DESERT CAMPAIGNING

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2796, 14 June 1916, Page 6

DESERT CAMPAIGNING

PRAISE TOR NEW. ZEALANDERS. »• -Aa interesting letter has been received bom Corporal It. HaU, of. the sth Battalion of Australian Pioneers, by his • lather, and 'forwarded; to his uncle, ilr. Koben; Half, of ."Wellington. "'l ain about to write, a few lines," says the corporal; "as a seat lain using my bag, which .serves also .as :my. pillow, and at times , .a- shelter, .before me stretches for miles, right Tout" to the sky-line, sand, sand, .sana, dotted with a few salt bushes, and a few camels in the -distance with - their drivers. Overhead the sky is clear and day is calm, not a thing stirring. An Ally aeroplane passes over- . head—the highest 1 have ever seon, just a spec, in the sky. . . ; About camels, .Ted Jluggeridge was telling me ia peculiar thing. He had seen a camel with its neck bandaged~:with a piece of canvas, and on asking'the'driver why, Ito was told that some of" tliem had been out on the desert without water, and to obtain a supply, they bad punctured the animal's neck and water-bag in sucli a way as to givo them a supply, and this was done without the camel receiving any hurt. Wonderful, isn't it? ... "We have wind storms that make and demolish hills of sand in no time, so that landmarks are not to be relied upon, the sands being always on the move. .. . Talking about.Hew Zealanders, they are a. fine lot of men, and deserve a lot of . praise for different things they have done. When water was scarce, they sacrificed their water supplies to give out' chaps further out in the desert, and when a certain battalion was marching to their trenches they were up on tile road to meet them with dixies of teaS then when our lads relieved thein they had left here and there.along;the trenches tobacco and cigarettes for the newcomers. After marching all day a battalion found itself far from any shelter; the men were lying down done up, and there was no water, when an officer came across, a N«w Zealanders'; camp, and asked, for volunteers to take water out to our men. There .: £ was not a New Zealander stayed in those lines. Dixie? and all other available utensils were filled.with wat<jr and taken out, and the Ambulance (New Zealand) worked all-night long bringing in our sick. This is not a thing to be passed by!" •