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Alfred Andreassend
1 october 1905- 19 February 1965 "His war was fairly straight forward - via Australia, Fremantle (he loved Perth), to India to regroup,several weeks near Bombay, then on to Egypt. More training and some combat then off to Greece. Moved rapidly north to near Mt Olympus,where the Germans met them in force. A strategic retreat took them right back to near Athens then withdrawal to Crete. Plenty of action in Crete, as the Germans sent in paratroopers initially, a sad failure as they were sitting ducks as they came down slung under their parachutes. Alf was a marksman,so had a busy time. However the Germans arrived in even larger numbers by sea - so there was yet another strategic withdrawal from southern Crete back to Egypt. Further training and regrouping, and Alf was offered one stripe, the rank of a lance corporal. He said no,as the one striper has no clout at all. He said 2stripes or nothing ! And the army being what it is,said OK nothing !! Later in 1942 at El Alamein his unit was once again in a no win situation and they were ordered to retreat. As he was preparing to move out from their position, he was wounded, and was told to wait for medics and transport. The Huns opened up with very heavy mortar fire, and the relief vehicles never got to him. That night most of the wounded around him died,and he hung on there soaked in his own blood for another 3 days before the Germans took him prisoner and tended to his wounds. His war in the NZ army was over - and later on he said he wished he had taken that darned one stripe! It would have put another one shilling and sixpence in his pay packet every day he spent as a POW, and up until he was demobbed in NZ, almost 4 years later !" Gordon Andreassend 2009 Alf was employed by the Riccarton builders of the day and when war broke out Alf was 37yrs of age with all the young guys 18/20s and all were put off so that they had no jobs so where did you go in 1939 with the depression just behind them well with a war looming? Everybody went to the enlistment office and signed up I think they only had a very short training period because Alf had been in the territorials 1937/8 but did not want a commission because his schooling had been very rudimentary and I do not know where he went to school I guess Timaru South" Noel Andreassend 2009 |
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Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grimstead, England
Alf was fortunate to be treated by two pioneers of plastic surgery, Sir Harold Gillies and Archibald MacIndoe, both New Zealanders and cousins, who developed revolutionary techinques for reconstruction and post therapy care based in Queen Victoria Hospital at the start of the war. He underwent nearly 120 operations, the initial ones were in Italy and Germany without anesthetics and continued throughout his life before being killed in a car accident in 1965 www.historylearningsite.co.uk/guinea_pig_club.htm www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/documents/past-exhibitions/2007-Guinea.pdf www.398th.org/Friends/FONA/Wright_Guinea.html |
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