SAILORS OF THE DESERT

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23446, 29 September 1941, Page 3

SAILORS OF THE DESERT

SCOUTING A WASTE OF ROCK AND SAND THE LONG-RANGE PATROL IN LIBYA Sand sailors who venture hundreds of miles into the shifting dunes of the Western Desert in the interior of Libya, navigating by the sun, the moon, and the stars, are carrying on in this war the work and tradition of Lawrence of Arabia. Stripped to the waist, bare-legged in khaki shorts, with a Bedouin headcloth secured by tasselled cords, these warriors of the desert patrols travel for weeks at a time far from their bases, scouting the unknown wilderness of rock and sand. The camels which served Lawrence so well are too slow for the long range desert group of 1941. These men, equipped with light trucks bearing outsize desert tyres, strike boldly forth into wastes that even the Bedouin shuns. Each man is provided with special rations. He has only one gallon of water a day. and part of this must be poured into the thirsty radiators. In a recent copy, of the “Egyptian Mail” an account is given of the long rides in open trucks with the sun beating down mercilessly on the soldiers’ heads. Whirling sand devils, spiralling hundreds of feet into the air, sometimes sweep over the vehicles smothering them in the choking dust. Often the wheels sink into soft patches of sand, churning the truck axles deep into dunes which are as liquid as water. Then it is all hands to scooping away the sand, like terriers at a rathole, until the canvas mats can be unrolled and edged under the whirring wheels for the trucks to wallow free. Then the patrol would lurch forward again, keen eyes scanning the distant horizon just as at sea, the ack-ack gunner gazing hour alter hour into the burning blue vault of the sky for a distant dot which might grow in a few seconds into a diving aeroplane. Sometimes there is a sharp clash with enemy patrols, and high-speed actions are fought across the sands which these men claim as their own. But most of the areas where our long-range patrols operate are so vast that more often than not they go hundreds of miles without sight of human life or habitation. Few of these men had desert experience before volunteering for this job. They are just ordinary fellows from a score of different regiments—with the burring accents of half a dozen English counties, bronzed New Zealanders, Australians, Rhodesians. But there are deep sea sailors among them, expert navigators who plot the courses across seas of sand. Spoors, tractor marks on the virgin sand enable them to tell with infallible accuracy how many enemy transports have passed that way, their size, type, and probable purpose and destination.