DESERT FLIGHT

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1940, Page 8

DESERT FLIGHT

BRITAIN’S HIDDEN ARMY. LONDON, October 22. I have just come back from my first flight over the Western Desert in one of Britain’s most modern bombers, writes a correspondent of the Daily Telegraph with the British forces in Egypt. Our task was to photograph an airfield and camp so as to examine the visibility of aeroplanes, the success of camouflage, and its suitability as a bombing target. Perched on the observer’s seat, amid a bewildering array of instruments, I could look directly down where, two miles below, the coastline divided the world into tawny desert and transparent blue sea. The sky had to be watched intently for enemy fighters, the sea for submarines, and the land for anything unusual.

Seen from above, this desert is a meaningless pattern of browns and buffs, with no shade and little op- . portunity for camouflage. Yet scattered along the coast an invisible British Army is camped but with all its material, hidden away as though it did not exist. An unsuspecting layman flying ovei’ at 10,000 feet probably would not see anything at all. It is hide and seek with no fixed military objectives. When it is suspected that any camp has been located, it can be packed up and moved almost within 24 hours. At several points I traced the foundations of villages and vast buildings which must have been palaces when the desert was the granary of the Roman Empire. These traces of men who occupied it 20 centuries ago are far more conspicuous than the present occupants. Mussolini’s side of the. frontier is indistinguishable from the Egyptian side, and his camps are not much different either. The camp we photographed was just a collection of spots and blurred shapes which might have been overlooked by anyone who did not know. Each time we got directly above a certain point halfway between the two bends in the -road the photographer pressed a button which released the shutter of the camera hidden somewhere in the aeroplane. Then he held up his thumbs to signify to the pilot that the picture was successfully taken. That was all. There was no anti-aircraft fire and no enemy fighters appeared.