ANOTHER EGYPTIAN RECRUIT.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 231, 1 December 1916, Page 5 (Supplement)

ANOTHER EGYPTIAN RECRUIT.

» PAPYRUS LETTER ASKING FOR COMFORTS. Among a lot of Egyptian letters, written on papyrus thousands of years ago, was discovered one from a young man of Alexandria who had evidently passed the military examination and had been taken from his home to serve in the army. He writes to his mother. and there is a striking similarity :n the nature of his requests with those to be found in many letters from the front and the training camps to-day. This recruit of the army of Ancient Egypt writes thus: — " Send me two hundred drachmae. I have nothing any more. Wh»n brother Gemellus came I still had four hundred drachmae. They are all gone. "Send me my monthly allowance soon. When I iwas with you you promised to send my brother with it before I came to the garrison. But you sent -nothing. You left me to go as I stood, nothing in the pocket. Also my father on his visit gave me not a, penny. "All laugh at me and say: "Your father is a soldier himself and still he .sends you nothing.' My father tells me when he gets home he will send me evervthing. But vou send me nothing. Why? "There is the mother'of Valerius; she sent him a pair of abdominal bandages and a cruse of oil, « basket of meats, and two hundred drachmae. Send quickly. I already went and borrowed from a comrade. Also brother (Jvmeiius sent me a pair of trousers."