IN THE DESERT AGAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 October 1941, Page 6

IN THE DESERT AGAIN

MOVEMENT OF NEW ZEALAND TROOPS PREPARATION OF NETWORK. OF DEFENCES. LAST WINTER’S DRIVE , RECALLED. (From the Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, October 1. “Somewhere in the Western Desert” is once mere today the business address of New Zealand fighting troops and other field units. And for many of them, meantime at least, digging is again their business. During the past few weeks, long road columns and crowded troops trains have swung westwards across broad stretches of# sand and scrub, carrying New Zealanders away from the training camps which have held them since their return from Crete. Another formation has been busy preparaing new strongholds as part of a network of defences which make the approach to the Nile Valley a harder nut to crack than ever it has been. Laden with food and war supplies, New Zealand Army Service Corps trucks —the covered wagons of “the Colonial Carrying Companies,” which made their name famous in last winter’s big drive —are rumbling again along the Desert highways, and our engineers are back on some of the jobs in which they gained similarly fine reputations during their first term here. The Western Desert is new ground, of course, to hundreds of our troops, but there are still hundreds more to whom this move meant “coming home” from their Balkan adventures. BIG OFFENSIVE EXPECTED BY ITALIANS. (Received This Day, 12.15 p.m.) LONDON, October 1. It is reported in Rome, the “Popolo Di Italia” says, that the Italians are preparing for a big British offensive in North Africa. “Italy sent men, material, tanks and planes in readiness to face any eventuality,” it is added.