LIFE IN SYRIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 April 1942, Page 3

LIFE IN SYRIA

NEW ZEALANDERS BUSY IN NEW SCENES ENGINEERING AND OTHER ACTIVITIES. UNORTHODOX FISHING ' METHODS. I (N.Z.E.F. Official War Correspondent.) BEIRUT, April 5. Scattered all over the fertile valleys and rugged mountain country of Syria are units of the New Zealand Division. Today I spent the day on the- Turkish frontier with members of the youngest Auckland infantry units. They are guarding bridges, cuttings, viaducts and tunnels of the railway line. On the way out to the unit headquarters we passed New Zealand engineers miles from anywhere demolishing a bridge before they replace it with a new one. A popper drill was manipulated by a Whangarei sapper who before the war owned his own quarry. Arab workmen and women were building an all-weather alltraffic road. Men with legs crossed squatted on the roadside breaking down stones with small hand hammers. They worked far into the night. Women, their baskets filled with stones and breastfed their babies. Men their heads and dropped them on the roadway. Lying in fields alongside the road, asleep in the Syrian sun, were babies. When the mealtime came mothers gave up their job of carrying stones and breatfed their babies. Men and women alike earned a Syrian' pound a day, which is the equivalent of 2s 6d in New Zealand money. Soon we came across an Arab village, with its quaint mud built huts, in architecture like some-crazy potter’s dream. It was market day. Arabs in their flowing headdress and their coloured robes had come from near and far. They crowded the market place, arguing, gesticulating. Nearby, in a large paddock, magnificent Arab horses rubbed shoulders with scraggy mules. An hour later we reached unit headquarters. There had been a sensation in the village near which the New Zealanders were camped. Featured in the unit “Chronicle” was the story with a Western rather than Eastern flavour. This story hit the headlines in the unit’s cyclostiled news-sheet. An unsuspecting Arab villager bought a sack of chaff from an unauthorised agent. Gendarmes; seeing the man carrying the sack along a street investigated. Before the Arab could explain, a shot rang out and the villager dropped. The seller, who had fired the shot from a doorway, flung the door shut, and, when the gendarmes surrounded the building, he jumped from the back window with a pistol in either hand blazing. This was the feature of the unit “Chronicle,” a publication sponsored by the. enterprising Auckland commander, who directed that a shorthand note be taken of 8.8. C. news and distributed to the widely scattered outposts of his command. Newspapers in English or French take some days to reach his outposts, but with the cyclostyled sheets current news reaches his 'men the same day. It is just another example of how officers of the New Zealand Division watch the interests of their men. At the furthermost outpost I talked to New Zealand infantrymen. They camped near a stream in which trout abounded. Rod and line meant little to New Zealanders when plump tenpound trout were there for the taking. Acclimatisation society members would have demanded the full penalty of the law had they seen the methods used by New Zealand troops to provide themselves with fish for breakfast. - On a tufty stone-strewn field an inter-platoon Rugby match is in progress. The Division never moves without its footballs. I have seen oui troops playing football under shellfire. Rugby balls to the New Zealand Division are like pipes to a Scottish regiment.