A PLAGUE OF FLIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 37, 12 August 1942, Page 5

A PLAGUE OF FLIES

(Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.) NEW ZEALAND LINE; Ruweisat Ridge, August 10. The lull on the El Alamein front continues, but the New Zealanders are fighting the most relentless enemy they have met, a plague of flies, which defy traps, nets, and poisons and make tlie summer desert campaign the most trying life imaginable. Spray-guns ancl fly-swats are front-line weapons and in the forward area it is uncommon to gee a truck, bivouac, or tent without white netting under its camouflage. Traps made from old petrol, potato, and fruit tins kill thousands of flies daily. Now in its seventh week for the New Zealanders, this campaign has been probably the hardest our troops have known. Living conditions from the outset have been the hardest, but always the troops have accepted them cheerfully. Though the shallow, scattered slit trenches in this front in no way resemble tlie front lines of the last war, the forward areas are becoming so familiar that they are known by names ■similar to those famous hi France and Palestine. The tracks to the line are called Willis and Queen Streets. Fur- | ther back, where movement is beyond the range of the enemy's observation posts, there are sandbagged dug-outs, j trucks, and offices dug feet into the ! ground. With the line between the coast and the Qattara Depression shortened by recent actions, and the possibility of forces being massed rapidly at any point, the enemy's movements are being watched even more closely than usual. Patrolling planes watch his day activities, and at night patrols and listening posts creep out after information. As the narrow strip of no-man's bind becomes ever more familiar to the men on either side of its lines of barbed wire, night patrols become more difficult. The enemy, particularly the Italians, who are warned regularly to beware of the New Zealanders at night, shoot out flares and spray the ground with machine-gun fire at the slightest movement. But still the patrols go out, and seldom return without information and their full number.