JOURNALIST WOUNDED

Southland Times, Issue 24831, 25 August 1942, Page 5

JOURNALIST WOUNDED

Auckland Man At Dieppe LONDON, August 21. One of two newspaper correspondents wounded at Dieppe was Wallace (Mac) Reyburn, of Auckland, representing The Montreal Standard. He was slightly wounded in the thigh and shoulder. Mr Reyburn, who is a son of Mr W. R. Reyburn, an Auckland dentist, accompanied the first assault landing party at Pourville and was the tenth man ashore in the Dieppe raid. He stayed ashore for nine and a half hours in the thick of the heaviest fighting. He was slightly wounded early in the morning by a mortar shell in the thigh and shoulder, but he was at work today.

“When the evacuation order was received we had to run 300 yards to the beach through a perfect inferno of artillery and mortar fire, also a tremendous air strafing,” he said. “I still do not know how we reached the landing craft "safely. The scene on the beach reminded me of pictures of Dunkirk. The town was ablaze .hundreds of men were wading to the boats and the sky was full of planes and shell-bursts. We scrambled into a landing craft, but it sank beneath us. We swam to another, but it also sank. Then a flak-ship picked us up and transferred us to a destroyer.” Mr Reybum landed in England in his underwear. He was formerly a member of the staff of The New Zealand Herald.