DESERT HAPPENING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 40, 14 January 1944, Page 5

DESERT HAPPENING

FANTASTIC OCCURRENCE

HELP FROM AXIS TROOPS

(By a New Zealand Soldier) One experience I haA*e had in this war Avhich Avill be Avorth telling my grandchildren Avas a fantastic episode last August at El Alamein, where the tide finally turned against Rommel in North Africa. It Avas the sort of situation one Avould cxpect to encounter only in some slapsticks comedy burlesque or warfare. I had been ordered to division headquarters at the battlefront for special duty Avhcn the fighting Avas Avell under Avay. They gaA r c me a package to dcliA 7 er to a lieadquart* ers on the coast. I. got there all right, but it Avas night before I could start back to my unit. 1/ came on a compass bearing and thought my-, self quite safe. It's easy to think of your battlefront as a dead straight line, and that's Avliat I did. Anyway,, in the. marsh my fuck bogged down. The driver, a Cockney, with the unusual name of Moretti, got doAvn and dug out the back Avhcels, then pushed Avhile I took the steering wheel and tried to case the truck out. No luck. Then some chaps camc OA r cr to see Avhat Avas up. My blood froze. They were Eyeties and Jerries. "Now, All Together, Boy si!" I thought my lighting days Avere over. Not so Moretti. He addressed them in the language Avhich i.s uniA 7 ersally understood by the. "perishi n' foreigner." They began to help us. "Now, all together boys, *eave !" Moretti exhorted. And, be damned, they all ''caved." Out came the truck. Moretti jumped aboard and Ave drove oil' as nicely as you please! That was the first part of it. The only explanation I' can give for this performance is that there Avas great confusion among the enemy at that stage and that the Italians thought Moretti a German and the Germans thought him an Italian. Our machine didn't arouse suspicion because,, at one. time and another they had captured many of our trucks, and Avhen we recaptured them avc often found the original British markings still visible. Swastika Crosses In any CAent, after a bit avc passed some, tanks with swastika cresses. "See those tanks?" I asked Moretti. He said yes, he saw them. But he didn't seem particularly interested. Finally avc came to some vehicles Avhich Avas ob\iously oiks. J: stopped. "What nationality did you think those chaps were who pushed us out?"** I asked. "Free French, weren't they?" Moretti replied. ''And Avhat about those tanks with crosses on?" "Did they have crosses on?" he replied. "I didn't notice." "They certainly did haA r e crosses on," I said,, ''and they weren't the crosses of Lorraine and the blokes who pushed us out were Eyeties and Jerries. Moretti's mouth seemed to drop six inches. "Crikey!" he said.