A MEDICAL OFFICER’S DAY

Evening Star, Issue 23657, 17 August 1940, Page 12

A MEDICAL OFFICER’S DAY

LIFE IN THE DESERT " ON THE WATER WAGON " Serving with the First Echelon in Egypt as a medical officer, Captain John Fulton, of Dunedin, gives an account of his work in a desert camp, including an unusual task of searching for water to drink. He writes: “ A most eventful day. We were camped out in the desert 30 miles or so from the Nile, ■ and just sand, sand, sand as far as you could see. Up at 5 o’clock and just having a good hot breakfast of bacon (out of a tin), hard-boiled eggs (also out of a tin), tea, bread and butter when along comes a man who had fallen from his motor cycle and had to be stitched up. Next, a case of measles and two dysentery cases are reported. Had to arrange for their transport back to Camp oyer the desert and later on to a fair road, about 50 miles altogether. Unfortunately, the measles case was the corporal in charge of the water carts, so 1 was detailed to, go on the water wagon to obtain from across the desert water for 700 men, to see if such water was fit to drink, and to purify it if it wasn’t, and return. Nobody knew the way except the sick corporal who was now of no use. So we set off across the desert to look for a certain bridge, somewhere on the Nile. You’ve no idea what riding the desert in a truck is like till you try it. A buck-jumping horse is nothing to it. There are occasional motor tracks, i.e., tracks of a previous car, but usually you just have to find your own way up hill and down dale. You run into boulders, soft sand, bumps, etc., every few yards, and have to bang on for your life. 1 had to wedge myself in with my foot on the dashboard to avoid having the life jolted out of me. When we hit_ the canal there was no sign of the bridge, and, of course, no road up and down the side of the Nile—just bumpy sand. We decided to head north, hoping that we were below our objective and would hit it eventually. As it happened, we must have been two miles above it, and we went 13 miles before turning round to search southwards. When found, the water supply was not_ clean, so we filtered and purified it with chemicals and returned to camp fully loaded. We were very lucky, as we didn’t get stuck in the sand at all except when we were only 100yds from home, where there was plenty of help available. The drivers of these trucks have a devil of a time, and the motor cyclists have a still worse one. Unfortunately, lights are not allowed at night and the task of finding your way about in the desert, in pitch dark, is about hopeless, and yet it seems to be done. The cars are marvellous too, to stand up_ to the thrashing they get. For mile after mile they have to chew through sand in second gear, hitting boulders the size of footballs, and climb up and down sand dunes all over the place. Thev are English jobs and certainly stand up to the work well. “ Back to Battalion Headquarters-at lunch time to find two more measles cases and a minor outbreak of dysentery ! Ten men in all need moving to headquarters, so off they had to go. When a sand storm arose just before the truck was due back, I was very worried, as a storm in the desert is no joke. But fortunately they got back while there was some visibility, Half an hour later, an order was given: ‘ Shift camp in 10 minutes.’ What a scurry I In 10 minutes we were off to another possy about five miles away —all very good training.”