WITH OUR BOYS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 293, 20 May 1915, Page 7

WITH OUR BOYS.

i,i JOTTINGS 'FROM EGYPT. j (By A. E. F. Harding). March 30, 1915. J I wonder as I sit here in my tent scribbling by the light of a flickering 'candle what the good folk of New Zea- , land are doing, and what they think we are doing, and I also wonder whether 1 cannot in my -seribblings give them some answer to the latter question. iWell, at the present moment all the members of the Taranaki company are sitting in their tents, because our company forms "unlying piquet" to"-night,j and a good majority of the Wellington Infantry Regiment are "at home" to their friends, for the very excellent reason that it is nearly a fortnight since last pay day, and one can't go iar from

the camp without the ever-necessary piastre, which will pay your train fare to Cairo, hire you a donkey or 'buy you a beer. Yes, despite the laments' of a certain gentleman appearing of late in the Taranaki papers, we have a wet canteen, and for a very good reason. Kipling's immortal advice to young soldiers in Egypt contains the lino, ''First keep clear of the grog-sellers' huts," and the authorities, recognising that a man doesn't shed all his pleasant vices when he dons the uniform, decided to provide the excellently-run and admirably-con-trolled canteens which we now have, so that a man can get good beer in camp instead of going to Cairo for had. And, by the way, the force as a whole is composed of a very temperate type of man, and we should be grateful i.'Vhe prohibition element in New Zealand would suspend judgment on this and other points till we have finished our job. AUn. none of us have been killed for insulting YaslHnak women, because we haven't insulted any. We hoard that yarn when : we first landed here about an English ] Territorial, and it has since been in turn J an Australian and a New Zealander. - My tent-mates—eight of them—are just i now singing "My home in Dixie." with more force than melody, and writing hecomes a problem. J

[ A CHANCED FORCE. And ourselves? Well, we've changed quite a lot since we left New Zealand and came to live in the land of sand and locusts, not to mention sand-storms and flies. We used to march gaily about announcing to the world at'large that '•we are, we are, Taranakee or "Ruahinee," or whatever it might be, but we dont do that any more because Mohammed Ali, the orange-seller, and his sisters and his cousins and his aunts only want to sell oranges and ''Flag" cigarettes, and don't seem to care who we are! And there are no pretty New Zealand girls here to smile on us. So we march soberly out to work and soberly back. Likewise, we have quite given up thinking that we occupy the same position with regard to Kitchener that the Almighty does to the Kaiser, because we have rubbed shoulders with fiurkhas, Punjabis, English Territorials, Austr*. lians, Sikhs, British regulars, and volunteers from Ceylon, and we realise fiiat K. of K.'s spring army might be able to start without us. And all this has been very good for us.

TEATS* AND TRAIN, AND TRAIN! AVliat 4o we do,, week in and week out? Simply train, and train, and then train some more. Day manoeuvres, night manoeuvres, divisional exercises, and company drill, anything and everything troops can do. In our spare time we demand of one another when we shall go to the front, and tell one another the latest rumor—and for rumors we have a very piquant but not over-polite name. Every day a different date for our departure to the Dardanelles, I'atmos, Cyprus, England or France is .fixed, and every time the colonel has a shave o; the quartermaster gets a new tunic, or the cooks make a good stew; the optimists aver that it is a sure sign that we are leaving on -Monday week or Wednesday fortnight for the "Dardanelles, Patmos, Cyprus, England or France. We're getting pretty fed up on, signs of that sort now.

THE 'MAORIS. The night before last the third reinforcements and the Maori contingent arrived, and they are now busy sorting themselves out and settling to camp life. The Maoris are a smart lot on parade, and it does one good to see them round the place when oil' parade with their good old Maori stride. They look like a bit of Xew Zealand. Their old native welcome and haka to General Godley was most impressive, and surely no stranger sight than this has been seen—one of the queer things which this war has brought about—these fine, sons of Polynesia dancing their barbaric war dance in a Y.M.C.A. tent on the desert sands of Egypt which Joseph and Mary crossed many thousands of years ago. ABOUT TO MOVE.

April 4. I am writing now in the line cool structure which the Salvation Army lias erected for us. You've only got to travel afield to war to gain an abiding respect for the Salvationists which their street corner worship does not perhaps inspire in thoughtless youth. Anyway, wo would not like to do without'them. Things are moving now, and at last we are to be up and away. "We embark, so say the all-potent ''orders," about Wednesday to hit the Turk in the region of Gallipoli, and may he show inore fight than on the canal! The boys are fed up with, inaction, and are now busily packing a war kit or paying the inevitable nigger a piastre to sharpen their bayonets. We are told that, in conjunction with the big Ernich force just landed at Alexandria, we are to assault a place on the hilly peninsula held by a strong force of Turks and that when we have effected a landing our troubles will be over in a, few days. I say "troubles" perhaps inadvisedly, for it will b.. the sort of trouble we' have been looking for for months. We want to do something more than chase th" all too willing Tuik away from the canal.

So it's good-bye to Cairo, with it-, wonderful life and its equally wond.-nV. depths of inioiiily; with ii - »lriki"». . ~' trast of a.n.-ie'nt and modem: with i{dazzling .hops ami old stone ruins and the citadel which bears to-dav lb-mark, of Napoleon'- bombardment. We are away at last—and 1 mii-t go and se\v some buttons on my field service tunic.