BRITISH "TOMMY"

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 308, 31 December 1942, Page 4

BRITISH "TOMMY"

TRIBUTE PAID TO FIGHTING SPIRIT Auckland. Dec. 29. Warm admiration of the fighting qualities of the English is expressed by Major Lindsay S. Rogers, Te Awamutu. in a letter to Mr. F. W. Doidge, M.P. for Tauranga. Major Rogers, who has just been awarded the enlisted at London coon after thp outbreak of war. anc. has been serving in tne Middle East for a considerable period. “My casualty clearing slat inn is a famous one in the Western Desert.” writes Major Rogers, ‘for it alone has been in al! four campaigns and I have been in three of them. We are extremely mobile, and in two hours can take in and attend to 200 casualties. “Mv first really big night was at Sidi Rezegh. I was the only surgeon in our clearing station when suddenly one evening we <rot 700 wounded In, and next night 400. I can see my Operating tent now; every’ available inch taken un by wounded, on stretchers. or just lying on the floor. I worked two tables, and kent going steadily hour after hour, and everv time I looked down the floor seemed to be as packed as ever. “An even more terrible tim-» was the last week in Tobruk. There we got 2000 in one night, and eight of us

did 456 major operations during that night. The looks of anguish and tiredness on those faces! Some boys had been without sleep for days on end. So had we for that matter, but lon we worked steadily through the i night, and next morning in came a I hospital boat. ! “We got them all away: emptied ■ the hospital, in fact, and Tobruk, too. ; It's a grand unit, and I am proud to jbe its surgeon, for the ‘Tommy’ my ' admiration is unbounded.” i