AIR FIGHTS & ARCHAEOLOGY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2968, 4 January 1917, Page 9

AIR FIGHTS & ARCHAEOLOGY

The following is takon from tho letter of an Australian officer serving in Mesopotamia:— . "I am now at Es Sinn, .witl.fin sight, of tho famous Dujailah llcdoubt. You remember I told you some timo ago that Fritz and his. Fokker had command of tho air out here. Now 'nous avons change tout cela. , - Fritz's famous Fokker was put down, some weeks ago, and, we hope, totally destroyed. Three of our new machines got after him, but one of the planes did most of tho fighting, aud finally forced him down on to the opposite bank, which the Turks hold. After tho light there was a fine' bit of work.. Ono of the airmen got, a bullet in the leg, and another took him straight down to Amara by aeroplane, doing the journey in , less than an hour. Had he gone down in tho ordinary way he would probably have had to wait three days for a boat, and taken about tho same time to get down the river. was out at tho Dajialah Redoubt. It is a long low mound, riddled with trenches, and the trenches contain stratified remains of several. superimposed towns or villages. I collected a.'few fragments of old glazed pottery, and some small pieces of glass, which had been buried so long that they had become iridescent. Ono fellow got out rather more than half of a- little glazed pottery lamp—a real Aladdin lamp; another got the neck and shoulders of a tiny, delicate glass phial, qilfito difreront from anything in current use among the Arabs, who make no glass, and only a very common kind of poor glazed pottery. One of the Tommies got a. beautifully preserved Greek bronze coin, which miust have been very ancient. All the mounds, about hero seem to be the same thing; remnants of past settlements, v.fth remains of bricks and pottery of kinds not now in useBut it need's fl skilled archaeologist and careful excavation really to find out anything about them. Kut is in full sight from any o[ the mounds about here, and less than five, miles away. It <is surrounded by oranjre. groves. 'The' very thought makes one's mouth water."