DESERT WARFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 January 1943, Page 2

DESERT WARFARE

BRITISH PATROL SCHOOL IN TRIPOLITANIA. NEW ZEALAND & AUSTRALIAN INSTRUCTORS. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) HEADQUARTERS, Tripolitania, January 12. New Zealanders, Australians and men of English and Scottish regiments are “pooling” their experience in desert warfare tb give advanced units of the Eighth Army the widest knowledge of patrolling—the all-important form of land reconnaissance. On the Gulf of Sirte our troops are seeing, hearing and discussing in the first British patrol school all that has been learned about patrols in the three years of static and mobile war. Formed within a few days after we had occupied this territory, the school, which consists of a group of trucks, bivouac tents and a 'cookhouse, is run by New Zealanders and has four of our infantrymen and a demonstration platoon from a New Zealand battalion on its staff. Three of the other 12 instructors are Australians who were flown from Cairo to make available the unparalleled knowledge of desert patrolling which they got during the siege of Tobruk. ' Obstacles such as the patrols at To-; bruk or the El Alamein line foundmines, trip-wires, booby traps, flares, and even tanks sitting on the objectives —are set out on the' stretch of sand which the students are taught to cross and recross with the information they went to get. They are mastering the technique of being able to advance on confpass bearings and cross featureless countryside without even the stars as a guide. Some of the Eighth Army’s original “desert rats” —Englishmen who have been fighting in the desert for three years—are teaching armoured and mobile patrolling, but most of the day periods are spent in discussing the results of the night patrols and learning to overcome traps and anti-personnel mines. “Everything that is taught is based on practical experience,” one New Zealand instructor told me. “We have learnt a lot and should show the results in our next patrol work.”