WORK IN ERITREA!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 120, 23 June 1941, Page 6

WORK IN ERITREA!

SURVEYING NEW LINE INCIDENT AT ASMARA Travelling by train, river boat and desert co.nvoy, men of a New Zealand Railway Survey Company penetrated far into Eritrea in order to survey a new railroad for British forces operating in East Africa. Captain Halley and Lieutenant I. Macky, two West Coast P.W.D. engineers, led a survey party into country which was far difficult from the green hills of Westland. From Kassala on the Sudanese frontier they penetrated through desert and thick thorny scrub into the highlands of Eritrea, working among great dome-like mountains of granite. In Eritrea they struck an autostrada and in the stone bungalow of an Italian road engineer they qstablished their headquarters half way between Kassala and Keren. Receiving rations from an Indian Division and supplied with fresh meat from the great herds of gazelle which roam at large in these regions,, they lived; well. The hard physical work was done by a gang of thirty fuzzy-iwuzzies whom they employed. These natives have great crops of fuzzy black hair which hangs in ringlets down their shoulders. They keep a long wooden fork stuck into' their hair so that they can have a scratch everj'- now and then. Eritrea is a land of great mountains with fertile, cultivated. pockets of soil in the vallciys. Game is abundant, and at night a watch has to be kept for wild animals. The boys can tell an amusing story about the fall of Asmara. The British troops entered the town in the evening, and as it had been declared an open town, the Italians at Massawa had to provide Asmara with power to light up the roads for the incoming British troops. Power and water were supplied to the British by the Italians in Massawa as it was the source of Asmara's supply. The survey job is done and the party is back at base ready for adventure in some: other part of the Middle East.