DESERT JOURNEY

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 279, 5 March 1941, Page 8

DESERT JOURNEY

LT. COL. PRIDEAUX EXPERIENCE LOCAL mi:n contacted In a letter received recently Lt.Col. Prideaux of Whakatane, gives an interesting account of a journey when lie made a torn-, of New Zealand Units in the Western Desert. The following arc extracts from his letter:—■ I started out. last Monday morning for a tour of our units on duty in the Western Desert and Libya. Bill Sergant accompanied me. We had an excellent trip but I had better try to tell you something about it though it is difficult without mentioning names of units. We had an excellent run the first day finishing at El Daba where we spent the night contacting two other units on the way and had lunch with one of them.

During the night a sand ? §torm blew up, and by morning it was easily the worst I have seen. Eve v n those who have been in that part of the desert for some months; said it was the Avorst they had experienced.

HoAvever Ave pushed off about 8' a.m. and. the going Avas pretty tough. At times we could see for five or ten yards around us, Avhile at other times Ave could not .see the road even under our front Avheels and had to pull up. Naturally progress was pretty sloav, but Ave found our next call at about mid-day and after finishing our business had lunch there consisting largely of sand.

This AA-as the unit Avith which Jack Stewart is at present, but he Avas at that time about 200 miles further AA 7 est stuck up with a broken axle. We continued under the unpleasant conditions for the rest of the afternoon making four calls altogether.

We reached Mcrsa Matruh at night fall and the storm had by then just about blown itself out. By Wednesday morning the weather was again what we call typical Whakatane weather, and it continued so, fortunately for the rest of the trip. We set out immediately after breakfast on our journey Westward. Up to this point, the roads had been very good, but from about 15 miles out from Matruh they deteriorated, and every here and there we had to make deviations into sand and desert. We reached Sidi Barrani about noon, and unearthed another of our units there camped in the rocky coast beside the sea. Norman Paterson was with this unit and I was talking to him for a few minutes. He is looking very well and seems to be enjoying the. life. From Sidi Barrani we left the main road and travelled along what is known as the coast road. On this route we passed through a |alt marsh. We saw some more of our people at Bug Bug and still more at Solium which we reached late in the afternoon. It lias been a pretty little harbour with a village of white buildings but now there is hardly a building there with a roof on. In the early days of the war it suffered somewhat from Italian air raids, and after it was occupied by the Italians it was bombed by our people both from the air and from the sea. During our advance it was particularly heavily shelled and bombed, and since our re-occupation it has* been further attacked by Italian aircraft and shelled by a long range gun at Bardia. However it is now safely in our hands and is being used as a port for evacuating sick and wounded and Italian prisoners. Solium is the furthest west spot in Egypt and the exit from the town is a winding road up a very steep cliff face, where a wonderful view is obtained of the little bay and the remains of the town. A little further on we crossed the border into Libya and soon after passed the much battered Fort Capruzzo. A few miles further on it grew too darl» to continue without lights so we pulled up for the night. That night we slept under the stars beside the car and it got pretty cold towards morning. As soon as it was light enough Ave boiled our billy and had a breakfast of tinned salmon and biscuits. We made a really bright and early start that morning, and soon reached Bardia, another prptty little harbour disfigured bj r a couple of Italian ships which have, been sunlv. The quantities of abandoned Italian war materials about here were ama# ing. There must have been hundreds of field guns of all calibres, thousands of rifles and huge dumps of ammunition of all kinds. There were also large quantities of stores which are proving very useful to our people during their further advance.

As there were no N.Z. units here, we pushed on over the seventy odd miles to our next objective, Tobruk.

The roads from Solium onwards were very much better, well made asphalt roads which the Italians had been too busy to destroy as they left. In fact only a very small percentage of the defenders could have left, ns the bulk of I hem were captured. Apart from a few places where the road had been shelled, it was a regular speedway light on to Tobrulc.

We found some of our people right in the town comfortably housed in barracks. Another unit were camped about three miles further along the road on which had been an Italiafn aerodrome. We had lunch with this crowd and there I ran across two Taneatua boys, Frank Mead and one of Tom Davis' sons. They are cheerful and both look well.

/ There was still another unit furI ther ahead and I decided to push on and try to finish with them and get back to Tobrulc for the night. The road ~was still good "except that it had been shelled in parts- where gangs were at work repairing it. There was an enormous amount of traffic on the road and many very dusty detours to make. In two places Ave had to negotiate rough tracks across gullies because the enemy had blown up the bridges.

We finally reached the last people we wanted to see at Tinimi, a place with very little more than a name. We heard there that Derna, about 30 miles further on had just fallen into our hands and the temptation' to continue on and see the fun was very strong. However I had 110 excuse to go, so much to the disappointment of my team. I ordered the ear to head for home. I could have done no good by going on except to gratify my own curiosity, and there was also the possibility of one the lads getting hurt by coining into contact with a land mine.

It was about 4 p.m. when we headed back and most of the road gangs were knocking off for the day so we had a much better run than going out. Nevertheless it was after

dark when we got there but they were expecting us and had a good meal ready. We had Italian tomato soup and bread made from grey Italian flour, not i-t all bad after a day or two oil biscuits. This particular crowd had been there about a week and had accumulated quite a lot of Italian supplies. They wanted to load) me up with them but car space was limited. However I brought some wine cheeses and a benzine tin full of cigars. The cheese is quite good, but the cigars are being appreciated by other members of the mess.

Next morning, Friday, we got a good start on the homeward liack and boiled the billy for lunch on the roadside between Solium Sidi Barrani, we did not take the coast road coming back, but, wished we. had. There was no road there before the war, but after the Italian occupation they set out to build a speedway. They had put in very solid rock foundations but that is all and the going was very rough.

We reached Mersa Matruh at 5 p.m. I did not stop the night there but pushed on to the camp where we had lunched in the middle of the sand storm. Conditions were much better this lime, and I spent a pleasant evening with the officers. I had a chat with Jack Stewart. This armylife certainly apices with Jack, Ticlooks so happy and well on it. That was Saturday nun ning and as we were now back on good roads we had an uneven*:"';', lun back to Maadi which we reached st little before ij p.m. I had a most interesting trip, as mither Bill Servant or my batman could drive. I had to do a fair bit myself to relieve the driver but J took it in short spells and quite enio.ved it. > OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO'I