There’s No Escape From The Sand: Far North Trials For Troops

Northern Advocate, 8 March 1943, Page 5

There’s No Escape From The Sand: Far North Trials For Troops

(Special) AUCKLAND, Saturday. Many members of the Northern Brigade who had wondered what it felt like in the Middle East have by now quite a fair appreciation of living and fighting conditions in the desert as army manoeuvres continue in the extreme North. ,

The country up here can only be described as a thin, worn carpet of dejected bracken, covering mile after mile of rolling sand dunes. In places the carpet gapes wide in jagged tears, as if ripped by the hobnails of some giant boot, and here the sand trickles up triumphantly tQ continue its dogged tussle with hardy dwarf scrub forever trying to edge its way towards the sea. Near the coast the sand dunes are dazzling white. Further inland, they shade into a warm golden brown, but wherever the brigade moves in its exercises near the tip of the northeni peninsula, the sand, like the poor, is always with them. Written in Sand Sand and convoys together spell dust, and everlasting clouds of fine dust, continually irritating parched throats, is the main impression we will all bring back with us when the brigade moves south again next week. Occasional Oases Today units are scattered about in bivouacs on occasional little green oases between hills where backblocks Maori families are doing their best to graze a few cattle on indifferent land. Maintenance of vehicles is the order of the day. Tanks, Bren carriers, armoured cars and all other mechanised units of a highly mobile brigade cannot lurch and grind indefinitely over forgotten land to the south of Spirits’ Bay without overhaul, and in any case it is an army tradition to keep vehicles in first-class trim. Camouflage Testa Round about midday, aerial photographs taken by the co-operating air force planes, with a view to testing the efficiency of the units’ camouflage experiments, were made with different types of concealment from the air, and air force prints will be studied later and lessons drawn from them.

Further brigade exercises are planned to take place over the week-end and early next week.