LITTLE CHANGE

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23112, 29 January 1945, Page 4

LITTLE CHANGE

Alamein Battlefield Hon. D. G. Sullivan

Makes Inspection

Official News Service ALAMEIN, January 25. Two and a quarter years after the Eighth Army passed this way, the battlefield of Alamein lies almost as completely preserved as if the fighting here ended only a few weeks ago. Amid the ordered confusion of trucks, minefields, barbed wire, blown-up tanks and trucks one can easily trace the course of the long-still currents of attack and counter-attack that ended in a smashing break-through and set moving the great chase across Africa. The Hon. D. G. Sullivan has been doing this to-day, the first member of the New Zealand Government to visit this scene of some of the most renowned exploits of the Second Division. He is being guided over its hallowed ground by tnree men who know it well, Brigadier W. Gentry (Wellington) and Colonels B. Barrington (Wellington), and J. Mitchell (Christchurch). Although all around us, so, little dulled by the passing of time, are signs of the occupation by thousands ox men, we are completely alone. There is no sound beyond our own voices and the whistle of the desert wind through the twisted steel of derelict vehicles. Hallowed Ground Even the dead have gone. They have long since been gathered up from the shallow graves dug where they fell and placed in neat rows at Alamein Military Cemetery, a great square of ground on the slope running down from the coast road toward the railway station. We went there an hour ego and walked along row upon row of graves of New Zealanders known and unknown. They lie together between Frenchmen, Australians, Scotsmen Englishmen and Poles. Their numbers are tragically high and these are only part of all whom the desert war claimed, for in other cemeteries far to the west are the dead of Sidi Rezegh, Mareth, Takrouna and the rest.

Senior officers lie at Alamein alongside private soldiers who faithfully served them and their country. Mr Sullivan found and stood bareheaded before the graves of many whose names were familiar throughout the Division and at home, among them fearless, beloved Brigadier John Gray (Auckland) and his able young brigade major, Brian Bassett (Christchurch); the fine leader of the Maoris, Lieu-tenant-Colonel E. G. W. Love; Lieu-tenant-Colonels A. B. Ross and S. F. Allen and Lieutenant A. G. Hultquist, a former M.P. for the Bay of Plenty. One grave among the hundreds bore the date October. 1940, and the name of Signalman Ted Manoah, of Auckland, a dispatch rider to whom motorcycles were as a first love and who lost his life on one and joined the first three of four New Zealanders killed in the Western Desert. But the names of most of those who lie at Alamein may be recorded nowhere more boldly in history than on those plain white crosses. The most moving of all that is to be seen in the cemetery is the sight of graves that bear no names but are simply marked “unknown N.Z.E.F.” Under one such cross lie the remains of eight men who could not be identified. Alamein Cemetery is so far little more than a field of white crosses and mounds of sand, but the task has already been begun of transforming it into a lasting memorial. Even trees will be made to grow ■ and gardens to bloom over those drab acres of desert. So it will be, too, in the equality of death with the Italian and German cemetery a little way up the road on the seaward side. Famous Tracks From the cemeteries the party turned into the desert along one of the lateral roads built behind the British lines in preparation for the offensive in October, 1942. Everything seemed as the Army left it —barbed wire, twisted signal lines, minefield warnings and mines themselves, even the old New Zealand Division sign with the familiar white fernleaf on a black background. On this lateral road we came, one by one, to intersections with famous tracks that marked the line of approach, march-tracks named Sun. Moon, Star, Bottle. Boat and Hat, each with its distinctive signposts still standing. Brigadier Gentry led us up the Boat track traversing the same ground over which he moved his infantry brigade to attack Meteirea Ridge. Now we stand on the crest of the ridge, a long, low escarpment which the New Zealanders with the South Africans on the left, and Highlanders on the right and Australians toward the coast, fought for and reached in the terrible moonlit hours of October 23 under the most thunderous artillery barrage the desert is ever to know Around us is the tumbled' debris of a battle fought with the fierce decisive suddenness of modern war —and in the case of Alamein a battle that changed the whole trend of a war that had set the world in flames. More New Zealanders were met by Mr Sullivan when he visited the New Zealand Y.M.C.A. hostel at Alexandria. He jvas told the hostel had housed thousands of New Zealanders on leave since it was established three years ago Mr Sullivan inspected the sleeping accommodation, canteen, dining-room and lounge, and complimented the Y.M.C.A., through the secretary in charge.