TRIBUTE TO MAORIS

Marlborough Express, Volume LXXVI, Issue 252, 26 October 1942, Page 6

TRIBUTE TO MAORIS

"P.EAL DEVILS IN ACTION." CAPTAIN A. C. WOOD, D.C.M., IN j NELSON. Formerly R.S.M. of the Maori Bat- | talion, with which he has been con- 1 tmuously since, as a permanent staff man, he was associated with its earliest training in New Zealand, Cap- | tain A. C. Wood, returned recently j to Nelson after being in the thiek j of the fighting for over 21 years in Greece, Crete and Libya. Now he is wearing the ribbon of the D.C.LI., this decoration having been awarded to him for his part in leading bayonet attacks against German machine gun nests at Malemi aerodrome in Orete. .Subsequently he was commissioned. He went overseas with the Second Echelon. "They are real devils in action, and it is glorious to be with them," lie told the Nelson Mail, speaking with sparkling eyes of the Maori Battalion. He laughed heartily when informed that Germans offieers had reported them as scalp hunters. He commented that the Germans hated the bayonet in close fighting and ran squealing like a rabbit. During the fighting at E1 Alamein, the Ivlaoris were ordered to attaek the Germans to relieve pressure on another part of the line. They did.it ,so effectively 'that they swep't all before them at the point of the bayonet right past the objective set for them and into the enemy B echelon (transport). They had to withdraw when British planes started to bornb the German transport. During the attaek they 1'illed 600 of the enemy, took 150 prisoners, and destroyed four tanks with their two-pounder anti-tank guns. They suffered only 84 casualties tliemselves, including about 10 killed. Subsequently, it was reported, the C'ommander of the Eighth Army wrote congratulating General Freyberg on the wonderful attaek. CIRCULAR DEFENCE. Describing the fighting at Nin Qua Quam, some 20 miles north of Mersa Matruh, Captain Wood said the New Zealanders had a eircular defence on an escarpment there when the Germans attacked. Most of the German transport eonsisted of British vehicles which had been eaptured earlier in the enemy advance. The New Zealanders were under heavy artillery fire and tlieir positions were being plastered when the Germans started moving tanks round the eastern fiank to the south. ,A company of about 100 German engineers attacked the front held by the Maori Battalion in order to cut the minefields. Tired of sitting down and being fired at, the Maoris charged with the bayonet and killed all but 15 of the Germans, who were taken prisoner. Starting after midnight on a mooniess night, the Maoris with two other battalions made the initial movement on foot, and in box-like formation which paved the way for the divisional break-through at E1 Ala-m-in, during which most of the enemy motorised infantry, taken by surprise, v;as wiped out. Later Verey lights were sent' up, transport arrived, and the Maori Battalion joined up with the Fifth Brigade, which was in the fortified position known as the "Kaponga Box." Mobile columns were formed of the brigades there. It was the South Africans and the New Zealanders who held up the German advance and fought off the annoured divisions till the Australians could. come up about a fortnight later. DRESSED COLONEL LOVE'S WOUNDS. It was at the end of a six-mile advance the last mile and a half on foot under heavy shellfire all the way from the ridge, that the Maori Eattalion dug in at Alyn Nyle on the way to Ruweisat Ridge, and it was there that their commander, the late Colonel E. T. W. Love, was mortally wounded. While dressing his wounds, Captain Wood was hit in the arm, which is now paralysed. Colonel Love's parents were among the first to greet Captain Wood on his return to Wellington. _V