INTREPID BAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 July 1941, Page 7

INTREPID BAND

V LATTER=DAY LAWRENCES IN BUSH AN ABYSSINIAN ADVENTURE. SOUTH AFRICANS AND AUSTRALIANS. Four South Africans are among a small, intrepid'band of Empire soldiers who for months past have been leading bands of Abyssinian patriots in guerilla warfare, which has now succeeded in driving the last of the Italians from the Gojjam province. • . . The men, who now hold commissions, are Sergeant Dick Luyt, Western Province sportsman and Rhodes scholar, Regimental Sergeant-Major Dick Shaw, Sergeant Geoff Clarke and Sergeant Martin Botha, a relative pf General Botha. In addition to the South Africans and a few men from East Africa, there are five Australians, who left Australia in the first troopship and volunteered from Egypt for the dangerous mission because they “liked bushwhacking and adventure.” . . This patriot force entered Abyssinia from the Sudan as Haile Selassie’s escort. They struggled up an escarpment with 12 trucks, which often had to be dragged by sheer man-power up steep mountain sides, along the vaguest of tracks. They caught the Italians in the rear at Dambatcha, and in another action near Burye, where they met GOOD of the enemy, they lost only 17 men, although they counted 150 enemy dead and between 400 and 500 wounded. These latter-day Lawrences had some stirring adventures. In the battle at Burye, Luyt manned a machine-gun behind a tree which stopped 25 bullets. Luyt only received a grazed cheek. Clarke fell into a creek, and, hurting his shoulder, was helpless with his legs in the water, while the enemy hurled 10 hand grenades at him without finding their mark. They then sprayed machinegun bullets at him, and at the erid of half an hour he was unhit, although the bullets were striking the bank sft. above his head. While the other officers and N.C.O.’s wear uniforms which are usually neat, considering their life, the five Australians look like characters out of a Wild West film. Their leader, a Randwick man, is a black-bearded, blue-eyed giant. When he bestrides a mule his long legs in their sheepskin chaps almost reach the ground. V/ith their slouch hats and chaps, and each with two revolvers strapped round his waist, these men might have stepped out of the pages of Bret Harte.