NEW ZEALANDERS MOVE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 80, 6 April 1942, Page 5

NEW ZEALANDERS MOVE

NOW STATIONED IN SYRIA “NO MORE DESERT, DUST, FLIES” (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent). (Recd. 10.5 p.m.) Cairo, April 4. New Zealand troops are now in Syria. They have been there some weeks but it has dot been possible to tell the story of the move from the sands of Egypt and Libya to the green hills of Syria. I roops who returned to the desert early in February to occupy defensive positions on the Libyan battlefront have now been withdrawn to join the rest of the division in Syria. News of tiie New Zealanders' move to Syria was brought by the General Officer Commanding to his forward troops several weeks ago, when General B. C. freyberg flew from Cairo to a Libyan aerodrome not far from where his detached troops were located. On the desert landing-field General Freyberg- told his senior officers the new plans which had been made for the New Zealand Division.

The story of the New Zealanders’ move was received with jubilation among the troops in the desert. Along the ‘‘bush telegraph” of the battalions the news was flashed. “No more desert! No more dust! No more flies!” These were the reactions of the men who for months had desert dugouts as their homes. With the troops of one fighting formation I moved across the Sinai desert to Palestine a few weeks ago. We crossed to the country where the fathers of the New Zealand soldiers of to-day fought in the last war, over escarpments and down wadis where the gallant members of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles fought between 1916 and 1918. As we got further into Palestine the face of the desert changed. Its harsh, cold sands gave way to grass, shrubs and trees. Here were Palestinian farmers working their fields unworried and unperturbed. Some of us wondered whether again their land would be torn by shellfire, as it was when our fathers fought almost a generation ago. Along the excellent tar-sealed roads of Palestine rumbled the trucks, guns and equipment of the New Zealanders to Syria. In the hills of Syria, hundreds of feet above sea

level the New Zealanders are now training amid the ruins of another world. The conditions under which the New Zealanders live are similar to those experienced in Greece—rugged, mountainous country, not unlike New Zealand’s back country. In this bracing mountain atmosphere the New Zealanders are making their new home.