New Zealand army trucks and the locals' donkey-drawn carts jostle for space on the road from Damascus in Syria to Beirut, Lebanon. The Māori Battalion and other troops from the NZ Division were sent to Syria in February 1942, as part of Allied preparations to counter a possible German invasion of the Middle East from the north - a threat that never eventuated. In June the New Zealanders were rushed back to the Egyptian desert to help fend off a more immediate danger, a renewed German-Italian offensive from the west.