Egypt.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 73, 27 March 1915, Page 5

Egypt.

OUR TROOPS IN EGYPT. i

Commonwealth Official Correspondent Cairo, March 18. '

The season here is already in full swing. Fruit blossoms are out and new green is covering all the trees. Flies are becoming pestilential, and occasional fierce hot winds frcim the desert bring down a cloud of sand, lasting a day or two, and settling like a fog over a landscape. Through all this the troops have worked thoroughly well. An Egyptian paper publishes a statement that altogether seven soldiers have fallen down the pyramid of Cheops, of whom four were killed and one was sent back to Australia with spinal injuries. The fact is that ope soldier has died through a fall on the pyramid. He was a Territorial. One Australian jnjured his spine. No other casualties &n the pyramids are known of by the authorities. The hardest part of training is now over. Probably the stiffest period was, for about a fortnight before.the Turkish attack on the canal, when the troops were working solidly in the desert from 8 o'clock to 5 o'clock every day. Since then the authorities, in order to keep the men fresh, have instituted one whole holiday every week, besides half a day on Sundays. Hard work in the dust naturally tells on the health of a proportion of the men, but this incident of training s absolutely unavoidable and willingly incurred. Willingness is the chief virtue of the Australian troops. British and French officers who watch them never fail to remark on this. Those who have fallen victims to pneumonia, which is always the prevalent complaint amongst soldiers in Egypt, have died as truly in the service of their country as any who die on the battlefield.

The third contingent has arrived, and is now in camp, after a splendid voyage, which was quite uneventful. There was not a rough day. The horses are splendid. One transport one day picked up a wireless message, but it turned out to be from a consort. She was asked for Epsom salts.