KING IN TRIPOLI

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 June 1943, Page 4

KING IN TRIPOLI

GREAT WELCOME BY EIGHTH ■ ARMY

WHOLE DAY SPENT ON TOUR OF INSPECTION.

TROOPS FROM MANY PARTS OF EMPIRE.

(British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 1040 a.m.) RUGBY, June 23

The King, after leaving Malta, visited Tripoli A delayed dispatch says the Eighth Army put on a full day show for him on Monday. It was most impressive as a display of might and numbers, but even more impressive as a demonstration of Empire solidarity and co-operation. Among the troops the King saw on a daylong tour were English, South Africans, New Zealanders, Sudanese, Indians, Mauritians, Palestinians, Basutos, East Africans, Swazis; also Free French and American Air Force units who had been fighting with the Desert forces. A Free French motor launch had the honour of bringing the King ashore at Tripoli. General Montgomery greeted him, and the King inspected the Guards of Honour drawn up on the dock. Waiting to meet him were the Grand Mufti, the Chief Rabbi and the Tripolitanian Chief Matrons of the three branches of the Empire troops’ nursing services. The Mufti and Rabbi were the only civilians the King saw all day. All civilians had been carefully excluded from streets along the route and houses were shuttered, while soldiers armed with tommy-guns patrolled the roof-tops and roadsides in careful precaution for the King’s safety in the former Axis teritory. The King’s car proceeded along miles of asphalt softening in the blazing sun and across vast stretches of sand and brush. Outside an enormous field hospital were convalescent patients and nurses cheering the King’s passage, and in the shade of the hospital wall a long line of hospital beds containing patients unable to stand, who insisted on being allowed to see the King. His Majesty broke an arduous day’s travel in a hot sun for morning tea at a roadside canteen, and had lunch at an army headquarters mess. The afternoon was again devoted to the inspection of Eighth Army units, including the Free French who fought so valiantly across the Desert with General Montgomery’s men. The King had tea with the “Cherrypickers,” the Eleventh Hussars, who vied with the Derbyshire Yeomanry for the honour of being the first in Tunis.