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Otago Witness, Issue 3336, 20 February 1918, Page 3

A visit to a troopship bringing back vncii from tho fighting lines is always interesting. In a recent case (says the Wellington Post) it was somewhat out of the ordinary. They were all mounted infantry, wounded or invalided, straight from Egypt and Palestine. "What's the'desert like?*' a trooper was asked. "Don't talk about it," was tho reply. "Nothing but sand, sand, 6and. I've brought badk enough desert in my inside to start a new colony." "Thirst!" said another. "You don't know what thirst is till you experience tho desert. Then, when your tongue i 3 getting black, and you can scarcely talk, you come- to a well. The water stinks, but you're mighty giad; of it. I thought I knew what it was to be dry in New Zealand country, but the desert ! Then you come to a well of pure water. A bucketful goes down before you know anything about it. Then you start having a drink." "It was hard going," said another. He 'was with the Camel Corp.;, but the experience was one of perpetual motion. Day in, day out, they were after tho Turk, scarcely a moment for rest, journey succeeding journey with awful monotony—and then the clinch." "Yes," ho added, "the Turk is all right as a fighter in the trenches, but not much good in the open. He is well armed, but very ragged in respect of equipment." One thing tluu strikes a visitor to a returned troopship K, the firmly-knit bondl of comradeship be twecn the nurses and the men. The feeling is so apparent that it needs no further expression. There is another feature about a troopship carrying returned soldiers, and that is the spirit of self-help that is abroad, as wftniiised in the way jn which apparently hopeless cripples get up and down stairs and into and out of bunks; the way in which weaknesses are cast aside at tho earliest possible moment; .and the matter of fact acceptance of physical disabilities.