SPEEDY RECOVERY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 July 1942, Page 3

SPEEDY RECOVERY

MADE BV GENERAL FREYBERG STORY OF NIGHT BATTLE. SOUTH OF MERSA MATRUH. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, July 22. Lieutenant-General Freyberg has been discharged from hospital after three weeks’ treatment. The thrilling story of how he was wounded when in the front line with his troops and of how he was in a Balaclavian charge of New Zealanders through the German panzer ring can now be told. On June 26 the New Zealanders fought their first action about 20 miles south of Mersa Matruh. They were holding a defensive position covering a general withdrawal of the British forces. Throughout the day the New Zealanders were heavily shelled. Five attacks from different directions by tanks and infantry of the 21st Panzer Division were fought off. About five o’clock, General Freyberg went forward in his car with his A.D.C., the well-known All Black, Lieutenant J. L. Griffiths, to see what progress the enemy attack was making. Shortly after the General had arrived at a machine-gun post, enemy artillery put down a heavy concentration of fire. The General was hit in the neck by a splinter while walking to his car. He was thrown to the ground. Griffiths and the General’s ! driver, Corporal Cropp, were with him. The general’s wound was bandaged, at once with a field dressing. Then another shell landed close. Luckily, it fell on soft ground. It threw Griffiths forward on to General Freyberg, half burying them with earth. Griffiths and the driver got the General into his car and returned to headquarters. There the General gave instructions that Brigadier Inglis should be (summoned to take over. “While he lay wounded, he got up-to-the-minute reports of the progress of the battle from the Auckland solicitorcolonel who directed operations from the top of the General’s truck. When the time came for the New Zealanders to fight their way through the German armoured ring which encircled them that night, the General travelled in his own office truck which contained his bed. So, wounded, the General was in the thick of the Balaclavian charge of New Zealand transport through the German armoured ring. His truck was well* forward, and ran the gauntlet of enemy tank and anti-tank guns and machine-guns. He dragged himself up to watch the display of German tracer, and see our own anti-tank guns coming into action to cover the withdrawal. The truck driver had to swerve to the left as. the truck ran into a stream of . machinegun bullets, cgome of which went through the frame of the windscreen. As the truck bumped over the broken desert at a fast speed, it was all that Griffiths could do to keep the General from being thrown from his bed. Dawn found the New Zealand column still making its way east. Later in the morning they reached an aerodrome, and the General was flown to Cairo, arriving there the same evening. Since then, the General has amazed his doctors with the speed with which he recovered.