A LETTER FROM CAIRO.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 33, 10 February 1915, Page 5

A LETTER FROM CAIRO.

Stan. G. Robinson writes to his father, Mr R. H. Robinson, Stratford, from Cairo, inter alia, as follows:—I have spent the New Year’s Day out with the guns in the desert. We have not recognised the holiday here at all, but have just gone ou the same as any other* day. As yet, we have done no shooting, but are getting in some splendid manoeuvre work, and the horses are in the host condition and working real well. It is all very heavy work for them, as the sand is so soft and the weight of the gun and limber sinks the wheels right down into it. The gunners have a deal of trouble with the gun when laying because when traversing from one target to another the wheels get so much into the sand that it shortly renders itself almost impossible to traverse the trail-eye of the gun to suit the target. We are working from long before daylight in the morning till sometimes 5.30 p.m., so you see we have a fairly long day of it. It seems to me that we are going to stay some time in Cairo because the native carpenters have been building large mess rooms for us to tucker in, it will bo much hotter than having our meals in the hell t n l s,

is we eat more than a share of the lahera Desert each day. and capooial'v so, if there is a slight breeze blowing. . . Yesterday, New Year’s

Eve, we had to take the B gun of our sub-section and dismantle from it the shield and fit up a coffin board for a military funeral. One of the medical officers (Capt. Bell), of Christchurch, died of heart failure. AV e bad to take the corpse eleven miles to the military cemetery outside of Cairo. General Godley and General Maxwell were present, plong with many other officers and men. A volley of about eight rifles was fired over the grave and then the trumpeter olayed the “Last Post.”