NEW ZEALAND TROOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 May 1940, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND TROOPS

WELCOMED IN CAIRO. A ’■GOOD-TEMPERED. FRIENDLY LOT.” The following report appeared in a Cairo paper under the date February 25: "A fortnight ago we welcomed thousands of New Zealanders to our shores as our honoured guests. Today they own the city, and are the sworn brothers of every Dick and Bill, Ahmed and Mohamed in the place. Half an hour’s walk down the main streets of Cairo leaves the onlooker with the somewhat dazed impression that there can’t be many of them left "down under.” The streets are a blur of khaki uniforms. There seem to be as many slouched hats as tarbushes down Fuad el Awal. Scarlet, shoulder tabs are everywhere. They stroll about in groups of four or five, chaffering good-humouredly with incomprehensible street-vendors. They jingle round the town in gharries. They fill the cafes, the bars, the shops, good-tem-pered and smiling and friendly. They find their way about and are to be seen everywhere —in the museum and on the racecourse—and down the Mousky. A homesick linotypist wandered into the offices of this paper the other day for a whiff of printers’ ink, and spent a delirious evening in the printing-shop. And everywhere they are met with smiles. The bus conductor and the gharry driver and the bar-tender and the shop assistant and the bootblacks grin at them, and they grin back, and the passers-by grin, and the general fellowshop of goodwill is estalished all round. . They certainly add to the brightness and liveliness of the city; they bring a free-and-easy atmosphere with them from their own country that is more than welcome here. They have come for a grim job. but they arc finding Egypt very pleasant, just as Egypt finds them.”