FROM A BOMBAY HOSPITAL

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2874, 12 September 1916, Page 3

FROM A BOMBAY HOSPITAL

NEW ZEALANDER'S LETTER, f Sergt. Joseph Hadfield, of Wellington, a member of the New Zealand Wireless Troop, writes from a Bombay hospital, whither he has been invalided from "tho river" (tre colloquial appellation for tlie Valley of the Tigris):— "Here I am, invalided back to Bombay with enteric, and expecting to go to a convalescent camp in the hills any day. It is rather monotonous here onaccount of the constant rain— we aro in the middle of the monsoonal season. This hospital has only been open for three weeks, the military authorities having taken it over from the Parsees. . . . The doctor was surprised to find a New Zealander here, and told me there was a New Zealand nurse downstairs. Ditto to the nurse about me, and she came up and extended the glad hand —quite a treat to talk to someone from dear old New Zealand after having nothing but 'ah, laad,' and 'coom 'ore, laad, 1 etc., etc., for months. The nurse is . an Auckland girl—think her name is Martin—she was holiday-making in the States when the war broke out, and joined up in England. I hear some of our wireless contingent have been invalided to Egypt. Was looking forward to getting there myself, and then on to France, but my luck is out, I have to stay in India to convalesce, so I daresay I will be back in the 'nightmare' up tho river again soon. Have been anxiously on the look-out since coming here to see anything in the papers on the Mesopotamia campaign, but nothing has materialised. There has been nothing doing up the river for a considerable time owing to the intense heat, but soon !" Tho writer of the above letter is an officer of the Post and Telegraph Department, who has specialised in wireless telegraphy.