NEW ZEALAND TROOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 April 1942, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND TROOPS

NOW WITH NINTH ARMY IN SYRIA FORCE INCLUDES VETERANS FROM GREECE & CRETE. PREPARATIONS TO MEET AGGRESSION. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, April 4. The Beirut correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain says that preparations are continuing in Syria to meet any Axis aggression. A New Zealand force, including veterans from Greece and Crete and from last winter’s campaign in the ‘Western Desert, has joined the Free French, British and Australian units which form the Ninth Army.

Work on fortifications is being pushed ahead, and more manpower and materials are due to arrive. Syria, while nervous about the possibility of attack, is internally peaceful and enjoying the greatest boom in history.

MOVE WELCOMED CHANGE FROM DESERT DUST & FLIES. GREEN HILLS & GOOD ROADS. (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent). CAIRO, April 4. New Zealand troops are now in Syria. They have been there some weeks, but it has not been possible to tell the story of the move from the sands of Egypt and Libya to the green hills of Syria. Troops who returned to the desert early in February to occupy defensive positions on the Libyan battlefront have now been withdrawn to join the rest of the division in Syria. News of the New Zealanders’ move to Syria was brought by the general officer commanding to his forward troops several weeks ago when General Freyberg flew from Cairo to a Libyan aerodrome not far from where his detached troops were located. On the desert landing-field, General Freyberg told his senior officers of the new plans which had been made for the New Zealand division. The story of the New Zealanders’ move was received with jubilation among troops in the desert. Along the “bush telegraph” of the battalions the news flashed. “No more desert, no more dust, no more flies,” were the reactions of the men who for months had desert dug-outs as their homes. With the troops of one fighting formation I moved across the Sinai desert to Palestine a few weeks ago. We crossed to the country where the fathers of the New Zealand soldiers of today fought in the last war, over escarpments and down wadis where gallant members of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles fought between 1916 and 1918. As we got further into Palestine the face of the desert changed. Its harsh cold sands gave way to grass, shrubs and trees. Here were Palestinian farmers working their fields, unworried, unperturbed. Some of us wondered whether again their land would be torn by shellfire, as it was when our fathers fought almost a generation ago. Along the excellent tar-sealed roads of Palestine rumbled trucks, guns and equipment of the New Zealanders to Syria. In the hills of Syria, hundreds of feet above sea level, New Zealanders are now training amid the ruins of another world. The conditions under which the New Zealanders live - are similar to those experienced in Greece —rugged mountainous country, not unlike New Zeaalnd’s back-country. In this bracing, mountain atmosphere the New Zealanders are making their new home.