SKILLED TRADESMEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 25 July 1942, Page 3

SKILLED TRADESMEN

BEING USED BY GERMANS AS FRONT LINE TROOPS. VARIED ASSORTMENT TAKEN BY NEW ZEALANDERS. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) WESTERN DESERT, July 22. Prisoners captured by the New Zealanders in their latest night attack on the southern sector of the Egyptian line have given a valuable indication that Germany is now calling on the skilled tradesman class for front line troops. Several of the prisoners had been trained as civilian technicians, and one who expressed Communist sympathies, was an experienced miner from the Saar. “The Nazis are ruining Germany,” he said early this morning. The pnly German prisoner who had been in North Africa for more than fifteen days was an infantryman who had been wounded by the New Zealanders in last winter’s campaign. “At last the New Zealanders have taken me.” he said. The remainder, whose ages varied from 18 to 45 had been flown to either Tobruk or Derna from Crete. Several Germans, all of whom were from the Fifteenth Panzer Division, had been wounded in fighting on the northern front in Russia. Most of the prisoners taken by the New Zealanders were German. The remainder were Italians from a Bersaglieri division.