MEDICAL OFFICER’S DAY

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 August 1940, Page 10

MEDICAL OFFICER’S DAY

LIFE IN THE DESERT 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 over 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 I 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 hang on for your life. I 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 vfeis no sign of the bridge, and, of course, no road up and down the side of the Nile—just bumpy sand.

HARD ON CARS j 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 1

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. They 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 yery 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! In 10 minutes were were off to another possy about five miles away—all very good training.”