OUT OF THE DESERT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 April 1942, Page 4

OUT OF THE DESERT

NEW ZEALANDERS TREK INTO SYRIA BY WAY OF PALESTINE. GREAT CHANGE FOR BETTER. (Received This Day, 11.30 a.m.) (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent.) BEIRUT. April 5. Thousands of New Zealanders have arrived at their scattered outposts throughout Syria, after a journey from the Suez Canal zone which will live in memory. Tired of the Desert, the flies and sand, the troops could have asked for only one thing better than this move to another land—to have been transported back to New Zealand. Behind them is the sweltering heat of Egypt and the beggars and stench of the Cairo streets. Across the sands of the Sinai. Desert, into Palestine, move the trucks of the Division. The troops were given a friendly wave as they passed a colourful Egyptian frontier post. As the great 'convoys rumbled along the tar-sealed roads of the Desert, the scene began to change and green hills and fertile fields began tc take the place of the cold and barren Desert. In the fields of Palestine me:* and women worked and children played, untroubled by the outside war-torn world. Camels and donkeys were harnessed together to pull single-furrow ploughs, hand-made and old. No Amej rican tractors or farm machinery of any kind have yet found their way into Palestine. STREETS OF JERUSALEM. Some of the troops moved through the streets of old Jerusalem, a city of strange contrasts, where religion has become commercialised, and where it costs many piastres to see the Holy sights. We saw the magnificent, mil-lion-dollar Y.M.C.A., which looked more like a university, and opposite the famous King David Hotel, the most luxurious in the Middle East. Below was the old Jerusalem. Around the streets moved a cosmopolitan crowd of Moslems, Jews and Christians from all parts of the world. Up near the Mount of Olives we saw a soldiers’ cemetery of the last war where many New Zealanders were buried. We knew the names of some. There were some of us whose fathers lay buried there. We saw the simple, impressive little chapel, the gift of the people of New Zealand. Next day we moved on over the rocky hills which surround Jerusalem and across the flat to the modern city of Tel Aviv, on the sea coast. Through miles of magnificent citrus plantations, the Division moved through the land of the famous Jaffa oranges, which in New Zealand cost sixpence each. We bought a sugar-bag full for one piastre —a tip for the boy who collected them. And then we found ourselves in Haifa —at the Mediterranean end of the Iraq pipe-line—Haifa with its straight-lined architecture of modern Russian style. Along the coast road, we wound our way amid scenery which is like the coastline around Wellington. South African Native pioneer troops were building a railway. MOUNTAINS OF LEBANON. Beyond, as we approached along the coast, towered the majestic mountains of Lebanon —we were on our way from the sun-scorched sands of Egypt to the snow-capped heights of Syria. For over an hour we climbed a winding road over the Lebanons to a famous town as old as time. High up in this mountain paradise an army of snowploughs worked ceaselessly to keep the road open for a constant stream of guns and other war equipment. Many of the New Zealanders saw snow for the first time. They staged snowfights with all the enthusiasm of schoolboys. It was night time and the snowflakes drifted lazily down from a moonlit sky. Hundreds of feet below a tiny village nestled in the foothills. Lights from houses twinkled in the valley, to present a glorious spectacle, like a scene from the Austrian Tyrol. Through the ruins of an old city we passed to see the remnants of another civilisation. We passed through an ancient town, the most colourful and picturesque of all the cities the New Zealanders have so far visited. Around here the New Zealanders rub shoulders daily with Arab sheiks who were Lawrence of Arabia’s friends. In a village not far away, New Zealanders have become friendly with the sheik who first taught Lawrence Arabic. MEN FROM MANY LANDS. In the cookhouses of the Division. New Zealanders work side by side with cooks of the Free French Legion and American ambulance drivers — volunteers who pay their own way and drive New Zealand ambulances. Miles away, in the mountains, are New Zealand machine-gun posts and infantry. Mules have replaced the machine-gun-ners’ trucks, for trucks are useless in this rugged mountain country. Already the New Zealanders have become skilled in loading mules with their mach-ine-guns, tripods and ammunition. Railway tunnels and bridges are guarded day and night by troops of the New Zealand Division. ARAB MARAUDERS. Camps have to be strongly picketed, for marauders from the Arab tribes come down from the hills at night to steal anything they can lay their hands on. The solid training of the Division continues —training in mountain warfare, which is poles apart from that to which they have been accustomed for so long. The troops have settled down to their new life, in new surroundings, with the usual adaptability of the New Zealander, and they carry out their tactical exercises with spirit and enthusiasm.