DESERT LIFE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 December 1940, Page 2

DESERT LIFE

NEW ZEALANDERS FITTER THAN EVER MANOEUVRES IN ROADLESS COUNTRY. CARRIED OUT WITH SMOOTHNESS AND PRECISION. (From the Official War Correspondent with the N.Z.E.F. in Egypt.) EGYPT, December' 6. All the desert becomes a road when formations of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force leave the beaten track to carry out motorised manoeuvres. Few sights could be more impressive than that of a full infantry brigade’s transport equipment on the move in open country. It is not like watching a long, single procession; the trucks, cars, lorries, Bren gun carriers and motor-cycles fan out with a front so wide that the furthest vehicles are little more than specks on the horizon. The brigade in the Western Desert travelled for miles like this on recent exercises. There were so many vevicles, and they were so much dispersed, that they stretched as far as the eye could see across the level desert plain. It was almost as if a swarm of huge beetles was moving in search of a new home, except that the pace was swift and steady. Each time a halt was called, the vehicles halted as one, and whenever a turn was executed they swung round with the precision and orderliness of a body of marching men. This part of the desert was a vast plateau almost completely devoid of features, which meant that compass bearings were the only means of deciding direction and location. Now and again “landmarks” came into view in the form of low mounds of earth surrounding disused wells, which were reputedly dug in the days when the Western Desert was the grain belt of the Roman Empire. Today the surface of this plateau carries hardly a vestige of soil, and consists of chips and slabs of grey stone—smooth and level under the big desert tyres of the modern army vehicle. The absence of roads was welcome, because where there are roads there is dust. To reach the plateau, the brigade travelled in line through scrub country crossed by tracks a foot deep in dust as fine as flour. Bren carriers rode through this yellow powder like small boats bucking a choppy sea. It broke in waves in front of the pitching tanks, and swirled around them until each crew looked as if it was sitting in a rolling cloud, with only the heads and shoulders of the men in sight.

It is on such manoeuvres as these that one appreciates most how the desert has lost its strangeness for men who have lived on it and with it for so long. Short of experience in actual warfare, it is difficult to conceive of anything which could make the troops more seasoned than they are at v present to desert conditions. Months in the fastnesses of the great western plains seem more like years in the changes they have made in these soldiers. Today their every action seems instinctive, and they look as much at ease in the remotest wilderness as a civilian crowd looks in a city street. Officers remark on the smoothness and precision with which they carry out their exercises and “think their way” into and out of unexpected situations. Physically, too, they have changed a lot. Most of. them are leaner, browner and more fit than they have ever been. From the infantryman in his scrim-covered tin hat and bare, bronzed knees to the tank driver, the face under his home-knitted woollen cap grey with dust 1 , they bear the unmistakable stamp of the Dominion breed.