FIRST NEW ZEALANDER IN ACTION

Dragon, 1 December 1942, Page 5

FIRST NEW ZEALANDER IN ACTION

The Libyan frontier on the night of August 22, 1940. A battalion of a famous English regiment receive orders to get urgently, information regarding the Italian enemy. A prisoner must be taken. The area is just North of Fort Capuzzo, on the road to Bardia. A New Zealand officer is attached to the regiment. He persuades the battalion commander to allow him to accompany the raiding party. Thus, in a characteristic spirit of adventure, LieutColonel T. C. Wallace became the first of our countrymen to participate in an action against the enemy.

The fighting patrol of one officer and fourteen others wore sandshoes and steel helmets, and carried two rifles, two machine-guns and an antitank rifle. In a parade an inspection was carried out to see that no clue as to their identity was carried. Trucks bore the men to a point near which it was known there were Italians. The journey was silently completed on foot. In the black Egyptian night, a barbed-wire entanglement was cut and the little party crept through to the bitumen road. Here, it was hoped, a motor cyclist could be snared so a wire was stretched across the road. An hour passed and no cyclist had eventuated so it was decided to go on. Voices and occasional bumping could be heard. At a road junction a hangar loomed up. They silently surrounded it—but it was empty. The moon came out brilliantly, their steel bayonets glittered. The enemy could possibly see them. Enemy trucks could now be seen, and about a hundred and fifty men. Stealthily, silently, the raiders crept closer until they were a matter of yards from the nearest of the foe. The signal was given. Every man rushed forward in a bayonet charge. Yells of surprise and fear.

Then the signal was given for the party to retire. There were seven prisoners, one of whom cried out to give the Italians a direction in which to send a hail of machine-gun fire. They fired mostly high, and a sergeant who covered the retreat returned some deadly fire from his machine-gun. Base Camp was then made without further incident.