GERMANS DODGED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1942, Page 3

GERMANS DODGED

MASTERTON SOLDIER ESCAPES FROM BENGHAZI LO\E TREK IN DESERT. BRITISH FORCES REJOINED. (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent.) CAIRO, November 24. A lone New Zealander, Albert Duncan, whose wife resides at 39 Fleet Street, Masterton, was one of the handful of men who greeted the British troops when they marched into Benghazi last Friday. He was the driver of a mobile canteen for the Y.M.C.A.. Hundreds of British and Dominions prisoners had been evacuated a few days before. When he left New Zealand nearly three years ago "Blue” Duncan was in an anti-tank regiment, but later he was transferred to the Y.M.C.A. Along the road to Mersa Matruh drove. Duncan and a friend on the morning of November 7, convinced that Mersa Matruh was in our hands. A couple of miles from Mersa Matruh they were stopped by a German staff car in which were four German officers, and they were told pointedly that, the war for them was over. That night Duncan and his friend slept out in the desert with a guard of three Germans standin" over them. Next day they were taken in a truck to a column, where they arrived in time for one of the many R.A.F. raids. The Germans kept Duncan with them as a kitchen hand and doing odd jobs about the place. “How long I was with them I do not know,” said Duncan, “but I awaited my chance to escape day by day. Sometimes I rode in a small car as the Germans retreated, and sometimes in the back of a truck, but there was another truck behind to watch my movements.” - It was just before he reached Benghazi on November 10 that Duncan’s long-awaited chance came. Just as they were going up an incline with no trucks behind he grabbed a water bottle, six packets, blankets ana binoculars, and dropped off the back of the lorry. He rolled down a steep bank at the side of the road, and lay in hiding in the scrub. He then sought refnge in a nearby cave. Day after day, and night after n>"ht he walked, keeping to the bush by day and using the road only at night. One day he had the good luck to kill a email, but could not cook it. So he ate it raw. One night he watched the Germans plant dynamite in a gor"e ready to blow it up before they retreated further west. “When I reached the settlement of El Razza on November 17 a kindly Catholic priest called me in and said: ‘You look like an Englishman in spite of the beard. He took me in, fed me, ■ and gave me warm clothes,” said Duncan. “He told me the Germans and Italians were miles away by now, and that I could wait there with him until English troops arrived. They came next day I could hardly believe that I was back among my own people again.” -