HEROISM OF THREE NEW ZEALANDERS

Camp News, Volume 2, Issue 78, 20 June 1941, Page 4

HEROISM OF THREE NEW ZEALANDERS

Episode In Greece

BLEW THEMSELVES UP WITH BRIDGE

How two New Zealand officers in an engineers’ unit held up a German ad vance with their revolvers at a bridgehead in Greece while a sergeant blew up-the bridge and the two officers and himself with it, is told by a sergeant in the New. Zealand artillery overseas in a letter written to his brother in Wellington. He praised the accuracy of the New Zealand artillery fire,' and said that, having once come in con tact with the infantry, the Germans were very shy of a second helping.

“The, stories are trickling in now of some of the things our hoys did ‘over the way.’ One I heard this morning is just about the grandest thing I have ever heard. In one position we were in we were camped next to a section of engineers, who were very hospitable and friendly to us. and we got to know them pretty well.

“Subsequently we were all separated and I had no way of finding out how they got on till this morning, when I met one of them in hospital, and he told me that to the best of his knowledge he is the only one out of five left. Poor devils! They had a hell of a time, as they were the last away, having' to blow up bridges and so on, and time and again they were nearly trapped.

, “At one position they were cut off by some tanks and hacked their way out and incidentally helped some Aussies tc escape by browing land mines and anything ’ha: would explode at the Jerries At out of the last bridges, however the terries caught up with them-before -imy <-<.uld blow up the bridge

“The two officers went across and tried' to hold their up with their revolvers while the sergeant held the two bared wires togethci and - blew the

three of them to nothin^ — gaum I’ll say!

“I found out ovei there that Jerry is not so tough as one might imagine,” he added. “Our boys were more than a match for him It wasn't as though he had the soft peda 1 on 7 , He threw everything but the grand piano at us and 1 am certain from what I saw myself that we inflicted five times the damage on him that he did on us.”

The accuracy of the New Zealand artillery fire in the Grecian campaign was amazing, lie said and was con siderably better than the enemy’s. (“His tanks are tough but our out size in fowling-pieces skittled them like nobody's business. The first 1 saw showed up at 10.000 cards—seven -t the forty-ton variety Bang, bang Two shots, and the two leading tanks blew to pieces The other five skipped smartly up a side guhy. where some Tommy anti-tank gunners bowled them over in jig-time, They were definitely wary of all our artillery and anti-tank fire, and once they had met up with our infantry they were very shy of a second helping.’’