DESERT WARFARE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume II, Issue 567, 3 December 1915, Page 6

DESERT WARFARE.

THE LIMIT OF ENDURANCE. *.

The almost incredible toil of those engaged in the Mesopotamia campaign is faintly described by an ar- ' tillery officer in a letter home, ,fro,nv> _- which these extracts are made:— . . . We cannot carry nearly enough water, and one's tongue soon swells when the sun gets up. After marching about eight miles we struck water and -got settled into camp at about 8.30 a.m. This was a bad camp on burning sand, and a hot, damp wind blew off the marsh all day. The temperature was 110 degrees, and that for damp heat" is about the limit of human endurance.. A great many men went sick. ' We lived- through the -day somehow and ..moved on again. at 6.30 p.m. '.-, . . We lay down.for the night. This camp was on hard alluvial plain, and the heat was awful. In the hospital tent the temperature varied between 125 and 130 degrees. All this time we were living on tea, sugar, hand cheese, tinned beef, and ' biscuits. .... I covered eight miles in about li hours, and my horse was about cooked. My goggles wereso hot that they blistered where they touched my face even under the shade of'my helmet. . . . We got to the rafts, and then had to push them back to camp through . two miles of water from Ift to sft deep. - ,