"GYPO" MEMORIES.

Digger (Invercargill RSA), Issue 38, 3 December 1920, Page 7

"GYPO" MEMORIES.

V nen the Willochra drew into Port Tewfik and disembarked her reinforce. ment (which was to go into camp outside Suez), the New Zealand boys must have sized up the native Egyptian as an "amusin' cuss," as they stood packed in trucks viewing him fulfilling ihe curse pronounced on Adam and his seed — that of earning his bread in the sweat of his brow." Lumbering past was a vebicle the appeaiance of which was strong presumptive evidence that the owner followed the occupation of Jerry Cruncher," the resurlection liian, and had rifled the grave of a countryman and utilised the coffin to mount on an axle between a pair of enormous wheels, with a diminutive donkey in the shafts. On this sat a soriouslooking Egyptian possessed of all the aplomb of a war profiteer at the steering wheel of a 40-h.p. 8-cylinder limousine. Another strange conveyance doing business was one with a- camel and a cow yoked side by side. But it was as a railway servant that the Gyppo focussed our attention. Each of the tribe carried a flag or a whistle and seemed obsessed by a belief that on his individual efforts depended the whole railway system. As the long troop train waited, hour after hour, the signal for departure, I watched the native railway officials closely. One, whose ears were the only preventive to a total eclipse of his face by an old helmet- he wore, was rushing up and down the platform with a red flag in one hand and a green one in the other. He would wave the red flag to the engine-driver, observing which a deformed Gyppo rau up, pushed him aside, and waved a green one, Another would blow his whistle at the driver, while a fellow-employee, to assert his superior power, bore down on him, places the toe of a very bony foot (with some force behind it) where the seat of the trousers would be if the Gyppo were to sport such habiliments, frowned him down so and blew a louder so things remaified "as you were." When ihe grand clima.. of departure approached, all the officials with flags and whistles commenced waving and blowing, whereat the astlirhatical engine set up such a sereeching — the Gyppo en-gine-driver cannot be . excelled for getting the most out of the whistle, both as regards volume and duration of sound — that it used up all the steam, and a further delay was necessary till mere was generated. Ultimately, when we diew out on our way t-o the Australian camp at Wabour-el-Miab (about a mile inland from Suez), it required a little gift of deduction to appreciate the fertilitv of Gyppo profanity and the amplitude of declamation as the officials argued and gesticulated on the station platform. Yes, the despatch of a train is a big event in the life of the Egyptian railway man.