PARACHUTE TROOPS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 85, Issue 106, 8 May 1941, Page 6

PARACHUTE TROOPS

LANDINGS WITNESSED BY MAORIS PREPARED THE WAY FOR TROOP PLANES (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service.) Cairo, May 6. A party of Maoris that had been attached to a brigade for special duties described the landing of parachute troops which they witnessed south of the Corinth Canal. Our troops had withdrawn across the canal and were resting in a dispersed area when suddenly clouds of bombers appeared in the sky. They circled over the area, bombing it constantly for nearly three hours. Then came huge troop-carrying planes which came down to 30(1 feet and dropped parachute troops. Several of the parachutes failed to open, which was just too bad. However, hundreds did, and here and the»s was a red parachute about which the others gathered when they landed. Here anti there shell holes which the bombers had made were used as machine-gun pits. Guns and ammunition had come down with the troops and these were used to cover the landing of huge carrier planes, which disgorged fullyequipped troops and small armoured cars. Our small arms fire killed hundreds of Germans, but, with the most of our equipment already abandoned, our troops could not cope with the sheer weight of numbers and armament which suddenly opposed them. They pulled out and continued the withdrawal, covered by the withering fire of our fighting rearguards.