GRANDSTAND VIEW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 May 1943, Page 3

GRANDSTAND VIEW

OF ENEMY BARRAGE OBTAINED BY MINISTER & SECRETARY. MR. JONES VISITS FRONT IN TUNISIA. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) NEAR ENFIDAVILLE, April 30. The New Zealand Minister of Defence, Mr Jones, and his secretary, Mr Sherwood, who have returned to Africa from London, had an experience of war during their visit to the . New Zealanders on the Eighth Army front this week, that falls to the lot of few civilians—even Ministers of Defence and their secretaries. From the top of a tank and from a sector of the line which only a few days previously had been the scene of some of the bitterest fighting in North Africa, they had a grandstand view of an enemy barrage. It was at his own request that the Minister visited this sector of . the front before he returned to talk to the men who had fought over it and who had been responsible for forcing the enemy from it. Immediately in the foreground rose the spectacular lump of Takrouna Crag, the scene only 10 days ago of one of the most daring exploits in New Zealand military history. On its right was the lower saw-toothed crest of Jebel Bir, which protects its eastern flank, and behind it, running to the horizon north, east and west, were the rising lines of rugged ridges in which the enemy was fighting so desperately with his back to the sea and Tunis. Due east of the party on the flat were the trees of Enfidaville village, and all round them the tremendous scattered array of the desert army lying partly on the plain and partly among the hills and rising ground to the north. The forward slopes of Takrouna and its flanking ridge, the cactus hedges, olive groves, and the bare lower ridges to the north-east, where our most recent advances took place, were clearly visible in detail without the aid of glasses. It was a scene by now familiar to thousands of Eighth Army soldiers, and a scene emphasising, as no description can, the grimness of the task still confronting them and the difficulty of what they have already achieved.

ENEMY SHELLS TAKROUNA. The Minister’s party travelled the final stages of the line on two light tanks of the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry. They had just arrived at a vantage point not far south of Takrouna and were listening to an explanation of the recent operations by the brigadier commanding the brigade which captured the feature, when, to add point to the story, enemy artillery started to shell our lines to the northeast, beyond Enfidaville. Simultaneously, long-range enemy guns landed shells in the valley between Takarouna and Jebel Bix - and on the access ridge to Takrouna itself. A plume of smoke and dust rose above a little group of battered buildings ■on the summit of the crag, and further to the north-east on the bare ridges from which the New Zealand infantry drove the enemy only five days previously a line of exploding shells erupted. Away beyond the shell-bursts was another pattern of smoke and dust geysers where o.ur own counter-artil-lery fire was registering. The needlesharp flashes of oux- answering guns came back from nearby artillery positions and, further’ to the east, other batteries took up the challenge. To add further to the realism, the drone of aircraft sounded overhead as some of oui' fighters flew toward the hills. The exchange of fire was ovex - in a quarter of an hour, but while it lasted the Minister was given a demonstration that no amount of explanation could have equalled. When the Minister finally returned to talk to the men who had fought ovex* this country and captured these heights, he knew not only what he had been told about the Enfidaville line, but what he had actually seen himself of its terrain.