CAUGHT BY ENEMY ARTILLERY

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 23084, 26 December 1944, Page 4

CAUGHT BY ENEMY ARTILLERY

New Zealanders Suffer Casualties Unbelievable Scene FAENZA, Dec. 21. Caught in an enemy artillery concentration just as they were beginning to attack, two New Zealanders were killed and about 20 wounded two nights ago. while crossing a space of 150 yards. This occurred in a farmyard not far from Faenza, where the shell-pitted ground and buildings, scarred by flying metal splinters, provide convincing evidence of the intensity of the German shelling. Our own artillery barrage supporting the attack had just begun. It was falling 100 yards ahead of the farmhouse and of the infantry in a position to move off. Realising that an attack was coming, the enemy began shelling just behind our barrage, where the advancing infantry would be, and on this occasion his tactics paid dividends—in this area, anyway. Those, who could, sheltered in the farmhouse, a substantial two-storeyed stone building, where in one room—that was used as a battalion command post—there were crowded in addition to the normal complement some 20 men wounded in , various degrees of seriousness, two who had died, and as many others as could manage. Building a Shambles The scene was described by an officer there at the time as unbelievable. Shells were still crashing around and direct hits were scored on the house. An emrgency operation was being performed on a man wounded in the buttock by a shell splinter and. until the enemy blitz subsided, the place was pretty much of a shambles. It is very much to the credit of the infantry that, after such an unfortunate start, they should later go forward and achieve their objectives in good time and in thorough fashion-