FAREWELL TO TOBRUK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 April 1942, Page 4

FAREWELL TO TOBRUK

LAST AUSTRALIANS DEPART SALVAGE UNIT WHICH DID GOO,D WORK. RETRIEVING & REPAIRING MOTOR VEHICLES. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.5 p.m.) CAIRO, April 6. “The last Australian soldier has now said goodbye to Tobruk,” says the Official Australian war correspondent. “Since the relief of the fortress a few months ago, a small Australian salvage unit has been employed there, repairing and reconditioning A.I.F. vehicles rescued from the Desert. These men have now returned to their base, and thus, for the first time since General Morehead’s Division began its historic defence, the fortress of Tobruk is without an Australian in its battered perimeter. Though most of the Australian garrison had been withdrawn before the New Zealand troops broke through and joined hands with the defenders early in the present campaign, an Australian battalion was still there at the time to share in that historic event. Under persistent bombing the salvage unit now evacuated from Tobruk has retrieved and repaired more than 800 motor vehicles.”