OUR MEN IN EGYPT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 July 1942, Page 3

OUR MEN IN EGYPT

BRAVE FEAT OF ARMS IN SMASHING THROUGH NAZI ARMOURED RING. AFTER SWIFT JOURNEY FROM SYRIA. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, June 30. The “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent with the Eighth Army says that the New Zealanders, who are now in action in Egypt—-veter-ans of Greece and Crete—came from Syria with remarkable speed and secrecy. ,Tbeir big convoys rattled down the Syrian mountains through Palestine and over the Sinai Desert, carefully avoiding the main roads and towns, and went into action west of Mersa Matruh on Saturday. The New Zealanders, after a day’s effective fighting side by side with men from the north of England, were eventually encircled, and they smashed their way back eastward. “The New Zealanders’ success on Saturday night in breaking through the ring of German tanks, artillery and infantry at Mersa Matruh, will go down in history as one of the greatest feats of arms in the North African campaign,” says .the Exchange Telegraph agency’s correspondent with the Eighth Army. “They went through the gap they had cut in the German lines,” the correspondent adds, “while machine-gun bullets and shells came from every direction. Some of their trucks were hit and went up in flames. New Zealand machine-gunners, perched on top of the trucks, kept up a withering fire, and 100 trucks got through with only slight losses. “It seemed incredible that the New Zealanders, in closely-packed lines, without tanks ahead of them, could force their way through the GertVian tanks, artillery and machine-guns. Earlier in the battle ‘the Maoris wrought havoc with the bayonet.”