FIGHT AGAINST FLIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24608, 16 May 1941, Page 3

FIGHT AGAINST FLIES

GERMAN DIFFICULTIES IN DESERT With the setting-in of hot weather, medical worries, due to flies, have arisen, writes an official Australian war correspondent from Tobruk. The problem was tackled at the outset, and a huge campaign has been launched against dysentery risks. The Italians left huge dumps of fly-spray here, and this has been generously distributed Strict supervision is being maintained over all possible sources of disease, and every man in the garrison has become fly-conscious. In this important matter we are in a far better position than the enemy The whole of the Tobruk area has been lived in for years, and there has always been some attempt at sanitation, which the garrison can improve 100 per cent. The position of the enemy living in open country outside is much more precarious in this respect. The Germans are not used to the hot climate, and all their cooking and sanitation arrangements must of necessity be primitive, because of the nature of the country. Dust and flies can easily be as big a factor in this campaign as armaments. Along our sector there are many good beaches, and swimming is fast becoming the main relaxation. Organised bodies of reserve troops are already visiting the beaches, and hundreds of naked men can be seen swimming and sun-baking, whilst others man Bren guns set up at intervals along the beach in case of air attack.