UNIT MOVES

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21211, 6 September 1940, Page 7

UNIT MOVES

SCENE IN EGYPT SPECIAL TASK ASSUMED ITALY’S DECLARATION (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service) EGYPT, August 7 “Moving day” is an occasion which practice has made perfect in the case of members of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force in Egypt. The precisely timed and smoothly executed departures of special detachments for duty in the Western Desert have acted almost as advanced courses in evacuation and the regulation of motorised convoys. The movement away from the training camp near Cairo of a party which actually took up its assignment in the desert some days before Italy entered the war, was marked by scenes of activity which were to become familiar during the following weeks. Although this assignment had been planned well in advance as an emergency measure, little was known of it by the men selected until they were instructed one afternoon to prepare for a move which might be made at the briefest notice. Quick Preparation Confirming a vague but growing feeling that something was “in the wind.” the announcement sent a wave of excitement through the unit’s section of the camp. The scene changed quickly to one of activity as each member of the party attended to his equipment.and effects, drivers checked and fuelled their vehicles, and the loading of stores was completed. So fully did the men prepare themselves that without further warning they would have been able to vacate their tents, ready for the road, within a few minutes. The order to move came perhaps sooner than most of them had expected. That same evening they were called on parade—some of them summoned from the camp cinema, which was as far from their tents as they had been allowed to go. Their departure had been fixed for daybreak, they were told, and there must be no delay. Early Morning Scene Sixteen hours after the initial warning notice had been given, a long convoy of trucks and motorcycles slipped out of the just stirring camp in the grey light of the early morning. The final hours of darkness had seen blankets rolled and stowed in lorries, breakfast eaten by yellow lamplight, and the men leave their tent lines with “packs up” and ready to depart. Farewell shouts from other early risers followed after them as the stillness was broken by the rumble of vehicles moving out toward the west. Swiftly and without incident the party covered the hundreds of miles which lay between the camp and its war station. It settled quickly into its special task and was well established by the time operations on the Egypto-Libyan border had begun as a result of Italy’s declaration of waf.