MOTOR TRANSPORT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 May 1942, Page 4

MOTOR TRANSPORT

NEW ZEALANDERS’ SERVICE. ACROSS THE SYRIAN DESERT. (Official War Correspondent N.Z.E.F.) CAIRO, April 28. With the growth of the Tenth Army —the youngest branch of the Middle East command —the desert motor transport route, pioneered through Iraq by two New Zealand soldiers of the last war, is of increasing military importance. Nineteen years ago when Gerald and Norman Nairn made their first trial runs across the Syrian desert it was a four days’ journey from Damascus to Bagdad. Today huge air-condition-ed buses cross 530 miles in less than a day, To Army personnel on duty between Middle East Headquarters and the Tenth Army, Bagdad is only three d:\ys distant from Cairo. The bus on which I returned to Syria was occupied entirely by men and women in uniform. The eighteen-hour bus journey was one of the last stages in 2000 miles of travel I have made through five countries in transport either owned or operated by New Zealanders. z Two air-conditioned buses, each of them almost as long as a New Zealand railway carriage, formed the Nairn convoy wherein I left Bagdad yesterday afternoon. This morning I. covered the same distance that the first Second N.Z.E.F. convoy crossed last week. Everything in the Nairn service is designed for speed and comfort. One of the two drivers, whose compartment is separate from the passenger section, sleeps while the other is driving. Before the passengers’ seats are adjusted for sleeping a meal is served them while the bus is moving. They wake to a cup of tea on the Syrian border, and by 10 o’clock they are in Damascus. When the last stage of my journey began I knew I was nearing the New Zealand lines. Once again I was in the back of the three-tonner with packing cases jolting alongside me as we crossed the hills beyond Beyrouth.