DIFFICULT YEAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 June 1943, Page 3

DIFFICULT YEAR

WHICH HAS SEEN TURNING POINT GENERAL FREYB'ERG’S SURVEY. OF THE NORTH AFRICAN OPERATIONS. (By Telegraph--Press Association.) AUCKLAND, June 20. A brief statement on the purpose of his visit to New Zealand was made .by Lieutenant-General Freyberg during an interview he gave to representatives of the newspapers. “The Division is resting at present, he said, “and the War Cabinet took advantage of the lull to me to come to New Zealand for consultations on the future operations of the Division and its welfare. It has been a very difficult year, but I think we can say it has seen the turning point. I think the interesting-thing about it was that the end was a pointer to the future. There is no doubt that in the finish the German would not fight. “The Italians fought in the last phase, because they were defending their homse. They looked, on Tunisia as an outpost of their own country, but to the Germans North Africa by that time had become a place to get out of. Ever since El Alamein, the Germans have been wanting to get out of North Africa altogether. “The enemy appeared o have adequate equipment to defend himself and the ground favoured defence. I do not think there is any doubt about it. If we had been in his position, we would have been fighting in tthe hills now. He had many more troops than we thought he had. and undoubtedly he had orders to fight, but he saw no chance of getting away, so turned his hand in.” AXIS SEA LANE CUT. General Freyberg gave a very sound reason why the Germans could not attempt a Dunkirk to get away from Africa. During the retreat, he said, they had placed two minefields right across the Mediterranean to Sicily. With these they had a sea lane that was immune to naval attack, but when the Allies got up to the Enfidaville line, fighter aircraft began to fly over the land and the navy lifted the minefields, with the result that when he wanted to use it the enemy found no lane there, while the British Navy had destroyers sitting in the Bay of Tunis, so he saw no chance of getting away. He was being heavily bombed from the air, attacked from the front, and the sea was locked behind him, so he surrendered. “The German again showed that he is very good when he has a lot of equipment and when he is winning,” the general said, “but he cannot stand up against things in the same way as others can.” Speaking of Allied equipment, General Freyberg said it was now better than, the Germans. He named the American Sherman tank as the best heavy tank in the desert. He also mentioned that many of the Germans whom the division had fought against had previously been in Russia. They did not like Africa, he added grimly. PROBLEMS OF SUPPLY. General Freyberg paid some attention to the special supply problems of the long advance from Egypt to Tunis. For instance, he said, when the Eighth Army was on Benghazi, 1200 tons of petrol were needed every day for the Air Force component alone. The daily needs of the division were 300 tons, and there were five divisions. In addition, stocks had to be built up over and above the daily maintenance in preparation for the next advance. For the last drive into Tunis, 1,000,000 rations had to be collected, and large supplies of petrol. When the New Zealand Division recently returned from Tunisia to Maadi, five tons of petrol were needed for every mile travelled. The distance was about 2000 miles. Thus about 10,000 tons of petrol were required for the move, which took between 10 and 12 days. The division travelled with between 3000 and 4000 vehicles and, though much of the way lay through country which had been heavily mined, the move had been carefully block-timed and minefields and malarial areas were strictly avoided. As a result, the only casualties on the way back through the mines were a few men who neglected to travel with tliir units.