THEY MET AT TOBRUK

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 52, Issue 3258, 3 May 1943, Page 7

THEY MET AT TOBRUK

AND AGAIN IN HOSPITAL

GERMAN AND AUSTRALIAN Two men entered the military hospital at Heidelberg, Australia, within a day or two of each other. One was an Australian, Private Alway, an exchanged prisoner of war from Italy. The other was a German officer, born at Heidelberg, Germany, sent in from an Australian prisoners of war camp for special treatment. Both had similar bullet wounds in face and jaw and their operations were fixed for the same day by the plastic unit. A dental sergeant recognised the officer as a man he had attended at Tobruk and remarked that it was strange that an Australian also from Tobruk had pust had a similar operation. The German was curious and he sought out Alway.

“I took you prisoner,” he said, and it was. not until his tale was told that Alway knew what had happened to him before he woke up in an Italian hospital in Africa.

Apparently Alway was in a forward machine-gun post with 14 others. At night 50 German tanks advanced. The Australians let go and waited for the infantry they thought would follow. But the infantry was riding on the tanks and the Australian post was surrounded.

At dawn the firing began and Alway was hit early. The German told him that his mates killed half a company before they were overcome.

Alway was taken to Naples, and on the day he entered, hospital there the German was hit by an Australian sniper and captured.