AFTER LONG TREK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1944, Page 4

AFTER LONG TREK

ALLIED SOLDIERS REACH SAFETY PARTY INCLUDES NEW ZEALANDERS. ESCAPEES FROM ITALY. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.55 a.m.) LONDON, January 5. A party of three Allied officers and sixty meh, including Britishers, New Zealanders and South Africans, has reached the Allied lines in Italy, after trekking for three months over the mountains of Yugoslavia, reports Reuter’s Cairo correspondent. A South African, Major Charles Ballentine, who was taken prisoner . a Tobruk said he and others were being taken to Germany and escaped from trucks after the Italian armistice. They headed for the Allied lines in Italy rather than neutral Switzerland. Yugoslav partisans, armed to the teeth, helped them from village to village. It was bitterly cold and German patrols, always active, picked off some escapees when crossing a river. General Tito’s Provisional Government one night entertained Major Ballentine, who was presented with General Tito’s signed photograph.