EMPIRE TROOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 November 1940, Page 8

EMPIRE TROOPS

GATHERED IN EGYPT MEN FROM MANY LANDS. SCENES ON RAILWAY JOURNEY. (N.Z.E.F. Official News Service). EGYPT, October 11. “Where’s the fellow who said the Empire was falling apart?” asked a New Zealand soldier of his comrades. He answered his own question in these terms: — “I’d like him to be here with me now, in the third class carriage of a leave train crawling back over the dreary wastes of the Western Desert. Without turning his head he would be able to see diggers, Tommies, Cypriot, Rhodesians, Indians—-all in khaki, all on the same side of the same war. A copper-coloured son of India, drowsing, is unconsciously squeezing me harder and harder against the side of the carriage. He has just lunched from a mess tin filled with flat slabs of unleavened bread and raw onions, and thumbed the bright pages of a magazine I offered him. Now there is nothing to do but sleep, and a soldier can sleep anywhere. In the seat opposite, black-bereted English “tanks” are talking with an amusing absence of reservation of their, plans to disturb —“friendly-like, chum” —the peace of the city for which they are bound. Down the aisle, half-a-dozen Cypriots are engrossed in a game of cards. Three New Zealanders are emptying three bottles of beer. The next carriage, which is a canteen on wheels, has just a stong an Empire flavour. Mile after mile across the familiar desert —a gently-rolling expanse of brown sand, speckled with patches of scrub —the train is bringing this mixed company slowly back to the civilisation which Alexandria and Cairo stand for. Bright lights, brilliant shops, new sights, music and gaiety all lie ahead, somewhere in the shimmering distance, beckoning to these dusty, sunburned men whom the desert has claimed for two or three long months.

Alexandria is now a mere hour away, but until its modern skyline shows through the blue sea haze it will remain a sort of dream city. The landscape is still devoid of distinguishing features that the train hardly seems to have moved all day. Yet it has left far behind the busy military station where we stood this morning in the early sunshine, peering down the line for the first glimpse of the engine’s smoke. Almost before the train had stopped it was full —crowded with men who scrambled in through the doors and window’s and choked the luggage racks with their rifles, haversacks and rolled blankets.

It has been stopping and starting ever since, for every little station on the way has its quota of waiting passengers. There is little to see except at these stopping places, where native boys come running along the line with hard-boiled eggs, ripe figs and fresh bread rolls for sale. Often a group of Bedouin families, moving out of the war area, is waiting there, too, each alongside its heap of folded tents, brightly coloured mats, and pots and pans. Forlornly crying goats may even be tethered to such a family’s worldly goods. -

In a little while the patchwork quilt of swampy flats and green fields that is the edge of the Nile Delta will be unrolling under the train’s wheels, and the crowded carriages will empty themselves on to the platform of a city station. The New Zealanders may spend their week’s holiday here or in Cairo, or travel on to Palestine. Excellent facilities enable them to make the most of their leave: in Alexandria, for instance, they may stay without cost at a rest camp within easy reach of the city, or find cheap and comfortable lodgings elsewhere. Several are seizing the opportunity of spending their leave in Palestine, from which they return with tales of the sights oi Jerusalem and other holy cities, the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. Organised sightseeing tours help to make such a holiday surprisingly inexpensive.