DESERT ORDEAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 556, 8 January 1929, Page 7

DESERT ORDEAL

FIRST WOMAN ENTERTAINED BY FOREIGN LEGION

LADY CHAYTOR’S ADVENTURE

An English society hostess has achieved the distinction of being the lirst woman to spend a night in the desert under the flag of the French Foreign Legion.

She is Lady Chaytor, wife of Sir Edmund Chaytor. of AVitton Castle, County Durham. This remarkable adventure, she revealed to the "Sunday Chronicle," occurred during a hazardous journey she made by motor-car across the Syrian desert to Aleppo. Her only companions were two Arabs who knew practically only half a dozen English words between them. "We were faced w-ith a five days' journey, so that it was necessary to provide ourselves with sufficient food and petrol,” Lady Chaytor said.

"These stores, with skins filled with water, were packed outside the car, and our bedding and baggage iDSidc. so there wms not much room for the drivers or myself.

Sea of Mud

“Since neither of the doors would open owing to the amount of baggage packed against them, one of the Arabs had to lift me into my seat as if I were a child.”

For five days the party ploughed Its way across the desert. During the last stage of the journey to Aleppo a bitterly cold wind was blowing and it commenced to rain in torrents.

“The whole desert suddenly became a sea of mud, into which our car sank deeper and deeper, until we were buried up to the axles,” said Lady Chaytor.

“The driver had to dig us out, and eventually we had to put chains on the wheels and drag the car over the most difficult parts.

At the Barracks

“Night had fallen when we arrived jat the encampment of the Foreign Legion. I crept out of the car, wet ! through, and made my way into a wooden hut, iu the middle of which stood a stove with a brightly burning fire. Soldiers of the Legion were seated round drinking and listening to the strains of an ancient gramophone. “A Danish officer appeared and invited me to go over to the barracks. We waded there knee-deep in mud and X was taken Into a room where the walls were hung with Oriental silk.

Slept on Straw

“A French officer welcomed me. Everybody was most hospitable, and I ' was given a concrete room in which :to sleep. Though it only contained a straw bed and a straw pillow, I spent a most comfortable night. “I said good-bye to the commandant | and to the Danish officer, who, as he ; shook hands, remarked: "You are the first woman to be entertained by the [ Foreign Legion.”