nzvia

Veterans, the nsw branch held their mid-year lunch today at the chatswood rsl club.

the lunch is another nice opportunity for veterans to meet and chat over a lunchtime meal. There is normally not great numbers to the lunch but for those that attend, its always nice to see each other again and exchange stories past and present.

whilst we do not normally have guest speakers our very own 96 year old 1221 T/ssgt Frank Harlow took the opportunity to relate his experiences in Greece and Crete. Ron introduced frank who served with divcav in Greece and Crete then returned to nz to set up the armoured fighting school in waiouru retiring as a t/ssgt instructor.

Frank conducted a lot of research for his presentation which included not only his own personal experiences but included statistics of the time he was in Greece and Crete and his statistics were very freightening especially in regards to the KIA, WIA and POWs. Frank also used maps of Greece and crete to further explain his involvement as he spoke. Nevertheless, some of Frank's experiences including his role in DivCav were very interesting as he talked about how they had to use the high mileage bren carriers and the south african marmon-herrington ford armoured cars. according to frank, the cars were ugly, high profile and 13 ton weight armed with a bren light machine gun and point five boyes anti-tank rifle which proved useless against tanks, the bullets just splashed off. to make matters worse they were fitted with sand tyres which were practically useless in some off-road condtions. frank recalls the time he had to take an officer down to div hq one day and while waiting for him and doing some house keeping he heard a voice say "how do you like your armoured car corporal?" with which frank replied "i'd sooner it was a light tank". The response was "so would I" and as frank turned to see who it was he realised it was the divisional commander, general freyberg. when frank turned to leave, freyberg told him to stay and informed him the the ships carrying the light tanks had been sunk and the replacement ship was also sunk so they had to make do with what they had.

this is one of the many experiences that frank shared with us as we sat listening to every word. for the veterans at the lunch they could certainly relate to franks experiences and afterwards, greg thanked frank for the presentation knowing that like most veterans, he was reliving his past and of course the hurt that goes with it especially as some of frank's conrades did not return.

It was a very moving lunch and something we will look forward to every year.

Ron introducing 1221 t/ssgt frank harlow



1221 t/ssgt frank harlow