- 2005 first edition. 320 pages
- Published by Penguin.
- Softcover. Large. Fully illustrated
- Condition. Very good, near new
- RARE
The Grim Digs - New Zealand Soldiers in Nortrh Africa, 1948-1943
AFTER many interviews with veterans of the Desert War, examination of their letters and diaries and reading hundreds of books and official histories the author has created a vignette of the everyday lives, events and experiences and emotions of soldiers from New Zealand during the campaigns in North Africa, Greece and Crete.
These are not the stories of the big wigs who were privy to the strategies, but of those went where they were told, dug holes, endured privation and hardship.
They joined the army for many reasons. Keith Arkinstall and Reg Jenkins were working at the Passenger transport Company in Otahuhu. “We joined on the Thursday on the third of October at the Military Training Depot in Rutland St in Auckland. I told my boss, ‘we’re going to join up.’
‘You can’t do that. I said, ‘yes I can, we’re doing it. Bang! And away we went. I didn’t realise what bloody war was. I was 21.”
New Zealand was poorly prepared when Prime Minister Michael Joseph Savage declared war on Germany in September 1939.
Compulsory military training had been abandoned for cost reasons with the onset of the Depression.
During the war years recruits assembled at racecourses and parks. After basic training the First Echelon left for the Middle East in January 1940. Gunner Cliff Barkle wrote home: “We are packed in, 80 to a small mess-room, which also serves as our sleeping quarters. After tea we suspend our hammocks above the tables.”
On the journey each soldier was allowed three gallons of water a day; no gambling on board; no familiarities with ‘natives’ of either sex at ports of call; false dentures were to be removed before being seasick.
Plates lost to be charged against the soldier. Life was harsh in the desert, trying to keep clean a nightmare and the men existed on poor rations.
Thompson has painted a vivid picture of the war in this part of the world through the eyes of the men who were there. It does not glorify war but it tells the story of ordinary men who did some quite extraordinary things.
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