WORSE THAN DUNKIRK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1942, Page 4

WORSE THAN DUNKIRK

EXPERIENCES IN ESCAPE FROM TOBRUK FORTRESS A ROARING INFERNO. LONDON SOLDIER’S STORY. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 1.25 p.m.) LONDON, June 23. Eye-witness stories are now coming in from the battle headquarters of the Eighth Army from men who escaped from Tobruk. A Londoner, Private W. G. Downes, a Dunkirk survivor, limped into a forward camp with a three-day beard and said: “I made to the dock on the afternoon of June 20 and got there as a shell blew up buildings behind me. I boarded a tug which was a long time getting under way. Shells dropped all around me and we were directly hit amidships by two or three shells immediately after starting. Another wiped off our stern. The sailors jumped overboard, so I followed them.” Downes searched vainly for words to describe the horror of swimming in a sea partly afire with oil. A minesweeper heard his- yells after dark and pulled him from the sea. Tobruk was then a roaring inferno of shells, tanks and machine-guns. Downes early on June 21 saw three Italian torpedo-boats closing in on the mine-sweeper, whose fire ceased, when the gunners were all killed. The enemy fired continuously, circling around the now burning mine-sweeper. Downes again went overboard, with oil again afire around him. He was without water all day on a raft and was finally rescued, with two others, by a torpedo-boat, after a R.A.F. plane had spotted him. Then he landed on June 22 at Mersa Matruh. “It was worse than Dunkirk,” said Downes.