A SERGEANT AT LAST

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 44, 28 January 1944, Page 5

A SERGEANT AT LAST

EXPERIENCE IN TUNISIA Godfrey* Talbot recounted in a BBC short-wave broadcast the other day a story told to him by a United States Army sergeant. The story belongs to the days of the Tunisian fighting, when American Fortresses were mailing first contact with Montgomery's men. The sergeant said that on one occasion it had been a matter of some urgency for him to find a particular advance unit of the Eighth Army. On turning a corner at speed, he. came upon a small group of soldiers in battledress. He pulled up ami shouted an enquiry as to where he might find the such-and-such unit. "Instead of answering my question.,"' the sergeant told Talbot, '"this man asked, me what I wanted to know that for. Well, li was in a rush and, in no mood to carry on a long conversation, and I told him so pretty plainlj 7 , I giuss, with a few personal remarks, maybe, thrown in. He talked back to int pretty straight, too,, and when Ik walked away I said to* one of tinBritish soldiers standing by that ? guessed that fellow must be a sergeant by the way he talked to mc. "You're wrong there," the man from the Eighth Army replied, 'that isn'' a sergeant. That's General Mont gomery.'"