SICK AND WOUNDED RETURN

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 263, 5 August 1942, Page 4

SICK AND WOUNDED RETURN

Party From Middle East STORIES OF THE DESERT CAMPAIGN Sick and wounded officers and men who recently returned to New Zealand have some interesting things to say about the fighting in the desert and about the area round El Alamein. in which the present Battle for Egypt is being fought out. Captain Noel Jones, who comes from Nelson, and has returned as the result of a wound in the fighting round Fort Capuzzo in December, knows the El Alamein area well, for his unit was concerned, nearly 12 months ago, lit the construction of the defence line On which the Eighth Army took up its stand after the retreat from Tobruk a few weeks ago. Captain Jones could not. for obvious reasons, discuss the nature of the defences which were being constructed, but he was able to clarify some things which cable messages have not explained. Ruweisat Ridge, on which the New Zealand Dii ision has been seeing such hard fighting 'recently, is one of a series of ‘ ridges, formed of hardened sand, lying in the belt of desert between the coastal area and the hills to the south toward the Qattara Depression) These ridges are seldom more than 10 metres (about 33 feet) high, and are no more than undulations. It is not till one gets well back from the coast, nearing the Depression, that anything in the nature of real hills and ridges is met. There the ground is stony on the surface, and the preparation of defences, may . entail blasting into solid rock below the thin softer crust. Members of the party say that when the New Zealand Division was transferred from Syria back to the desert to reinforce the Eighth Army, it -was ’in magnificent condition, fitter than it had ever been. Some units were transferred from the Syrian border to Siwa Oasis, the first position, taken up in the desert, in 68 hours. Contact was not made with the enemy at Siwa, and the first engagement in the. present fighting came when the division had been withdrawn into the area immediately south-west of Matruh. Some of the men who have returned were through the campaigns in Greece and Crete, as well as the fighting during the advance into Cyrenaica .last December. A (Maori said that the lighting against the German parachutists reminded him of duck .shooting back at his home. The Desert Railway.

Majoi; G. T. Poole, Auckland, was concerned in the operation of desert railway over which the main* part of the supply of the Western Desert forces is carried from Alexandria. The railway, he said, in prewar days carried four trains a day, and for purposes of wdr it had to be made capable of a service of 18 to 20 trains a day. It is a single track, and the passing facilities existing when the army took over control were totally inadequate. For this reason it was necessary to construct many passing loops. Between El Alamein and Matruh, for instance, five such loops were installed, and at each of these a station, one being Tel el Isa, for which heavy fighting has taken- place between Australian troops and the enemy. Major Poole said'it was doubtful if much of the railway line, which had been laid to within, a few miles of Tobruk by New Zealand Railway Construction units, could have been destroyed during the retreat. The extension from Mersa Matruh onward, was laid on level desert, and if sections had been blown up they would easily toe repaired 'by the Germans by the straightening of bent rails or the laying of a few new ones. The Germans would, however, have no locomotives. They were too valuable to have been left behind, and any the Germans managed to damage would be towed back out of their reach. The Germans, however, would have plenty of transport trucks for which wheels could be flown across the Mediterranean to fit •them for rail running. Major Poole paid high tribute to the work of the ■New Zealand construction units in the laying of the railway. Often they were held up by the slow arrival of material, but there were some days ou which three and four miles of track were completed. There was a sufficient supply of rolling stock for the military traffic, and it was not unusual to see French wagons, with the familiar “Houimes 40, Chevaux 8” inscriptions. These had come down from the Syrian railway system. Bad Sandstorms.

Sandstorms in the desert have grown mueh worse since the war in the desert 'began, said a member of the party. The continual passage of motor transport and armoured vehicles has broken surfaces which have not been disturbed for centuries, with the result that there is much more for the wind to raise. As far east as tlie environs of Alexandria this has been noticed, and considerable trouble has been experienced in keeping orchards and farmlands free from sand drifts.

Many of the men who have not been in the actual firing line pay tribute to the wonderful work being done by tlie New Zealand Division. “I take off my hat to the Kiwis,” said one. “Wherever they go they seem to do the job given them and do it as well as it could be done.” High tribute is paid to the Indians and to the Tommies, too. One man said that the Tommies are getting tho toughest breaks, and get far less leave than do our men.

The day the party was due to leave the Egyptian port they received a farewell visit from Jerry. German bombers came over and dropped a few bombs in the district, but departure was delayed only an hour or so. A few hours before some of the officers left hospital at the base, General Freyberg was admitted, having been flown back from tho forward area after receiving his neck wound the same morning. Tlie party was welcomed at the clearing hospital,in New Zealand by an official party headed by the Prime Minister, Mr. Fraser. Others present included the Minister of Supply, Mr. Sullivan, the Minister of Defence, Mr. Jones, the Minister of Armed Forces and War Co-ordination, Mr. Coates, the Associate-Minister of Supply and Munitions, Mr. Hamilton, the Minister of Primary Production for War Purposes. Mr.’Polson, the Minister of Health, Mr. Nordmeyer, tlie Minister of Public Works, Mr. Armstrong, tlie United Kingdom High Commissioner, Sir Harry Batterbee, the Canadian High Commissioner, Dr. W. Riddell, the mayor of Wellington, Mr. Hislop, the Dominion president of the NewZealand Returned Services’ Association Mr. Perry,’M.L.C., and the chairman of tlie Wellington Harbour Board. Mr. Price K Among the men who returned was Driver C. E. Claridge, better known as a member of the Wellington College Old Boys’ Football Club and as a prominent .swimmer in Wellington for a number of years,