PLAGUE OF FLIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1942, Page 4

PLAGUE OF FLIES

ENDURED BY OUR TROOPS IN EGYPT CONDITIONS OF STATIC WARFARE. CLOSE WATCH ON ENEMY. (Official War Correspondent, N.Z.E.F.) NEW ZEALAND LINE, Ruweisat Ridge, August 10. The lull on the El Alamein front continues, but today and every day from first light to dusk, the New Zealanders are fighting a battle against the most relentless enemy they have met. Two weeks of static warfare have brought a plague of millions of flies, which defy traps, nets and poisons and make the summer desert campaign the most trying life imaginable. Spray-guns and fly-swats are front-line weapons and in the forward areas it is uncommon to see a truck, bivouac or tent without white netting under its camouflage. Traps made from old petrol, potato and fruit tins kill thousands of flies; daily. Now in its seventh week for the New Zealanders, this campaign has been probably the hardest our troops have known. Living conditions from the outset have been the hardest, but always the troops have accepted them cheerfully. One of the cooks for a South Island infantry battalion was telling me about an issue of fresh meat that arrived. He said with a dry smile, “I knew there was something fresh coming up. You could see the flies coming over the horizon before the ration truck.” His advice was to drink my cup of tea off his bench. “You need both hands free to kill these man-eaters,” he sffid. Day after day of inactivity is something new for the New Zealand fighting battalions, but it cannot shake their morale. I found machine-gunners playing their old favourite game of battleships. One gunner, his faice and steel helmet under a fly net, was marking on a battered envelope the shots shouted to him by his partner in a trench about 30 yards away. An indignant voice called out: “I can’t hear you,” when a shell-burst nearby blotted out an all-important shot at a paper battleship. Shot after shot whistled over, but the machine-gunners went on with their game. So it is all along: the groups of slit trenches and gun pits that form our front line. Infantrymen sit smoking and reading, awaiting their chance for action.

Though the shallow, scattered slit trenches in this front in no way resemble the front lines of the last war, the forward areas are becoming so familiar that they are known by names similar to those famous in France and Palestine. The tracks to, the line are called Willis and Queen Streets. Further back, where movement is beyond the range of the enemy’s observation posts, there are sandbag; god dug-outs, trucks, and offices dug feet into the ground. With the line- between the coast and the Quattara Depression shortened by recent actions and the consequent possibility of forces being massed rapidly at any point, the enemy’s movements are being watched even more closely than usual. Patrolling planes watch his day activities, and at night patrols and listening posts creep out after information. As the narrow strip of no-man’s-land becomes ever more familiar l:o the men on either side of its lines of barbed wire, night patrols become more difficult. The enemy, particularly the Italians, who are warned regularly to beware of the New Zealanders at nij(ht, shoot out flares and spray the ground with mach-ine-gun fire at the slightest movement. But still the patrols go ou't, and seldom return without information and their full number.