ITH NEW ZEALAND TROOPS IN EGYPT

Camp News, Volume 1, Issue 18, 12 April 1940, Page 3

ITH NEW ZEALAND TROOPS IN EGYPT

Wellington Officer’s Impressions H 1y OF CANVAS near CAIRO n" —

Impressions of life in Egypt ith the First 'Echelon are conincd in an article written on ibruary 19 by Major C. A. L. 'eadwcll, 0.8. E., ' Wellington, eputy ■J udge-Advocate at the •erscas base of the 2nd New Zea nd Expeditionary Force. Major j readwell writes as follows:— i Ls 1 write these lines in my tent m camp of the Second New Zealand editionary Force, dustblinding/ dug, parching dust — is sweeping in. ■ls and flurries through'our canvas; A brisk southerly breeze is iking it in from the arid lands bens, and bringing the first discomwe have experienced in Egypt, our adjutant, who spluttered in same dust a quarter of a century

cries : ‘Good for you! Toughens stomachs!' and we grin and bear iindful of the clear,-cool evening we feel will inevitably follow the ng of the sun. ‘his inevitability about the Egyptweather is one of the things that i to take the meaning away from and make us feel we have been aaigning here in the desert for s. instead of in actual fact spendi very few days in moving into a try that many of us hadn’t given ought since we closed our school es for the last time. The climate r all the world like early autumn Le Rotorua district or in Central )— each blue and gold day giving to a night with a tang in it, cold Jblear and refreshing. jinantic desert nights 1 Well, nd no. The sun drops, glowing ehind the pyramids; the crescent hangs out its silver lamp;. a fightane drones overhead and is trap: Jtke a moth in criss-crossing flights; and the lone sentry on y shift marvels at the beauty of flight—it I. think I can say for all of ns Hye like it here; a so-called tradi- |. army pastime as ‘grousing’ , to be out of favour. To get a

* picture of our location, imagine J-row strip of green, fertile New nd countryside, divided lengthjHby a slow-running river, and so I»1 that it merges into the build_jf a city. The river, of course. Nilethe bio ream of Egypt the city is Cairo. On either side A fertile strip the ground rises , T into undulating downshut is no vestige of green, nothing larched sand and shale. ■mnewhere in those downs, overng the flat Nile Valley, lies our ijing city of tents. There are surjigly many more cities like ours igly many more cities like ours ling in these wastes, which shelter 'll as ourselves, soldiers from Eng- I Scotland and India. Royal Air i I? bases, too, are not very distant hours,, and we like to think that fl of the daredevils who somersault your heads may quite possibly be I Zealand pilots. on would find it quite a long walk I end to end of our camp Emerg[Tom a charming, tree-shaded resial suburb, you would pass a golf 5e whose greens and fairways are ly sand rolled hard, and shortly ' p the camp limits. And there, iding over a long, flat tract and flowing on to a low plateau but; z would lie at your feet. nder canvas roofs we sleep com tbly on raised plank beds, with tresses and pillows. The floors are and, but we have found that by cientiously sprinkling water on i we can evolve a substance more i concrete. In our own particular , incidentally, there is a basis of

solid lock a few inches beneath the surface of the sand, and pneumatic drills had to be used before tent pegs could io driven home. •‘Though we are again undergoing the experience of occupying an uncompleted camp, we lose little‘in, comfort by that fact. Messing rooms, cook houses and washing and showei house* ire still in the hands of the builders. We were delighted today to (earn that contractors to the Army are to do all our clothes washing free of charge; but we feel that we might hang our heads in shame if a Digger of 1914 were to stand by and see a truck carrying our laundry away. “Winter, such as it is in Egypt, is with us at present, and we follow the sun out of bed at half past six in the morning After washing and shaving in the crisp open air. we breakfast in marquees at 7.30. The Imperial Army scale of rations is somewhat smallei than we have been used to, but the food is good and adequately varied. A hot dinner, with sweets, comes at the end of the day, Training Resumed . 'The units which make up the force have resumed their training programmes during the past day or two. Some have sent parties to various . barracks for courses of instruction with English units. A good deal of our transport equipment has been de livered, and the transport sections are learning the tricks of desert driving We look forward to the day when, no doubt, we shall begin to make excur sions into the desert to carry out ma noeuvres. Members of our advance

party, who left New Zealand some five weeks before we did, have told ns how they witnessed the thrilling spectacle of a full division in ‘war games’ on tin sand, which was made alive by the movement of hundreds,of tanks, truck* and other vehicles so necessary to the" modern army’s progress. “As leave has been granted almost every evening since we arrived, there is practically no,. one who has not visited Cairo, that teeming city of contrasts — ultra-modern stores and countless peddlers beauty and squalidness peopled by races from almost every part of the world. x There are warm smiles and words of welcome for us in the streets, where after dark our ‘quaint hats.’ as one local newspaper put it, can be seen everywhere. ‘‘Here in the camp we can spend .our leisure time at a newly built picture theatre or in the several canteens operated by the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes). Prices in general are about the same as we have been used to, but beer may be bought as cheaply as 2| piastres a quart—about sixpence in English money. The end of each day finds us well ready for bed. While you in New Zealand go about your morning tasks, it is time for us to roll in between our blankets with the thought that our great adventure has at last really begun.

“There is a story worth repeating which appeared in one of the newspapers a day or two ago. One of their reporters was walking down the street and came upon two diggers and a gharry driver arguing and gesticulating violently. It was clear that .nei-

ther party could understand the other. The reporter offered his services. The diggers pointed to the two emaciated horses in the shafts of the gharry. They certainly looked as if they might I drop any moment from starvation. I ‘We want to buy that bale of lucerne on-the seat.’ ‘What do you want it for?’ asked the reporter. ‘We don’t 1 want it for anything except that if we buy it the driver has to let us feed his horses with it.’ Then began a 20 minutes’ bargaining, and. at last the driver, who clearly thought the diggers were demented, sold his lucerne or berseem for 5 piastres (one shilling). The diggers then carefully divided the food and placed half in front of the two poor beasts, and there they remained till the horses had swallowed every blade of their unexpected feed. That over, the two soldiers walked away thoroughly pleased with their action. The driver was still scratching his head in bewilderment.”