LIFE IN MESOPOTAMIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 218, 12 September 1916, Page 2

LIFE IN MESOPOTAMIA.

« NEW ZEALANDEK'S EXPERIENCES. We recently published a very interesting letter from Lieut. Hunter, 'brother of Mr Stephen Hunter, of Takapuna. Writing again from Bombay at the end of July, Lieutenant Hunter /says: "You .will, no doubt, be surprised to see -wiiere lam writing from. A month ago I got a dose of fever (malaria). As there was only another officer 'besides myeelf left, I tried to fight the fever without leaving the battery, but I became very weak, and I was packed away in an ambulance to the hospital. I was sent to Basra, Owing to the want of accommodation 1 was sent on to Bombay in the hospital ship. I am now recovering rapidly. When 1 left Mesopotamia the temperature averaged about 12Odeg in the shade, and was almost unbearable. There was ■very Vrttle fighting going on in Mesopotamia when I left —it was too hot— and few casualties from that source, yet the hospitals arc more than choke full of patients. The first I was in was equipped for 100, and had over 700 patients. Cholera, dysentery, typhoid, malaria, jaundice, are the principal diseases, and unfortunately the death rate iboth among officers and men is very high. There arc eight or ten large hospital ships plying between Basra and Bombay, and hundreds of the less serious cases are carried by transport steamers every week, yet they%an't evacuate the hospitals quick enough to make room for new cases. It is a serious state of affairs. Mesopotamia at this time of the year is no country for a white man. Taj "Mahal Hotel, a palatial edifice in. Bombay, has been taken over by the military authorities ac a hospital. At present- if is •'being used as a convalescent place for officers. There are a lot of officers here, and no Jess than three from my battery. When I left the battery there was only the O.C. remaining ac far as officere ore concerned, but the next day he aleo had to go to the hospital, and is now here. There are a. lot of fellows leaving for England in a hospital ship to-morrow, among them being the late O.C. of our brigade, and a'subaltern of our battery."