EAST AFRICA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 July 1941, Page 6

EAST AFRICA

BRILLIANT ACHIEVEMENT BV ALLIES SUCCESS AGAINST GREATER NUMBERS. ENEMY GIVEN NO REST. (British Official Wirelesr..) RUGBY, July 14. Willi Hie suppression of till important resistance save in - I lie Gundar area, the campaign in Abyssitii.i. the last of Ihe Italian hast African possessions to fall to the Allies’ arms, has now almost reached it.s close. The East African campaign has been a brilliant achievement by a force of Allied troops far smaller than the enemy they conquered and operating in country of extraordinary difficulty. An account of the campaign was given in London on Monday by an officer who has taken part in it since the beginning of the year. Success was achieved largely by pursuing and harassing the enemy day after day and never allowing him time to rest, reorganise or prepare a counter-attack. "If he had ever been able to strike back," said the officer, "our position might soon have become difficult, for this was a campaign in which very large superiority in numbers was always on the side of the defending army, lime after time when we had brought all our available troops into action, wo found ourselves called upon to make headway against an enemy twice or three times as strong as ourselves. THE ATTACK ON KEREN. "At Keren, which was the turning point of the campaign, where the hardest fighting took, place and where we suffered much the greater part of cur casualties, we had to attack a vast mountain fortress armed with carefully prepared defensive positions. Our forces were no mere than two Indian Divisions, the Fifth and the Fourth, which had joined us at the beginning of the advance, and a Sudanese defence force. Altogether we had perhaps some 15.000 men to set against double that number of defenders. "These were the kind of proportions in all our actions. When the strength ci the positions captured, the time the Italians had to prepare their defence and the superior numbers with which they were able to hold them are allowed for, our casualties,’ heavy as they were in proportion to the total for the campaign, must be accounted small. The Fifth Indian Division lost in the fighting at and about Keren some 2000 killed or wounded, which was four-fifths of their total losses for the- whole campaign.

"After Keren the Italians knew that they had snot their bolt. They had intended there to strike hard back at us on two flanks of our advance. As they told us after the capture of the town, their plan had been to let us rush forward along the trail and cut in behind us both from the north and the south. Unhappily for them, we followed up their retreat so hard and chased and harried them so continually that they were never able to pull themselves together. "Their one later chance of checking us was at Amba Alagi, where, in the last few days before the surrender, the rains were making it immensely difficult for us. In some places everything 1 needed by our fighting troops had to be brought up on pack mules, making journeys of five hours and five hours back again. A wonderful job was made of bringing up ammunition for the guns. Had the Italians held . cut for another fortnight we should have been compelled to withdraw to . Asmara and wait for the end of the rains.” REMARKABLE CAPTURES. Two examples of the readiness of the Italians to surrender to forces infinitely smaller than themselves were told by this officer. A squadron of machines of mechanised cavalry ran into a large body of Italian colonial infantry south of Asmara, In Eritrea. The Italians were preparing to evacuate the town which had been the depot and headquarters of their brigade. A convoy of some motor vehicles was standing in a street laden and ready to drive off. "Cur squadron, comprising no more than 100 men called upon the Italians [to surrender,” he said. "Our officers j were then invited by the enemy to lunch to talk matters over. The Italians gave them a splendid lunch in conditions of comfort and even luxury, which came as a surprise after the hardships and bare living of the cam-> paign. When the lunch was finished the wagons were found drawn up outside all headed back toward Asmara, and every one with an Italian officer in charge ready to drive into captivity. The squadron brought back- these 30 wagons with their full loads and 6G prisoners." Another example was that of a patrol of the Worcestershire Regiment, comprising a second lieutenant, an n.c.o. and six men. They suddenly found themselves in the presence of 250 Italians two miles away from any possible support. The subaltern took a chance, marched up to the enemy, and called on them to surrender. They hesitated for a while, because they had with them 25 Abyssinian patriots ’ whom they had captured and disarmed. The subaltern said he would attend to that and thereupon the Italians laid down their arms. The subaltern armed the 25 Abyssinians and. with them to reinforce his own patrol as guards over the prisoners, marched the whole party back through mountains strongly held by the enemy and delivered them five miles away.