OUR BOYS.

Northern Advocate, 12 May 1915, Page 3

OUR BOYS.

■ NEWS FROM EGYPT. Appended are extracts from lettors written by Private iVIcK., and from Private K. M. Stevens to his people at Maungatapere.' We are having a horrible sand storm just now and they have just put off church parade on account of the continual cloud of sand that is Hying. The reinforcements have just arrived in camp, and they find the sandstorm terrible, we of course, being , used to it.

I was reading a lot of lies in the last papers of what happened at the Canal and what we did and didn't do—a lot of rot about getting lost in Heliopolis, a place with trams all through, and only aa big as Whangarei. And the girls here! They are wonderfully pretty and well dressed. New Zealand girls don't come up to them. Everywhere hi these lines the fellows say the same. They wonder at the papers printing such rubbish as what our fellows write. We are getting very good kai now, with the exception of milk, of which at present we have none, and only Egyptian coffee, which has a very nasty flavour. We had a very big review last Monday, comprising the whole of th e New Zealand force and the Australian boys that belong to us or are joined to our force. There were about 20,000 or more. At first we rode past the saluting base (in lines of 200); next the infantry marched past, then the guns, then we galloped past in lines or' fifty, the guns following. I saw a swarm of locusts that morning that covered about two miles square. It was a great sight. The insects we call big grasshoppers in New Zealand are locusts; not those things that ilap their wings and j sing. i We went out to a lovely garden j covering 50 acres last week. It is' kept up by the Government. We I saw the second largest dam on the ! Xi'o. It is 000 yards long. They' :i."(- marvellous. Wo also saw a com- ■ !.'!e mod'" ! l of the great dam in a i iiisjouiii of models at the gardens. | There are a lot of soldiers gathering j a<: Alexandria now, and we hope to : bo marching soon. \