoping the bombers would not see us. They cruised round overhead, dropping a bomb here and a bomb there. Every now’ and then they would come down in a roaring dive, their machine-guns spitting tracer bullets, and with screaming sirens on their wings. The latter are weird in the extreme and show’ to what lengths they will go in order to try to terrify their enemies. They of course, do no damage whatever, but are merely one more weapon in their war of nerves. “Anyway, we sat huddled in our tanks for the best part of an hour, during which time we were treated to a fireworks display which would have put the Crystal Palace to shame. However luckily none of my chaps were hit. although several bomb splinters spattered against their tanks. When we came to move on we found that w’e had been sitting in the middle of a dump of engineer stores, and not 20 yards away from my tank was a heap of 18.000 mines. You can imagine how we felt and how everyone laughed when they heard about it, me pulling up for safety in such a spot.