"YELLOW HELL."

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 268, 12 November 1935, Page 7

"YELLOW HELL."

Horrors of Disease in War-Torn Abyssinia.

"WILL NEVER BE CONQUERED."

ADEN, November 11. The Sun-Herald correspondent, Mr. Noel Monks, says:— "Carrying out a pltn formulated at Addis Ababa with a young Belgian gunrunner, I posed as his assistant and succeeded in penetrating 100 miles beyond Jijiga into Ogaden, 'the yellow hell.' When our caravan reached the last civilised outpost, Jijiga, I had my first glimpse of Ojraden's horrors. "In a small hospital I saw 400 Abyssinians dying from every sickness from malaria to leprosy. One lone doctor, Dr. Hackman, an American, was fighting heroically for their lives. Two days before I arrived 50 had died from cholera. "Fifty miles beyond Jijiga there is nothing but a desert of sand and stones for 300 miles into Italian Somaliland. Wβ pushed on in terrific heat to Warror, ,which is the last connecting link with , the front line, which is 150 miles further across the desert. Six weeks ago the Warror outpost numbered 5000 men, but I was shown the graves of 1200 who died from sickness. "Giant buzzards swarmed black over the sandy mounds where lay some of Abyssinia's fittest and bravest young men, who had never even fired a shot in war. A young Abyssinian officer who refused to allow us to proceed further told me that the Italians were dying in even greater numbers than the Abyssinians. "I was told that the Abyssinians had surrounded all known waterholes within an area of 200 miles, and that what they could not hold they would poison. The Italians have definitely not advanced any further than in the first week of hostilities. "Returning to Jijiga, I passed through British Somaliland and embarked at Zeila, arriving there yesterday. lam returning to Australia by the Orford. lam satisfied that Mussolini will never cdnquer Abysaiam."