FIRST ECHELON

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21082, 8 April 1940, Page 8

FIRST ECHELON

EXPERIENCES IN EGYPT SPECIAL TRAINING COURSES GENEROUS LEAVE GRANTED (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service) EGYPT, March 12 Since the first echelon of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force set foot in Egypt, nearly a month has passed. It has been a month crowded with training activities and new and exciting adventures. Now. too. the camp itself has begun to lose its first air of brand newness and with the rapid completion of administration and other buildings, stacks of timber and cement bars arc disappearing. But before these sounds of toil finally die down, there is one that deserves special mention. It is the weird music of the “work shanties” that the Egyptian labourers chant when they are mixing concrete. There is only one shovel, but to it is fastened a long rope which half a dozen workmen seize and pull while another guides the shovel. With each heave, they chant the chorus of an endless, droning song whose main part is taken by yet another man, apparently the foreman or supervisor. Improved Camp Equipment The more important roads in the camp have now been bitumensealed. Unit headquarters have transferred from temporary marquees to roomy offices in wooden buildings, and we are dining in new and airy mess halls. Shower houses, some of them with hot water laid on, banish that dried-out feeling after a hot and dusty day. Egypt’s winter seems to be drawing to a close, for we have lately experienced one or two days of intense heat. Reveille in my own unit’s line* has been put back half an hour to 6 a.m., and there are others who are up and about before that hour—this I know from being awakened by the sound of marching music played by one of the infantry battalion bands. The weather plays tricks here which seem novel to us, and one of them is its consistent failure to produce anything like our idea of rain. When a few drops fell some days ago they monopolised the conversation: sometimes we long for a good New Zealand downpour. On the other hand, however, we had the experience only this week of seeing a whirlwind, lifting a huge column of dust into the air, cross our camp. It left three flattened tents in its wake. Training has long since been seriously resumed. Several units have sent parties away for special courses of instruction with British and Indian troops which are also encamped in Egypt, and some of them have gone so far afield as to have had their first glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea. Convoys of cars and trucks move out from time to time carrying detachments away to tactical exercises in the desert. Colourful Corners With leave still being granted on a generous scale, we have been able I to continue our excursions into the I colourful corners of Cairo. Streets, bazaars, theatres and cabarets have seen us come and go, our boots have worn even smoother the routes which countless tourist pilgrimages have taken to relics of ancient Egypt. From fortune-tellers we have accepted—with a grain of salt here and there—predictions of long life and happiness. Letters For Home Organised tours, usually occupying a Saturday or Sunday afternoon, are held regularly. Something more ambitious is being arranged for the Easter week-end, when a three days’ excursion to Luxor, which abound* with the tombs and temples of another age, is to be held. Then there is a leisure-hour occupation for which all of us find time. As many as 2000 of our letters to families and friends in New Zealand and elsewhere are handled each day by the division’s postal staff—the product of spare minutes during the day and an hour or two by the light of kerosene lamps in the evening. This is an activity that is given a great stimulus by the arrival of earh inward mail. V r e have not even lost touch with Hollywood and Elstree. In a picturesque camp cinema, whose roof is a covering of coloured mats, we can watch up-to-date films with the accompanying pleasures of a smoke and an iced drink. Thu 6 the amenities of the world we left have been fir from forgotten in our new home.