LIKE THE PLAINS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3138, 1 July 1942, Page 5

LIKE THE PLAINS

NO NEWS IN SYRIA NGATEA BOY’S LETTER CHANGE FROM DESERT & FLIES An interesting ’ sidelight on the conditions under which the Second N.Z.E.F. is living in Syria is provided in a recent letter received by Mr and Mrs E. Flavell, of Ngatea, from Bombardier James .W. Mitchell. Bombardier Mitchell, inter alia, writes: —“I am still waiting for the day to come when I shall walk in for a decent cup of tea and an apple pie. “This dump over here is just about as bad as the Hauraki Plains —no news, no nothing. One thing we get plenty of is rice—six times a day, if you want it, and then more. We

never run out. Sugar is like gold, and S; p U <ls—well, we’ve forgotten what they look like. We don’t know what the word -potato means.

“What gets me beat is the way the Territorials in camp in New Zealand moan about living in tents and not getting potatoes for a fortnight. Ig they had to live in some of the holes we have to live in, they’d have something to moan about. Sometimes we have to sleep out in the rain and like it. Moaning gets us nowhere, but still we can take what is handed out to

“We have left Egypt arid are now in Syria. Quite a change from the desert dust and flies. We get a drop of rain now and then and a drop of m ud!—quite interesting to see some of the heads slopping around in the mud. It also does away with all the spit-and-polish.”