Editor: Robert George Dean

Contributors (this issue):-- W.D. Brown, Hammond Douglas, Joseph Frank, J. Hodel, C.B. Ives, Norman C. Jefferys, Richard Tevis, Frank E. Wood, Jr.

Arthur Foster Missing  "November 6th"  Large AFS Contingent Arrives in M.E.  "Generally Quiet Last Night"  To and From the Editor  Mobile Clinics in Syria  "On The Road To Bir Hacheim"  "A First Experience in Action"  "Life Can Be Beautiful In The Western Desert"  "Don't Write It"  Valedictory From First Unit  Department Of Higher Learning  Lonely Hearts Column  "Jeeper Creepers"  "An AFS Guide To The Levant"

The following dispatch arrived after we had gone to press:--

(Cairo -- 9 Oct. 42)

General Catroux today decorated Lorenzo Semple III, of the AFS Free French Unit, with the Medaille Militaire

Citation as follows:

"Au cours de la sortie de Bir Hacheim le 11 juin 1942 conduisait une ambulance remplie de blessés et immobilisée par le feu de l'ennemie, A réussi après deux heures d'attente à sauver ses blessés en les transportant sur des camions."

This citation also carried the Croix de Guerre with palm.

 

We reprint from the first issue of the

NEWS BULLETIN:--

". . . Unfortunately this work has not been accomplished without losses. May I extend my deep sympathy and the sympathy of the AFS to the families of those men who have given their lives in relieving the suffering of others, and to the families of those men who are wounded, missing, or captured."

Ralph S. Richmond
Colonel, AFS

(Cairo --- HQ AFS G MEF)

The following cablegram has been received:

BLESHAW MITCHELL GERMAN PRISONERS
WELL
CAMP UNSTATED

STEPHEN GALATTI

Cairo -- HQ AFS GHQ MEF)

Arthur P Foster has been missing since the night of September third.

The official report of Major F.J. King, OC 11 AFS ACC, states:

"On the night of 3/4 September 1942 Foster was attached to the xth Royal ----------- (xxx Brigade) RAP, with his ambulance no. 325, moved forward with the Battalion in accordance with the plan for an attack by the -----Div. which was heavily engaged by the enemy South-West of the main RAP in the ------------ minefield. It was reported to DePew (Lt. AFS, OC Foster's Platoon) by eye-witnesses that the RAP truck was hit by a shell and the MO and orderlies were killed. The witnesses also believed that Foster's ambulance was hit. Further enquiries were made and other witnesses state that they believe they saw Foster alive and unwounded after the shelling of the RAP truck. No further information has as yet been obtained."

THE FIRST AFS UNIT has sometimes been called the West Point Unit. There were about a hundred of them. They sailed from Halifax, on the USS West Point, on November 6th, 1942, and so their term of enlistment draws to an end.

Many of them (see lists below) will return to the United States to enter the armed forces; some are joining American forces in the Middle East. Some are re-enlisting in the AFS, and some are staying in the Middle East in civil capacities. 4 of them are in Italian or German prison camps; 2 are still listed missing, 3 are dead.

The men who embarked on November 6th came, to know the bleakness of life aboard a troop ship on their voyage to the Middle East. They were delayed en route and did not disembark an Egypt until mid-February, 1942. They, being the first, were of necessity guinea pigs in the development of an AFS organization in the Middle East. It was from the experiences they went through that later units arrived to find a worked-out scheme of things.

The men of the First Unit had the disappointment of being sent to Syria when they wanted to go straight to the Western Desert. Later, re-grouped with members of Unit II, they provided some two-thirds of the personnel of the first AFS Ambulance Car Company, which felt the shock of the action around Tobruk and of the subsequent withdrawals. About 80% of the total AFS casualties to date are from the roster of the First Unit.

We have read clippings and letters concerned with the reputation which the American Field Service earned in the Western Desert during the late spring and early summer of this year. For this reputation, a greet deal of credit is due to the First Unit.

Now in October, many of these-men are still in the Western Desert, or have only recently returned from there. The majority of them, both in the Desert and in Syria, are preparing for the long voyage home. They have just received orders naming the day they are to assemble in Egypt, to return issued clothing and equipment, and to stand by for the ship or ships with space to take them aboard

We would like to be there to say good luck, and those written words are in lieu of the last yell from the dock. We are of the Second, the December 30th Unit, and since March of this year we have been associated with the November 6th veterans. We were with them in Syria and in Egypt and in Cyrenaica; we got to know them well; we count good friends among them.

To those who are returning here is the best wish we can think of: that you be at home with your families on Christmas Day. And a Merry Christmas to you.

(HQ AFS Syria October 10)

Our HQ in Cairo has not yet forwarded the information concerning First Unit men who are in the Western Desert; so the following lists include only those men who are (or have been recently) stationed in Syria.

(Middle East, Sept 6)

After two months and a week en route, AFS Unit XVI, consisting of approximately 100 men, disembarked here today. (A complete list of names is printed below.) The new men were met at the port by Colonel Richmond, OC AFS MEF, by Major Stuart Benson and Captain Hinrichs. Benson and Hinrichs had started with this Unit from the United States and had accompanied it as far as Capetown, from where they proceeded by plane to Cairo.

Following the welcome by Colonel Richmond, Unit XVI (which now included the five men of Unit IX) boarded lorries and was driven to a desert camp at El Tahag, some 66 miles from Cairo. The men found that all preparations had been made for their arrival, and they learned that they were to become the first two platoons of a new AFS Company, temporarily designated 'W' AFS Ambulance Car Company. The OC of the new company, Captain Geer, the two platoon lieutenants, and the staff of NCOs had already been selected from AFS personnel in the Middle East --- from 11 AFS Ambulance Car Company (485 Coy.) operating in Syria and in the Western Desert. Colonel Richmond's message to the newly arrived men explained this:

"It is our policy to appoint officers and NCOs from the men who have been in the Field, who have had the experience and who know the ropes. We are following this policy with your Unit. Many of the men we have appointed will return to the United States when their enlistment expires, so that when men of your Units have proved themselves as capable leaders in the Field they will be promoted to take the place of these men."

On the journey from the United States to Egypt, the OC of Unit XVI was Bayard Tuckerman, Jr. Tuckerman's Log of the journey disclosed that these 100 men followed much the same procedure as have previous AFS contingents. Divided into squads, they kept night watch, patrolling the ship to see that blackout regulations were enforced. They were instructed in lifeboat drill, and some of them were put in charge of lifeboats. They attended classes (including a class in Arabic), lectures, church services. They were drilled, put through exercises, and given instruction in First Aid. As early as the fourth day aboard ship, this routine was in effect: Assembly at 1000 hrs.; Drill, 1000 to 1100; Calisthenics, 1100 to 1140; First Aid, 1140 to 1200 hrs.

In the afternoons the men sunbathed, squinted for periscopes, swam in the pool, read, played gin rummy, wrote letters, talked. On the third day aboard ship the bar opened. Prices were favorably commented upon:-- Scotch --- 17 cents; Beer --- 15 cents; Martinis --- 10 cents; cigarettes ---10 cents. Also, on this day Carl Adam conceived the idea of publishing a daily newspaper to be called the TORPEDO TIMES. Tuckerman wrote this about it in the Log: "The TORPEDO TIMES is a great success so far. Editor Adam has worked extremely hard to make the paper interesting, informative, and amusing. It is a great help to us, 'The High Command', in getting across ideas and feeling out opinion". Later, the newspaper fell afoul of that old bogey of the press --- a libel suit. The log entry for July 30th. reported:

"At 8,30 this evening, a libel suit was brought by Major Stearn against the TIMES, Inc., and a mock trial was held, with Huntington presiding as judge. The Major's charge was based on an article printed on July 23. To a capacity audience, the principals of the trial presented a highly amusing evening, supplying a great deal of humor while adhering to strict legal procedure. The Major presented his own case, with the aid of A1 Clemmons as co-counsel. The TIMES was represented by William Elmslie. The decision favored the plaintiff."

The plaintiff had sued for a million dollars, and was handsomely satisfied by the jury by being given the ownership of the newspaper. The first issue of the TORPEDO TIMES under its new management appeared the following day. It included some new features, --- a social column, sports page, cartoons, photographs.

Before the ship reached Capetown, there were Drill Competitions, First Aid tests, and three weeks or more of rehearsals for what the log termed, "a musical extravaganza". The extravaganza, TUCKERMAN FORBID, with skits and songs and ingenious costumes and sets, was presented to enthusiastic audiences. Fenton, who, together with Jeffress, was co-author, directed the production; LeBoutillier and Jenkins arranged the music. Van der Molen was Business Manager.

The men were ordered to be prepared, with all of their belongings packed, to disembark at Capetown for a possible layover and trans-shipping; and such were the instructions later received from the military authorities. Based at a shore camp, the men enjoyed leave for a few days before they boarded another ship. This ship was big and fast, and the British gave AFS men the privileges of officers' mess and lounge and deck facilities. The day alter weighing anchor, the ship was apportioning some of its space to Jacobs, who began a voluntary course in map reading. A small group attended the course. Tuckerman requested Clifford Saber --- who, from the beginning of the trip, had drawn many sketches of the men and of shipboard scenes, and who had won the caricature contest to do a water color painting of President Roosevelt. On the second of September, this painting was presented to the captain of the ship.

Between Capetown and Middle East, the ship took on board the five men of Unit IX. This group (James R. Ullman, OC, Merrill R. Johnson, John A. Nattinger, William N. Snyder, Norman C. Sargent) had started from the United States in mid-May. After one month, they sighted the lights of Capetown. Then began a miserable sequence of delays. They spent nine days at anchor, staring at the shoreline of Capetown and biting their fingernails: not once were they allowed to leave the ship. Then they steamed up the coast of Africa, anchored in a sheltered bay, and for well over a week they looked at this shoreline and bit their nails. They steamed back to Capetown. This time, eight weeks after they had embarked on the little freighter, they were allowed to set foot on land. They enjoyed ten days ashore. They re-boarded the ship, but it merely went farther out in Table Bay to drop anchor. Finally, five weeks after first sighting the lights of Capetown, they moved off again. But only to Durban. Here, they had ten days to study the shoreline before setting foot on it. Ullman wrote in his log: "Life on the freighter is becoming almost unendurable. The food has gone from bad to worse, bedding is changed once a month, and the bathrooms are swimming in filth." On. August 16th, at the end of three months aboard the ship, they were happily transferred to an army camp. On August 24th, they boarded the ship which was carrying Unit XVI. Of this ship, Ullman wrote in his Log: "Accommodations and food are excellent, and the whole experience, after three months on the little freighter, is like moving from a Bowery flophouse into the Waldorf.. . . . We spend our days on the sun deck and in the smoking lounge and swimming pool and often have trouble remembering that we're not on a peacetime luxury cruise. The only regular assemblies are the occasional lifeboat drills. The ship is far too crowded for any AFS activities en masse. Those days on the freighter seem very far away and long ago. Inevitably, one's perspective changes with time; we find ourselves glad now that our trip has included so much variety."

"Journey's end at last", Ullman wrote on Sunday, September 6th. "Sixteen weeks to the day after we set off. By early afternoon we are ashore, under the leadership of Colonel Richmond and other AFS officers who have met us."

On September 7th, at El Tahag, Units IX and XVI, now combined into the first two platoons of "W" AFS Ambulance Car Company, began to draw their complement of 66 ambulances and to draw clothing and equipment.

Each man was handed a set of mimeographed sheets which contained information about the AFS in the Middle East:-- a listing of officers and heads of departments; the location of HQ AFS MEF; the organization of the AFS in the Field; a recounting of the types of work which have been done in Syria and in the western Desert by 11 AFS Ambulance Car Company (485 Coy,); the status of AFS men in the Middle East,. the necessity of conforming to British Army regulations and the penalties for not conforming; the Social Status of AFS men; the importance of Geneva Cards; responsibility for clothing and equipment issued by the British; leave; censorship; health (with details about certain diseases prevalent in the Middle East); and finance. On this day, the AFS Cashier arrived in camp to supervise the first of the monthly payments to the new men and to handle other monetary matters.

On September 8th, the men continued to draw ambulances, clothing, and equipment. They were visited in camp by Colonel Richmond and Major Benson. The latter snapped a number of pictures.

On the 9th, Captain Geer, OC. issued Standing Orders. These gave information regarding the location of the camp, meal hours, sick call, daily routines, camp cleanliness, dress, natives, washing and bathing, security, gas masks, photography, vehicle discipline, Church services. First Call was set at 0715 hrs.; breakfast, 0800; lunch, 1300; dinner, 1800.

On Thursday, Sept. 10th, the following Orders of the Day were posted:--

The Orders of the Day for September 11th were:-

On Saturday, the 12th, Platoon I was given a 24-hour leave in Cairo; and the same leave was given Platoon II on Sunday, the 13th.

During the week ending September 19th, there was instruction in desert navigation, desert convoy practice, sand driving, sun compass review, maintenance of vehicles, cleaning of vehicles, and inspections of vehicles and men.

The following week, each platoon went in convoy to the desert on an overnight practice run; there was more vehicle maintenance; there were parades and inspections; there were lectures on enemy aircraft recognition; camouflage nets, vehicle blankets, and reserve rations were drawn; and excess baggage was assembled and taken in lorries to be stored.

During this period the company was notified of its official designations15 AFS ACC (567 Coy.)

Early in the morning of Saturday, September 26th, the men and vehicles of15 AFS ACC departed from El Tahag in a convoy line that stretched for miles. They were on their way to the Western Desert.

The roster of AFS Unit XVI (which, in New York, had absorbed almost all of the men from Units VIII and XI) was as follows:--

Here, we have again the Eric Maria Remarque motif in title. And we have our best story of the month:

IT SEEMS IN THE CRAZY DISTANCE NOW, long past, writing here where the only sounds are flies bussing and the flap of the tent in a warm autumn wind, where lorries rumble heavily in their own swirl of dust, miles from El Alamein. Alamein is what the papers and the radio are calling the front. To us, perhaps, it is less of an abstraction. It is a terrible vastness of ragged desert, of sand and shale and stone, lonely wind-torn miles, barbed wire entanglements, and the twisted charred wreckage of tanks, planes, guns, transport. It is waste and torment and stillness. It is men waiting by heavy guns to fire at men unseen --- men smoking and laughing in the dusty sunlight, working, waiting---now, long past it seems. Only a few days actually.

Midday was bright and quiet, but for the occasional artillery. Lunch had been bread, tea, and marmalade. The others parked there around the Dressing Station were sleeping in the back of their ambulances. I had no such luck because there seemed to be no getting used to the flies or the heat, or the reverberations of the nearby canon. I merely sat and wondered about the desert, and the men on the desert. A medical orderly dozed in the shade of the main tent. I remember he wore shorts and a torn undershirt and his Red Cross armband almost hid a large faded blue tattoo and his face was shadowed under a dirty sunhelmet.

Perhaps an hour passed.

I was being introduced to Peter, my new orderly. Peter was tan and kind of prune-faced, a dry little New Zealander who was saying things had been quiet these last weeks. (Later I found out Peter made the men mad saying that: such an attitude begs trouble,) And he said his division was about due for a rest. Peter set on the seat beside me in the ambulance and thought we should be going.

That was the first I knew of my assignment with the RAP. The RAP was nearly four miles West by way of a crooked deep-rutted road, pock-marked here and there with shell holes, dust-laden. After we arrived, my car was holed in behind sandbags a few yards from the wreckage of a Jerry tank.

A wadi they called it, sparse brush in deep sand, and the camp was dug in pell mell, --- a slit trench here, a dugout for supplies there. The main tent was a buried affair, sandbagged, and it had a dusty old Red Cross flag lashed to its top. Peter introduced me around. There was a Captain Thompson, his orderly, a young chap called Harry who seemed glad to see a new face. Another officer, whose name I later found out was Ryan, lay curled up asleep, an old copy of the EGYPTIAN MAIL over his face. Peter told me that Captain Ryan was the Information Officer, wounded with the outfit in Crete, that he liked whisky and could find out more about Italian prisoners by their smell than any living man.

How, I could not discover at first, but they all looked comfortable there the little dugout. The roof was propped up with a broom and a piece of a wrecked plane. A Field crank-phone, a dirty, used cup of tea crawling with flies, and a cluttered ashtray, --- all sat atop a petrol tin in the center of us. There were medical blankets on the floor, a pair of German binoculars, old magazines, a stethoscope, a half-empty bottle of rum.

After a time the Padre came in, smoking a pipe which he was seldom without. He sat down with a grunt and wished there were tea. Thompson laughed and asked him why it was that all of the clergy were so everlastingly hungry.

The phone rang. Three long rings. Thompson talked quite a while and finally, receiver still in band, called to Ryan to get out his map and codes. Captain Ryan groaned and, still half asleep, pulled down his map, drew out pencils, lit a cigarette, and waited. Thompson continued talking, then listened, then commenced speaking strange short phrases to Ryan, who scribbled red and green and brown lines over the map. It made no special sense at first, but I felt the others become tense. At last Ryan spoke up, "2300 hours, Bruce. A Div. show".

infected. Without a word, I felt a part of them. This was taken for granted (All of us who had come over recently had heard about these quiet men from the Dominions: Germans respected them and Italians feared, it was said. Their battalions had lost officers and men since Crete. They seldom mentioned it. They drawled, smoked a good deal, were mostly lean and burned by the sun and the wind.) I was naturally anxious about the telephone call. Ryan and Thompson poured over the map, spoke cryptically about flares, about barrage and Bren carriers. Finally the Padre relieved the tension by asking what it all meant. Thompson said gently, "A raid using the whole Division, most likely to find out what they have left over there after the tank thrust down South". To me, he added, "A noisy first night, Bill."

The day waned. The sun sank over the desert blazing red and gold. Utter silence. It became cool, even chilly. In darkness the mess truck brought us bully stew and applesauce and hot tea. Cigarettes glowed. The Padre thought we should catch some sleep, and Ryan said there would be rum before we went out. I curled up under a blanket in my new slit trench. looked at the sky, heard the brush of wind over the desert earth. My stomach and heart jostled my anxiousness . Once a plane carne over us low, but I couldn't tell whose it was, as the others could. Now I could get comfortable. Now and again the dim staccato of a machine gun betrayed the strain of waiting . . . and the thundering crack of bigger guns. Peter came over and told me it was time.

Five minutes later the artillery was infuriated and the ground under us quaked. The rim of the earth flashed insanely, making of the horizon a mean silhouette of barbed wire. We wore heavy overcoats and helmets, and drank the issue of rum in a silent circle.

Thompson spoke "We better be going."

Behind my ambulance was a lorry and a jeep. We moved slowly, up through the gap in the minefield. A sentry stopped us, peered in my window, said, "Good luck. Hope you've no business". His voice had the same hush that all these voices had. At first, I drove too fast. Some one in the back of the ambulance said that even at night dust drew fire. We moved up perhaps a quarter of a mile, then were hailed down by a small group of men standing in the darkness. I recognized Ryan, still in shirt and cap, his field glasses slung on his chest, he told us we might as well get below and be comfortable. There were ten minutes until the Verey signal. the enemy was just commencing to answer our barrage with their mortars.

In the dugout it was crowded. I stumbled on an empty beer bottle and swore. The men sitting there smoking laughed and called me "Yank". "Yanks swear different", a voice said, amused. There was a luminous watch dial on someone's wrist that caught my eye. It moved hither-thither in the blackness. Little was said . . . . only a joke if a shell came close by. Then silence to hear the next screech. A dry silence. Peter said that mortars are not bad, but quick, and they're bastards because we can't hear them go off.

When the phone rang it seemed that Thompson spoke loudly. He told us the show was on, should be over by a half-hour after midnight. We were to hold tight until called. The earth rocked and rattled. I remember the roar of the enemy's Spandows --- a faster roar than our Vickers. I felt clammy and mad at this noise because I couldn't possibly think. I had to relieve myself. I mentioned it, and they all said they needed to. Once, Thompson called C Company for news. There was none. Dirt sifted down the sides of the trench, and dust and smoke blurred the belching light that flashed in our doorway, and the smell of cordite and dust made some of us cough.

Suddenly we realized our lorry had been hit. Now it was only a roaring pyre of flame and black oily smoke, ---a blaze worse than the flares because it was close. "Tank guns. All my gear, goddamit." It must have been the driver. There was nothing we could do but hope the glare would not bring more fire down on us. My ambulance stood out as if in a terrible dream.

The truck was still burning when we had the call to move up to A Company. Three wounded that they knew of. We drove fast now, following behind the jeep, whose driver still wore his sunhelmet. He told me later it kept the glare out of his eyes. Five minutes through thick sand and we were hailed down. On the ground were the three. One, gray-faced, unconscious, a leg shattered. There was blood enough to smell. The others were stomach wounds, --- one of them groaning, the other smoking quietly. Thompson gave morphine and shell dressings, marked their foreheads, M-100. We slung them in the ambulance and waited. More should be in.

Two more: an eye bloodied with shrapnel; an arm hurt and splintered. Behind the jeep again, we drove slowly back through the wires to the Aid Post. 'Snowy' with the blind eye, on the seat beside me, fainted. The boy with the bad arm was sitting on the tail gate and singing, "My Wild Irish Rose"; almost hysterical, I thought. The orderlies worked fast getting them out. 'The smashed leg", as they called him, had died on the road back from bleeding. He was now a wallet, an identification tag, a pay book. There was no word spoken. No pause.

Before two o'clock we had made three such trips. Even the jeep and Bren-carrier brought in wounded, some of them Italians. About midnight, we had paused at Battalion HQ through a moment's lull. It was good spot for observation, and sometimes under the low flares we could see the bayonets flashing. Before we left the spot, near to a hundred Italians ---dirty, silent, clad in greatcoats, bareheaded were marched under guard and halted. They dropped exhausted; they chattered now and seemed happy. I was surprised at their youth.

By three o'clock all of the companies had returned, the wounded dressed for the moment. A thin moon grayed the desert. Our next job was getting the bad cases back to the Dressing Station ---four miles in the darkness, or so I thought. I was wrong, for the darkness became a glaring cauldron of parachute flares, of white magnesium on the ground. A spectacle that no one could ever forget. the reek of sulphur dioxide; the smoke; and then, once they had located their objectives, the screaming sirens as Stukas descended from the night sky. Where the bombs fell there erupted gray and bleak earth and rock. It awakened Snowy into pain, and his eye bled badly. "Bloody insult to a man's intelligence, those screamers", he muttered. "He' wastin' a boatload of powder tonight."

When the flares would let. up for a moment, it put us in total darkness and we were lost. It took us over an hour to get there; and there, for the first time that night, I realized others were in the fight too. Ambulances everywhere. The wounded strewn in hundreds over the ground, some under blankets in shock, others sitting on the ground, nursing bloodied bandages. No one talking. Thick dust, and still the flares, and the screaming. Inside the tent there was the inhuman groaning of the wounded awakened. Many were unconscious. Five doctors worked in silence, swiftly, perspiring. Wounded strewn everywhere, and at the far end of the tent three dead, wrapped in blankets. It was stifling there in the lantern light. I was told to go back to my post. Outside they were still bombing, but I could see that dawn would soon drive the planes away. Our road was more pock-marked than before. When we returned, sunrise was full behind us and the planes had fled. Now only the occasional rumble of guns reminded me there ever had been a battle. And they said et the camp that the raid had done what was needed. A few birds chirped up in the brush and fluttered away.

Captain Thompson told us to get some sleep, but the car was already drawing flies. The stains became dimmer under a scrubbing with petrol..

Shortly after seven I evacuated the last of them back to the Dressing Station. It was almost worse in the light of morning. A wind had stirred dust, and the Dressing Tent was a silent chaos. Still they were lying about. Flies were terrible. Dead were being loaded into one of the cars for the graveyard, a mile away.

We had mess around the back of the truck. Waiting in line with my Dixie, I talked to some of the others. It had been about the same all up and down the line. I could see that on the faces. Some of the faces I had known all my life almost. We all recognized what had happened. Only one of our drivers had been lost, an older man.

Afterwards, as I was washing my Dixie, a Messerschmidt was spotted heading for us, low to the ground. Everyone scattered, I into the garbage pit with two others. Then the plane passed, only a flitting shadow to the West.

Inside, things looked just the same as the night before A clutter of wounded. Men silently dressing the smashed bodies. My eye caught the eye of one of the doctors as he looked up from his work; he winked at me. Our eyes had met the same way last night. I watched him work; shrapnel in the rump. (There is a lot of that.) A local anaesthetic, a swathe of disinfectant on the white flesh, careful fingers feeling for the fragment and cutting quickly and probing with scalpel. A piece comes out, a small sharp piece which the doctor hands to the young soldier there on his stomach. "Next, please." The next is far worse, A. strong yoeman weeping in pain and silence at his own mutilated manhood.

Some one turned on the radio in a far corner for the early news. I went over and listened to the impersonal, clear voice of the announcer; "On the Western Desert it was generally quiet last night, with some exchange of artillery in the central sectors".

In early July, at Ikingi, we wrote for the first issues

"The AFS NEW BULLETIN is dedicated to our families and friends at home. Immediately an issue is published (about once a month), the first copy will be sent via air mail to the New York office of the AFS so that, through its publication department, factual news about AFS men serving in the Middle East may be relayed to those who are interested.

"That is the chief purpose of the NEWS BULLETIN . . . "

That continues to be the chief purpose.

With the appearance of the first issue, AFS men began asking if the New York Office would print copies and send them to the families and to friends. Many of the men have since found the answer in letters from the States, written around September 1st, which mentioned the arrival of the new Middle East Bulletin. To those who haven't yet heard this news from home, we can say that the New York Office cooperated splendidly. The first issue arrived there sometime after the middle of August; and what happened then is told in this letter to the editor.

August 26, 1942

For the past week, we have been running your bulletin on our machine here, Mrs. Field and her assistant working hours every day, and it should get out tomorrow. I am sure that it will have a wonderful reception among the parents and friends of the service.

All of us here in the office have read it and have enjoyed every word.

My experience has been that a bulletin like this does more in the long run to make friends for the Service than anything else, and I also assure you, from my experience in the last war that as the men get older they will turn more and more to it with satisfaction.

Please tell all, those who have helped you how much I appreciate the trouble you have taken to do this so well.

Good luck to you.

Yours,

Stephen Galatti
Director General

"It should get out tomorrow", Mr. Galatti wrote. That would have been the 27th We feel sure it did get out on that date, because on the 28th the Staff of the New York office --- HQ AFS USA --- found time to sit down and write us a letter.

An Open Letter
To: The Members of the AFS in the Middle East
From: The Staff of AFS HQ USA

How many times each one of us has wanted to write to each one of you, but pressure of business and ye olde airmail postage have prevented our doing so. However, now you are publishing a bulletin, we are taking advantage of it to renew acquaintances.

You will remember --- we hope --- most of the HQ Staff, but in order to refresh your memory, and because a few new names have been added, lets call the roll.

Lets also poll the relatives and friends of yours helping here at HQ

Now that we have all been accounted for, we can chat.

Do we have to tell you --- or course we don't. but we will ---that we all nearly burst with pride when we read about or listen to the reports of the work you are doing out there. You have done a magnificent job and what's more, you've proven you can take it, and in a war as it is today, that's really something

Because your families have shared your letters with us, we have been on the ships going over with you. We have seen the bazars of India and the Taj Mahal in the moonlight. We have been to Capetown and Durban and many other parts of the world we never knew existed. We have laughed with you at the funny experiences you've had, at the humorous sights you've seen, and we've been with you when things have gone wrong, and you've been ill and unhappy. We've been on the ambulances with you and watched you load your wounded with no thought to your own safety --- and, yes, we've been just a little scared with you when the first bomb dropped nearby. In other words, as they say in the navy. We are glad to be aboard, and we enjoy this privilege only because of the fine spirit of your folks back home.

We watch you all go over and then wait for the news of your safe arrival. We have watched some of you return because you met with disaster on the seas, but you always come up smiling under any circumstances. Your fine spirit has come through time and time again. You're really tops with us.

Our life here isn't as eventful as yours but, perhaps you would like to hear about some of our doings HQ is at the moment (and we say at the moment advisedly as we move quite frequently) located in a large store on the ground floor of 60 Beaver Street Those of you who have seen the place know its size. You also know that you have to be a first-grade athlete to get around it. To cite an example, if one wants to get a drink of water, one must practically run an obstacle race. You must hurdle a desk or a chair, or both, and either bypass or crawl under a table. If you've negotiated thus far without any broken bones or abrasions, you run around the left end of the bulletin board, take a deep breath, and leap over duffle bags, musette begs, bedding rolls, portable radios, typewriters, victrolas, and suitcases. As a matter of fact it is getting so hard to travel around here that, if we can secure a priority on compasses, we are going to furnish each member of the staff with one in order that he wont lose his way.

Everyone is hard at work over here. It's been a long, hard pull with many discouraging incidents and set-backs. However, we know you'll be glad to hear that the AFS, according to printed reports of the Department of State (under whose jurisdiction we operate) stands at practically the bottom of the list for funds expended on administrative costs. Our operating percentage is slightly less than 6% and is next to the lowest administrative expense of any War Relief Organization. This has been accomplished only because the AFS pays no high salaries to any one, because it depends for the most part on volunteer personnel, because so many of its members in World War I have agreed to act as representatives throughout the country, serving without remuneration, and because those in charge of the Service all give freely of their time without any compensation other than the satisfaction of a good job well done. We're here only because of you out there, and, strange as it may seem, you are there because we helped you on your way. We are mighty proud of this record that enables most of the funds of the AFS to go to the Field.

A short time ago, we worried about finances and asked that Major Benson return. He arrived from the Middle East by plane, through the courtesy of the British Government, tired and stiff, having had to sit on a barrel practically all the way over, but he immediately started his tour of the country. He told the story in a simple, but sincere way, and said his only regret was that he had been called back without having seen any action. (We have just heard of his re-arrival in the Middle East Good luck, Stu, you did a swell job and we all owe you a lot.) As a matter of fact, it is largely due to his successful tour that we have been able to grant each of you an allowance of 20 dollars per month.

Speaking of money --- and who isn't these days --- we have received funds from your parents, relatives and friends, and these we have cabled to you. If there has been delay in your receiving them, we are deeply sorry. But please don't blame it on us, blame it on the slow communications and that "nasty man" the Censor. Be assured that all monies received for you here are immediately transmitted to you with due dispatch. your accounts --- as well as all AFS accounts --- are audited every three months by the accounting firm of Arthur Anderson & Company. These audited statements are sent to the Department of State, and the books of the AFS are open for inspection at all times.

We have met many of your parents and relatives They come into HQ to get news about you (Incidentally, why don't some of you write home once in a while? You don't know how your letters would help morale on the Home Front.) They also make some very good suggestions, which are always most welcome. It was through one of these that the AFS pin was born. So many of your relatives wanted something to show that their boys were "in there pitching". The pins are very attractive and your parents and friends wear them with great pride --- as a sort of badge of honor. Now, some one has suggested a cigarette case with the AFS insignia on it, which would make an appropriate Xmas gift. We are working on this idea now and hope something will come of it. We'll let you know in our next letter.

Your bulletin is wonderful. We are printing it here in HQ and can't wait until the job is finished so we can all read it and pass it around to the folks. Keep it coming boys and here' hoping it grows bigger and better with each edition.

We hope by the time this reaches you, all the Units an route will have reached their destination. If so, happy landing boys. There are still quite a few waiting here for shipment and though the wait has been long and postponements discouraging, they are all eager to get off. Here's hoping the call comes soon, and they'll be on their way.

Things on this side of the ocean have changed quite a bit lately. The automobile is no longer considered a necessity --- it is definitely a luxury. And it's pretty hard to be "sweet" with sugar being rationed. Everything is going up and---the cheapest commodity on the market is rumors.

Here's one rumor if you hear you can believe. We're all 100% behind you --- working for you and believing in you. Sure we make mistakes --- after all we're only human---but at least we try not to make the same mistake twice. Don't get discouraged --- and above all, don't think you've been forgotten by the Staff of HQ USA. You're very much in our thoughts always. To be of service to you is our only aim. If we've failed anywhere, it is due to inexperience---not insincerity. Don't 'forget --- this job is as new to us as your job there is to you, and we only hope that when the final whistle blows, our record will be as good as yours. We're mighty, mighty proud of you.

Until a later date, good luck to you all.

The Staff --- HQ USA

 

The following letter, Colonel Richmond forwarded to the editor:--

Medical Directorate
GHQ MEF
---------------

Dear Richmond,

I have read with the greatest interest Vol. 1 No. 1. of the AFS News Bulletin.

Your men have set as high a standard in their literary efforts as they have in the job which they came out here to do.

I well remember the first day you and Benson came to see me and I recall feeling that the Medical Services of the Middle East were going to be richer with the arrival of the AFS. That 'hunch' was not wrong.

I remember also the slight atmosphere of disappointment that went through the men when the first Unit was posted to Syria. There was method in that move; it got the men 'salted' to climatic conditions in. this part of the world before facing the rigours of the Western Desert, where one and all were itching to go.

Their chance came --- Tobruk, Bir Hacheim, Mersa Matruh, Fuka, El Alamein.

I know how they carried out their difficult and dangerous tasks. I know of the very warm regard the combatant people have for them. I know that some did not come back and I would appreciate it if you will, convey the sincere sympathy of the Medical Directorate to their relatives.

It was fine to read about the experience of those who came through, and the 'News Bulletin' will form a very valuable historical document.

Good luck for the future.

Yours sincerely,

A S Walker
Brigadier

If any of you at home, relatives or friends, happen to think (and not unreasonably) that the AFS is exclusively an ambulance-driving business, you're in for some lovely surprises. Of course ambulance-driving does provide the bulk of our business, but don't go telling the neighbors that your WILLIE is at the wheel of a Dodge

It's quite likely that Willie is underneath a Dodge, working as a grease monkey or as a fitter. Or he may be on a motorcycle, delivering mail and messages. Or, he may have as little to do with a vehicle as you who are gas-rationed.

The chances are not at prohibitive odds that your Willie is behind a desk clerking, or paying out money like any good obliging teller. Maybe he's an OC, playing on an accordian or with a dog. He may be drawing the daily supplies; he may be delivering flour and medicines to the villagers and Bedouins; he may be quartermastering; he may be running a canteen.; he may be --- temporarily, at least --- an orderly in a hospital. He may even be an assistant to an MO, a sort of doctor.

For months, one AFS man was aide to the British Officer in charge of a Check Post. Since March, two of our men have been working in a malaria-control laboratory. One of our jokers actually was --- during an inter-regnum--- the Officer Commanding a Post along the Frontier.

The greatest variety of work, for obvious reasons, has been in Syria. The story of the wide range of AFS activities in the Second World War certainly would not be complete without an account-of our detachment with Lady Spears' clinics.

(The article below has been sent to the Beckley, W Va newspapers, and to the AP Cairo office. Hodel thoughtfully borrowed the censor's copy for us to set it up.)

OUR JOB IS DIFFERENT -- refreshingly so to me. While the world is at war, we're doing work of a charitable nature.

I watched Lewis, the Friends' Ambulance Unit men, grimace when I read that to him. He didn't like calling it charity, and I suspect that he had the right idea. Anyway, what we do is take medicine and skilled medical personnel to a people whose household remedies are poultices of camel dung, or flour, vinegar, salt, oil, eggs . . . most anything that happens to be handy.

Our outfit is called Speers Mobile Clinics in honor of Lady Spears who is sponsor of the organisation. Our clinic consists of a Lebanese doctor, graduate of the American University in Beirut, a Friends Ambulance Unit man, three men (and ambulances), and Barjat, who is general handyman.

We live in a large village in a typically Syrian house. The house consists of a plot of ground with trees and flowers and vegetables, surrounded by four rooms and the kitchen and a high wall of rock and mud. Two rooms are for sleeping, one is the pharmacy, and the fourth is the dining room. The mud walls and the tins, which hold our gas and oil supplies, give the place a somewhat desolate appearance, but it's our home and headquarters.

What we do is take medicine in one of the ambulances out to a village and set up a clinic. We gas up the ambulance while Barjat loads our 75 or more medicines and drugs, and then we are off on roads which are so miserable that they always give me the feeling of walking barefoot on glass or on a bed of nails. It is 50 kilos to our first village. If we're lucky we arrive in about 90 minutes. We are not always lucky, however.

One day, about 20 kilos out, we had two flats in quick succession. And no tire repair kit. The doctor walked half a mile to an Arab tent village for help, and then about fifteen miles back to our headquarters from which he sent another of our ambulances out with a spare.

If we have no such trouble, we roll along through the countryside. There is no rain here for about nine months of each year, and the only green spots are irrigated fields, where a donkey or aged plug horse goes blindfolded around and around a thirty-foot circle, pumping water from a deep well. When we come to one of the infrequent streams, fed by springs which are very lush this year, we have to ford it. Sometimes we get stuck in the irrigation ditches, but usually our American made four-wheel-drive ambulances take us through.

Barjat starts a sing-song Arabic tune. To me, it seems to have no musical qualitites whatsoever. Now the sun is well up in the sky, and if it weren't for the dry air we'd be dripping sweat. Fortunately, we've long since got used to the glare of the sun, which is terrific. Barjat starts telling Bayley one of his stories about when he used to be in the army. I'm never able to decide whether Barjat's peculiar brand of English is modelled after the French or Arabia languages, but it's a source of amusement to all. I get snatches of it as we drive along : . . . "I make shooting about 500 yards far. . it make kick . . . " The next time I'm listening, he's off on the story about bringing his wife to the village where we have moved. He is saying that he will tell his wife when we go for her: "I took one house for you and everything is ready. When I went to sleeping I think I have sabig chance if I be at my house at this time . . . " And so he rambles on.

We roll into Jeni Al Bawi over huge rocks which would tear the bottom out of a normally low-slung car, and are greeted by the village Muchtar.

Curious children swarm around the ambulance. We unload the medicines and equipment in a crowd of flies and humans. The latter, Barjat manages to put to work helping us unload.

Our materials moved into this temporary clinic, we close the doors to the crowds of people, curious or sick, who almost invariably gather. The primus is started sterilizing instruments; wash bowls are filled with disenfectant; medicines and instruments are laid out; and then we admit patients.

"Wahad bi wahad" is the cry as we strive to keep the patients coming one at a time We have varying success in this. One man is stationed at the door to take names, to collect ten piastres from each patients and to write down the diagnosis and treatment. The ten piastres (about a nickle) is a kind of token payment.

We handle bawling babies who resist the trachoma treatment, suspicious men and women and children who think they are being murdered when an abcess is opened. There are cases of malaria, malnutrition, and a host of others streaming through. They bring their bottles, and the pharmacist fills the doctor's prescriptions

It is s madhouse. One man tells the doctors "I am sick; examine me and find out what is wrong. There's a lot of this, and the doctor explodes. He tells the man that if he will not give the symptoms of his ailment he can take his ten piastres and go. The doctor says he is not God, he cannot always tell even that a man is sick by merely looking at him. Sometimes the man will relent and sometimes he goes sulking out with his two francs and wailing that the doctor is no good if he cannot tell what is wrong with a mane

Our Doctor's name is John Ayash. His specialty is eye, ears nose and throat After graduating in 1939 from the American University of Beirut with high honors, he spent three years there as an intern. He is 28 years old; his home is in Aaley, in the Lebanon. He came with the Spears Clinics on a five-month contract. He is a tireless worker: his hours are long, and, when the clinics are going strong, he performs the functions of two or three men. His pet hate is the malarial areas, because prices of quinine are so high that we can treat only the worst cases and have to turn many away What John Ayash would most like to do is to go to the United States to study under one of the well-known eye, ear, nose, and throat specialists. Chances for that at the moment, unfortunately, seem remote. I think he has the makings of a brilliant specialist. I know that he's a good guy All of us here will mourn long and loudly when his contract expires.

Another man has come into our clinic. He thanks the doctor for saving his daughter's life. We do not remember the case. The man says he thought that the doctor was cutting her throat from the inside. Then we remember the throat abcess which the doctor opened while the girl was biting at the scissors and squealing. That is how it goes: the doctor risks his reputation on such a case, where the danger of infection is great. If the infection had not healed nicely, the man would have been yelling bloody murder.

Occasionally, we run into rare diseases. There is a child with Myothenis Gravis, which is a weakness of the muscles. The child can stand only with great difficulty and, trying to stand, looks like an acrobat or contortionist limbering up. It is tragic that the war has taken away the means of cure.

A man has acromegaly, "with enlarged hands and slightly enlarged jaw, bitemporal hemianopsia", which latter is a blindness of part of the field of vision. There is practically nothing that can be done for such a case.

A middle-aged lady comes limping in very painfully. She has broken off a scissors' point in her heel. The point is embedded deep, near the bone, and the only thing to do is to probe for it. This is a hospital case. We tell her and her husband that we must take her to the hospital. She refuses to go, and says she wants medicine to draw the point out.

She says she would rather die at home than in a hospital. And so, it appears, do almost all of the natives regard hospitals. Nor is it altogether unreasonable. They know little about medicine and surgery; they see only the results. The patients the natives have seen go to a hospital were, for the most part, very serious cases, and many of them have died. So the hospital is regarded merely as a stop on the path to the cemetery.

Finally, the babel of Arabic and English is over. There was the job of getting the Arabic names translated into English, and then the doctor had to talk with the patients in Arabic, and give his diagnosis in English. The doctor is a harried man in the clinics, trying to draw information for diagnosis from simple Bedouins. He lights up a cigarette as we clear the clinic and pack the medicines.

Invariably, just as we are packed, a few straggling patients arrive. They went us to unpack everything to treat them. In most instances we must refuse: if we spend an hour unpacking and repacking for one or two patients, we may be depriving fifteen patients in the next village of treatment. Sometimes we are able to treat without completely unpacking. Generally, however, the answer is "buchra" which means tomorrow, or, roughly, in the future. With us, it usually means next week.

It is disappointing to have to refuse. Medicine is for the ill, and to refuse to treat may seem brutal, almost criminal. But these people have known in advance that we would arrive at a certain hour of the day, and to deprive ten or fifteen patients in the next village of treatment is not sensible or fair.

We go to the village Muchtar's for lunch. The Muchtar is chief of the village and always one of its wealthiest men. It is his moral obligation to feed any visitors in the village, and it is a virtual necessity because there are no restaurants or public eating houses. Usually, the Muchtars are glad to see us and they feed us well indeed.

A sheep is killed for us. We are brought the choice parts, including the head, which signifies that we are honored guests and are not being given left-overs. One of the honored guests is offered the eyes, regarded as a great delicacy. Almost invariably, the lamb is served on top of a large platter of wheat. There are side dishes of savorily-cooked vegetables. In season, fruits are served. The drink is water, or sometimes leban. the artificially soured milk of sheep.

We relax as long as we dare after lunch, with the heat of the day upon us, and then push on to the next village. In thirty or forty minutes we are setting up another clinic.

And so it goes. At the end of a day, our nerves are frayed and we may sound like a carful of enemies. It is good work and exasperating. We are alternately happy with the clinics and cursing them, and cursing the cars, when we have trouble, and, indeed, everything.

At the end of a week, with the summing up, we find this list of treated patients

A picture of the country and the people is hard to give now, after having lived here for several months. When one comes into the country for the first time, the differences are quite striking, but after living among the differences for a few months one becomes accustomed to the unaccustomed.

A village looks something like an American Indian village of tents. Almost all of the houses are cone-shaped adobe. They're built of adobe because there is practically no wood for frameworks.

In general, the robes of the Bedouins are heavier and of a darker color than those of the villagers. The dress of the villagers when they are not venturing far from their homes is very much like the old-fashioned nightgown. The women seem to wear darker clothes than the men; black is the predominant color among them.

The staples of diet for both Bedouins and villagers are sheep and wheat. Usually, there are vegetables with the meals. The villagers have better access to vegetables and fruit, a more varied diet than the Bedouins; and, consequently, stomach disorders are far more common among the Bedouins.

Travel is mostly by beasts of burden, except for the tribal cheik who almost invariably owns an American made car. Camel is the usual beast of burden for the Bedouin. Horses and donkeys are the usual means of travel for the villagers.

Bedouins are born with a whole set of friends, persons of their own tribe or friendly tribes, and with a whole set of enemies. The enemies are those who contest for the better grazing and watering places. Bedouins carry on feuds, some of which are traditional.

The life of both the Bedouins and villagers is hard. This is an arid, infertile country which cannot support great numbers of peoples. And so, in a sense, we are heightening the problems by cutting down the death rate, we cause a strain of the population limit, which is a very real thing in the desert. Of course, that is not supposed to be our problem, but it is hard to ignore it. Perhaps birth control is the answer.

Jeffreys is an AFS pioneer in the Middle East He is pre-First Unit. He came over in 1941, and was a member of the small AFS group which accompanied the allied forces North into Syria. This year, he has worked with the Free French in the Western Desert. He was in the one convoy that got through to Hacheim during the siege.

IN MAY 27th I WAS ON MY WAY to Bir Hacheim and I was feeling very gay. I was singing as my ambulance moved over the sand. This was to be my last journey into the Desert. I was on my way to Bir Mu Maafes and Bir Hacheim to turn over my ambulance, say goodbye to my friends, and then return to Egypt to embark for home. I kept singing to myself all through the early morning.

Soon, the road was thick with lorries heading in the opposite direction. But I didn't attach any special significance to them until I reached El Adem and found hundreds of lorries and tanks, and hundreds of officers and soldiers. It was impossible to miss that feeling in the atmosphere, impossible not to realize that something big was happening. I was two hours passing the concentration of vehicles and getting up over the escarpment onto the track leading south-west to Maafes.

Here the Desert was quiet. My thoughts about El Adem were lost in the attention I had to pay to the compass and holes in the sand. After a while, I saw a beautiful formation of lorries heading towards me, on my right, going NNE. I stopped and waited for them to come close enough for me to take a snapshot. There were over a hundred lorries and they looked like ships at sea in convoy. When I saw they were coming directly in my path, I turned South and got out of their way. Twenty minutes later, I drove over the rim of the wadi where our Maafes camp was located, I had a real jolt.

All that remained of our camp was a mess of petrol tins and empty holes, one French lorry, one French driver, and one tent. It was my tent that was still standing. In it were the bodies of two English boys. They hadn't been dead long. Crudely set up in the midst of tin cans, broken stretchers, and bloody rags were tables which had been used for operations. My tent had been used as an operating tent. I'd been wondering why everyone had left camp in such a hurry and now I knew why and my pulse was throbbing and chills rippled along my back. You only have this sort of evacuation in the face of an oncoming enemy.

I hurried across the hundred yards to the Frenchman standing beside his lorry. Yes, he said, they'd had to pull out fast. Everyone had left. As he told me this, he showed absolutely no anxiety to get away. He was waiting for his friend to come back from the NAAFI with the keys for the lorry. Yes, he said, there had already been shelling here. And there had been German tanks. That he had hid in a hole until they passed.

I started walking fast towards my tent. I would bury the two Englishmen before leaving. I hadn't gone halfway when I heard enemy planes, flying low, and I jumped into a ditch. There were eight of them, Junkers 88s, and they came over only a hundred feet in the air. They passed out of sight and I went to my tent and started digging. Then I heard a shell coming. It landed some hundred yards away. I jumped into a ditch again.

Then there was a second shell, and a third and a fourth. I thought: where are they coming from, who's firing them, and why? There was just the one Frenchman and myself, and surely they weren't wasting shells on us.

Suddenly, I was startled to hear a curt voice saying,

"On your feet and present yourself".

Oh, oh, I thought, now I'm in for it. Why the hell hadn't I got out of here while the going was good? I scurried out of the ditch and came face to face with a Tommy gun. An English major was pointing the gun at me; he was on a 15-cwt. truck loaded down with Indians and a Bofors crew of Englishmen. he began asking questions, and I answered hurriedly and in my best English accent. I told him who I was and what I happened to be doing here and yes, that was my truck there. The major sold, "You know where we are?" "Yes, sir !" "Can you get us out of here?" "Yes, sir!"

"Right" said the major, "then put some of these men in your ambulance and let's get going. The Germans marched through here two hours ago. Their mop-up squads are right behind."

I explained that my ambulance was already over-loaded with material I'd purchased in Alex and that the two main rear springs were broken. Well, he said, his truck was over-loaded and if I couldn't take some of his men, I'd have to empty my ambulance to make room. I decided to chance it, and eight of the Englishmen climbed in. We drove over to the Frenchman, explained the situation to him; but he refused to leave. he was convinced that his friend would return shortly with the lorry key. And so we left him. (I have since seen his grave.)

The petrol in both my ambulance and the major's 15-cwt. was low. We set a compass course South-east, towards Gubi, where, the Frenchman had told us, everyone had gone. We'd driven ten minutes when we saw smoke from a burning wreck and we headed for it in the hopes of finding petrol. But the Jerries had been too thorough in their destruction. Two miles farther on, we sighted an enemy column moving North. We shifted our course to NNW in an attempt to beat them to the coast and then turn East. Our shortage of petrol was becoming serious. We inspected every desert camp we came upon. In one, I found a set of false teeth a man had left behind in his hasty departure. We found water, too. But no petrol.

We stopped when the major shouted that he'd spotted another column in front of us, and we looked through the binoculars. English trucks? Yes, they were. We immediately headed toward them. We were only a mile away when bombs began dropping around them. And then planes dove and machine-gunned them. The planes were English; and so, apparently, we had made a mistake in the identity of the column. We veered to NNE again.

After driving a few minutes we saw a big supply depot. It was deserted. We had a look around, found 1500 gallons of petrol, and filled our tanks and took on board as much as we could carry. I suggested destroying the dump. The Indians started spilling the petrol but we saw this would take too long. We drove our cars well away, made a lead to the dump, and lit it. A terrific explosion closely followed the flames, and smoke shot up. There was another explosion as we drove off.

We drove five hours, zig-zagging and keeping a sharp lookout. I spotted a man waving to us. As we approached we could see that he was a German and unarmed. Although he spoke no English, he made it clear that he wanted water and to surrender. We gave him water but we had no room for him, and we tried to explain that to him. We left him staring at us. Soon we spotted three trucks and some men. We watched them for a few minutes and then the major handed us another Tommy gun he had and said we'd chance it and if they turned out to be the enemy we'd let go at them. It was a pretty thrilling prospect, and we kept our eyes and aim on them as we broke wide and came in towards them at different angles. We soon saw that they had English equipment. But the major took no chances: he began shouting at them to say who they were. There was no answer. They stood silent, their rifles and Lewis gun pointed at use Slowly we came closer; when we were 50 yards sway, the major signalled to me to stop, he climbed down off his truck and walked towards them. He repeated his questions. Again, there was no answer. They just stood there, silent and ready. Finally, a sergeant said, "Our orders were not to speak to any one, sir". It developed that these men were members of an Armoured Division, separated from their unit. One of them pointed to two Germans lying beside a German car. The Germans had just driven up, thinking they were coming to some of their own, and these men had let them have it.

I broke open some beer and food that was in the back of my ambulance and we all ate. We decided to move on together for the extra protection a larger group would provide. Like ourselves, these men had no idea where the Germans were, but from what we'd seen of the columns we felt sure Jerry was in his usual pincers movement. Of course we didn't know if we were in or out of the pincers. We finally agreed on a course of N slightly E.

We travelled for three yours before we spotted another convoy in the distance. They were stopped, but they were facing West. There were over a hundred trucks in the convoy. We watched them for a half-hour before we decided that one of our trucks should approach them. We were tense and excited as one of the Armoured Div. trucks went towards them. We saw our truck pull up near one of theirs, and our driver got out and speak to one of their men. Then he drove back to us. They were English, he said; and we started towards them. When we were about 400 yards away English planes swooped down, firing machine guns as they dove. We hopped out of our cars and raced for a small patch of brush. One plane circled over us and dove on the major's truck. He calmly lifted his Tommy gun and let go a burst at the plane. It went up, circled, headed down again. This time, it dove at us without firing any shots, signalled recognition, and headed off. When we went to the convoy we found the captain in charge had been hit on the foot. He was the only casualty.

The officers stood around expressing their views as to our next move. The captain said that he preferred to wait for the return of a scouting party he'd sent out and that he knew the enemy was to the North. I chirped up, saying I thought we should go East. The captain took a poor view of that: he thought the enemy might be to the East, and he wasn't going to move until he was certain. The sound of cannon fire broke up the debate. Through binoculars, we soon located German artillery about a mile to the North of us, firing down on El Adem. We were near the escarpment.. We could see them putting the shells into the guns and could hear the report and see the burst of the shell as it landed on El Adem.

I turned to the major and said that I was moving East. I'd take my chances in that direction rather than wait here for the Germans to swing their guns on us. The major agreed. He had no sooner got his truck than a range-finding shell struck the ground only twenty yards away. Then the captain decided that perhaps I'd had an idea. He ordered the convoy to follow us, and we headed East along the escarpment.

During all of our moves we'd constantly been wondering how long it would be before my rear springs would snap. They were sagging badly under the heavy load. It was agonizing to hit a bump or a hole and feel the mudguards digging into the tires. Of course, now that we had the big convoy with us we didn't have to worry about walking if my car gave out, but I hated the idea of abandoning it. We kept on, mile after mile, and the springs did not snap. There was still more luck for us: just before dusk we sighted an armoured car company. They gave us hot tea and escorted us to Mob. Centre, where hundreds of stray vehicles were assembled.

We formed a square, stationed guards around our trucks, and picked places to sleep for the night. We were very glad to lie down and to close our tired, bloodshot eyes.

On the following day, we moved some 30 miles to safety and broke up our convoy to rejoin our respective units. I found out the whereabouts of the Free French. I had no compass; so the major set my course. Then we exchanged names and addresses and went our ways. Three hours later I located the French Bureau, but they hadn't yet received any news about our ambulances. With borrowed compass, I searched for two days before I found the small AFS group I had left in charge of Tom Greenough. Tom told me that the flap started unexpectedly. A doctor arrived at Maafes with wounded. While they were working in my tent they were shelled. Then German tanks appeared on the horizon. Just as the tanks came over the lip of the second wadi, some 500 yards away, they were loading wounded into the ambulance.

I investigated the rumor that an armed column was to be sent to Bir Hacheim, found it was more than a rumor, and then convinced AFS HQ that we should send an ambulance in the convoy. There was a strong possibility of an attack and casualties. By now, Bir Hacheim had been out off from communication. On this very day, the French were beating off a large tank attack, destroying 37 tanks and forcing the rest to retire.

At 7 in the evening, some orderlies and myself loaded on medical supplies and joined the convoy. We drove all through the night. There were tanks on our left and right and armoured cars in the front end rear to protect the trucks with their heavy load of mines, ammunition, food, cigarettes, and medical supplies. The convoy moved through the night at the rate of ten to fifteen miles in the hour. By 6 in the morning, we were at the opening in the Hacheim minefields. All around the minefields was the wreckage from yesterday's battle, ---wrecked and burning tanks and armoured cars.

Once inside Hacheim, I went straight to the GSD. There were Alan, Smitty, Semple, Tichenor, Kulak, Stratton, and MacElwain. They were chipper and still excited about yesterday's battle. Alan (Stuyvesant ---OC of the AFS unit with the French) agreed that I should return with the convoy to bring back the rest of our ambulances and more AFS drivers. We still had Legionaires driving some of the AFS cars. I caught some sleep during the day and was ready to leave at 8.30 that evening. Smitty came with me. The convoy lined up and began to move toward the minefield opening when, suddenly, ack ack fire broke out. Then nine bombs fell on the camp. The planes had aimed at set objectives and, luckily for us, didn't see the convoy until they were in their dives.

As in the previous night, we moved silently and slowly and without mishap. Later we learned that we had passed an Italian convoy, less than a mile to our left.

On the following day we got everything reedy to start back to Hacheim. But it was too late. There'd been another tank attack and Hacheim was completely out off.

The days that followed for the AFS men who were out off have been well described by Semple (Vol. 1 No. 1 ME= BULLETIN) Six times we tried to get through to them and six times we were turned back. All we knew of what was happening was the terrific and constant cannon fire. Then, on June 10th (I think it was), we were ordered to be prepared to move at 5 the next morning.

We were like phantoms driving into the early morning mist. By nine o'clock we were 5 miles SE from Bir Hacheim. Then we were told that Hacheim had been evacuated and that we must be prepared to help the wounded and others who had managed to get out. It wasn't long before we saw the wide formation of trucks, Bren gun carriers, gun pullers, and every type of vehicle coming across the desert. For hours after that we were busy unloading wounded from trucks, loading them into our ambulances, feeding them, bandaging them, listening to their tales of the horror of the evacuation.

We had to drive our loads of casualties for 36 hours before we could find a hospital that wasn't filled Then we came to the Spears Hospital, and they were able to take our patients and give them the care and attention they neededl

This has come from the Western Desert recently. It tells with pleasing candor what it's like to go up where the barbed wire begins.

IN EARLY AUGUST, WAR WAS STILL AS VAGUE to me as when I'd left home. I had completed several months of training, but it had been in a quiet sector. Then, after being transferred to the Western Desert, my subsection received a movement order to proceed to a Main Dressing Station --- only a few miles behind the front lines.

But the MDS didn't offer what we'd expected: there was nothing to disturb the tranquility except the distant rumbling of artillery and the occasional dronings of planes. Our work was entirely localized. We drove incoming patients from the reception tent to the tent wards and evacuation center, from which they were taken on down to Base by motor ambulance convoys.

After a few days of this, we were ordered some miles forward to an ADS. There still wasn't much in. the way of warlike things on the trip West: all we saw were vehicles parked here and there on the desert, and streams of military vehicles on the track. But, as we approached the lines, we came to minefields and to guns and to lorries and men dug into sheltered positions. A Red Cross flag waving atop a large tent showed us the location of the ADS. All around, gun batteries were in evidence, and their noise shook the ground. War came closer in the air, too. We saw many a dog fight and bombing raid while stationed here. We were here four days, evacuating patients back to the MDS. Then came news that we were to go to the RAPs.

RAPs are about as far forward as any one in the medical department can go. And they are posts for individuals, not subsections, which meant that travelling those last miles West I was entirely on my own. I went over ridges studded with gun batteries and down wadis filled with camouflaged positions what struck my notice was that everything along here was dug in very deep, and there were burned skeletons of German and Eyetye tanks lorries, and guns. I was almost on top of my destination before I saw it: a truck in an abandoned artillery emplacement.

I spent the afternoon becoming acquainted with the staff (an MO, two orderlies, and two stretcher bearers --- all from a Maori battalion and a wonderful group of men). and trying to become acclimated to the peculiar conditions under which I'd live and work. The most peculiar of the conditions was the flies. There were thousands of them. They followed one everywhere, and the only way to escape from them was to put a net over the front of the ambulance; close the doors, and use a fly sprayer. The flies actually determined our meal hours. Breakfasts brought up by a Bren gun carrier, was timed to arrive at 6 AM --- before the flies were up; and dinner: brought by the same conveyance, was scheduled for 8 PM --- after the flies disappeared. And because of them there was no lunch.

About 5 o'clock of my first afternoon at the RAP, I had a rude awakening to the potentialities of my surroundings. I'd already been told about our position: we were several hundred yards behind the front itself, with artillery emplacements to our rear and anti-tank guns in front of us. About 5, the battery immediately in. back of us began firing. For the first time I heard at close range the boom of guns, the singing of shells over my head, and their distant explosions as they landed somewhere inside the enemy lines. I was startled, but the thought came to me that they were our own guns and, therefore, I was in no danger. At 5.30, however, when the enemy batteries began their evening's work, I had to get used to an entirely new sensation: . . . that of being fired upon. The shelling this first evening didn't land closer than two hundred yards, and our only danger was from flying shrapnel. About 8 o'clock, the artillery duel died out. I was stiff from two hours in a slit trench, but I welcomed the arrival of the Bren gun carrier and I ate a hearty dinner.

It was dark soon after dinner and I got my bed ready. I lay at the foot of the emplacement in front of my ambulance. Our position generally was on a slight rise above the lines, so that I had a fine view of the night's performance This was warfare in technicolor: tracer bullets from machine guns sailed around, and flares brilliantly lighting up the stretches of barbed wire in no man's land. I don't know how long the performance went on. I was tired and I soon fell asleep and slept soundly through the night.

Next morning, I as awake with the arrival of the Bren gun carrier and breakfast About 7 o'clock, the artillery began dueling again, and I had to spend the next hour and a half in a slit trench. Soon after the MO held the Sick Parade at 9, I made my first trip to the ADS with a load of minor casualties brought in from the trenches. During the next four days I made that trip several times daily.

On the evening of the fifth day, as I was sitting in my ambulance awaiting the arrival of the first Jerry shell to start me for my slit trench, I suddenly heard a tremendous explosion. A hundred feet in the air, a little to the left of our position, there hung a heavy pall of black smoke. I didn't know what the smoke meant and I didn't wait to ask: I dashed for the slit trench. It was in the direction of the explosion. When I was about ten yards from the trench. I heard the now familiar rustling of an enemy shell coming in this direction, only much louder than usual, as if it were going to land right on the RAP. My heart beat fast; I was saying a prayer as I dove for the trench. Just as I landed in it, the shell landed with an explosion that threw dirt all over me.

From the concussion, I wasn't able to move immediately. I lay there gripping the earth with all that was in me when again I heard that rustling with its gradual increase in volume, and then I felt the second shock as the shell exploded. Soon there was a third And a fourth. In all, seven shells landed close by. I couldn't move for several minutes, and when I finally did stagger up and out to take stock of the surroundings, the enemy gunners began shelling about 300 yards to the right of our position.

Frightened out of my wits, I actually didn't realize that I'd scraped off the top of a knee in my dive to safety until the stinging shook of iodine liberally applied by an orderly, brought me to my senses Then the MO told me why I had been the only one here in any way affected by the con-centrated shelling of our post It seemed that the first shell was a ranging shell and was deliberately exploded high in the air in order that the enemy gunners could range it. My mistake had been in running to my trench, in the direct line of fire, instead of running away as the others had done.

I slipped into my sleeping bag and finally went to sleep. When I woke up it was still night. The ridge in back of us was lighted up with flashes of guns. The noise of the firing was deafening. We'd had some shelling in the night before, but never on this scale. There was only one move to make and I made it: I crawled into my slit trench. An orderly who realized that I'd been shaken earlier came over to reassure me. He told me that it was just that we were putting up a barrage for an hour and a half, and not to worry. I went sleepless through the rest of the night. I listened to our barrage and, when that was over, to the enemy's answering mortar fire on our trenches. In the morning, I had to spend another hour and a half in my slit trench while Jerry concentrated a few more shells in our area. This time, as I started to clamber out of my hole, I discovered that I'd wrenched the knee I'd hurt the night before. I was really eligible for evacuation now. The MO took another look at me and sent me back to the ADS with the comment that I wouldn't be able to move fast enough to work in his RAP. I'd lost much of the enthusiasm I'd had on arriving a few days before and I looked with heartfelt eagerness to a couple of days of convalescence at the ADS.

I was four days recuperating. Then my subsection was relieved. We headed for Alexandria with a 48-hour leave. We had showers, clean clothes, sheets, a blessed absence of flies, and lots of conversation about our experiences in the fortnight at the front. We returned to Base camp refreshed and with the confidence of veterans who have lived through the heavy stuff.

The Western Desert is not all RAPs. It is not all Stuka raids and shellings and short rations. It is not all flies and furnace heat and fatigue. In fact, in many ways, the Western Desert is not at all bad; and it's high time that AFS writers got around to the brighter aspects, to the silver-lining department.

We present the following in the hope that it is only the beginning:--

I GOT A LETTER THE OTHER DAY from a friend in the States and for hours after I read it it tormented me. Finally, I decided I'd have no mental ease until I had straightened out a few of the sender's obviously warped ideas. It occurred to me that there were probably many others at home like him, who should be similarly enlightened. So I concocted the idea of spreading the good word to all interested via the NEWS BULLETIN, providing that our editor were of the opinion that its raison d'etre is justified.

Silas (my unfortunate friend's name) wrote that he was acutely aware of the wretched conditions under which we must live and work daily in this Desert. He enumerated many of the conditions, and some were unknown to me, how he admires my ability to produce the stamina necessary to cope with the Herculean problems that are common occurrences here.

I can picture the misty, far-away look in good old Si's eye as he sat sipping one of those incomparable Brandy Alexanders for which Harry, at Boston's Copley-Plaza Merry-Go-Round is famous, thinking of poor Ham, pitying poor Ham.

Don't misunderstand me, dear readers, I appreciate Si's concern for my welfare, his dwelling over my sad plight. But I know, for instance, that I am right at this moment a darned sight cooler than Si has been most days this summer in Boston.

I'm in the Western Desert and it's noon time. It's noontime, but the usual breeze is blowing through my ambulance. It keeps the ambulance free of flies, too. The atmosphere is dry and, at night, cool enough that we have to use two blankets.

I'm not only cool and confortable, I'm clean. I had a good sponge bath at dawn; and my clothes, dry-cleaned in petrol, are spotless.

Don't bother to send me Camels, Si. I have on hand a quantity of South African and English cigarettes. They are packed wonderfully firm, are made almost entirely from Virginia tobacco, and I've come to prefer them to our native blends.

This evening, old man, I'll be drinking just as good Scotch as you can buy . . . . and for half what you're paying in the States. Moreover, my Scotch will be mixed with fine-quality water. (No, you don't need to send me a bottle of water-purifying pills). Of course, if I chose, I could drink beer, good American tinned beer which we carry in our canteens.

Don't send me vitamin pills, either. Our food, God knows, is plain, but it's wholesome. It consists mainly of bully beef, tea, and biscuits, and from time to time we do complain of the lack of originality and imagination shown by our cooks and by the QM purchasing commission. Still we are on occasion pleasantly surprised to find fresh fruits and vegetables from the Egyptian Delta in our mess tins, and, on some very happy occasions, canned potatoes, meat, and fish from New Zealand or Australia.

Though life on the Desert does involve a complete blackout as far as anything feminine is concerned, we sometimes have leave in Alexandria or Cairo. Last week, I had a couple of days in Alex. I played tennis and golf, went swimming at one of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen, went sailing, saw two recent American movies, ate marvelous six-course lunches and eight-course dinners, drank Canadian whiskey, and lived at very reasonable rates in the best hotel in town. All of these activities were in the company of one local Heddy Lamar or another.

I'm feeling fine. I don't believe I ever was in such good shape. I've been feeling fine all along, except for one brief encounter with dysentery, which, spread by flies, is a common ailment.

Now perhaps you're thinking at this point that I've been sitting behind the lines at a Base job, but that is not the case. I believe that what I've done is typical of the Service. I'm convinced that I've seen and done as much as the average AFS man, and my length of time here is about average.

Practically everyone here is satisfied that his job is both necessary and interesting. If you hurry to New York, Si, you may find them still recruiting.

A veteran NCO of the First Unit in parting offers us this sound advice:--

THE BOY LEANED ON THE FENDER of his ambulance and thought long, deep thoughts. He had just come back from the front, where, like most members of the AFS, he had run into a bit of shelling and a Stuka raid or two, had seen some pretty nasty things. Being young, his recent experiences were impressed rather deeply on his mind. Being young, he wanted his family and all his friends to know the hell he'd been through. Perhaps he really wanted them to think him a hero. Whatever the case, he recalled to mind a news article he had read, --- how a certain American hero famed for his message --- "sighted sub, sank same" --- had been feted and ballyhooed all over the United States. Perhaps he dreamed of a tickertape snowfall in the canyons of New York.

His thoughts matured until, back in Alex, they led him to the cable office. Four days later, his family read the message --- "sapper shot, saved same". In their excitement and pride they showed it to a newspaper friend. The story broke in all the big chains the following day, and, on the day after, it was printed by all the independents.

A month later he was flying home at government expense. In New York, under the tickertape snowfall, he was greeted as the ambulance driving hero of the Western Desert.

Pure fantasy, eh? Quite so.

But if letters and cables back home could make men heroes the AFS would be lined deep with rip snortin' gen - u - ine fire eaters. Some of the things we say about ourselves are as fantastic as the story of the boy who became a hero. Frankly, if you want to impress friends with your magnificent courage, your unexampled coolness under fire, and your heroic deeds, that is absolutely no concern of mine. Indeed, even now I harbor dreams of sitting in some Frisoo dive with a frowsy B-girl, recounting the wildest personal tales to her over a good Scotch. But, I should prefer to keep those tales for such occasions only.

Unfortunately, letters from the front are often good newspaper material, and frequently well-intentioned friends pass them on to the local papers. If those letters are accurate accounts of our experiences, no matter how wild, there can be no better publicity for our organization, which has already a well-earned reputation. But how many of us can set down on paper a factual account of anything? When it comes to War, we seem to take no risk of minimizing our hair-raising experiences: we lay it on thick, like a man buttering bread with real butter after three months of margerine. What comes from our pens would often make excellent material for the most imaginative pulp magazine.

Now the point is this. If such accounts reach the newspapers, and plenty of them do, what will be the reaction on the public? I'm afraid that many persons will have a strong tendency to laugh heartily up their sleeves and remark, what a bunch of fakes those AFS boys must be. And they would be well within their rights.

An organization which makes elaborate boasts about itself in print is somewhat like the man who makes a fool and a bore of himself by explaining what a great man he is to all his acquaintances. I'll bet you a dollar to a nickel you have never read personal accounts from the AVG group concerning their heroism. An organization in war stands on its record, not on its boasts. (And we have the record to stand on.)

Have we done so little that we have to talk big to sound good?

It isn't that I think we should write home nothing but cute descriptions of Mersa Matruh and the phosphorescent blue sea. Not et all. I merely maintain that we have no right to endanger the already established reputation of the AFS by writing personal heroic fiction in our letters. If a man must be a hero in the eyes of his friends, for heaven's sake let him add a postcript and tell the friends to keep his letter out of print.

Better still, --- don't write it.

Another member of the First Unit, an officers In parting gives us this:--

OF 102, THERE ARE NOW SIXTY-ODD of us left to say goodbye, an odd dozen left to say goodbye to. There will be all sorts of farewells to all sorts of arms, and this is no attempt to consolidate them. Rather it's an attempt to say how we feel about going.

We envy you the reputation of the Field Services it has sprung up in spite of us. We enjoyed the first fine flush of enthusiasm for allied assistance, and also took the brunt of the reaction to it. We have numbered in our ranks thieves, drunkards, cowards, riff raff, playboys, intellectual derelicts, and refugees from a change of life. We are going home and tell people of our heroism, our front line experiences, of steady nerves and sudden death. And there will be no one to remind us of the fleas, the flies and the filth. Nor will any one of us admit we were ever bored.

We leave you the Middle East not much changed for our having been here.

We leave you a war yet to be finished.

We say goodbye with mixed feelings. Go with God and keep the faith.

The besetting sin of educated people is that they will do everything for an idea but little or nothing for a thing. . . I thought I should do greet deeds in the Middle East and be indispensible oversea; if my work was not fraught with danger, I thought it paltry and unworthy. Now I look at matters very differently. I prize the simplest things and hold them dear . . . In a regular, methodical, permanent calling all we need is intelligence, and it is all we use, so that we grow blind to the extraordinary things we have to deal with even on ordinary days; and when we do see then we find a hundred excuses for avoiding them. A merely intelligent man may be useful to himself, but little use to the community.

--- Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

To:	Lonely Hearts Ed.
	AFS NYC HQ

Darling,

I'm coming home. For reasons now thought good, I'm coming home.

But the self-conscious mood is on me and I'm afraid to come home. I'm afraid you'll make a liar out of me. I'm afraid that when I find you your eyes will be starry and your voice twittery. I'm afraid that the atmosphere will be charged as with movements of the earth and portents in the skies.

I am also afraid that I may find in you a great lady whose heart throbs with the heavy harmonies of noble sacrifice, or else that I may find a buddy in skirts, a pal with long hair.

Look, darling, all I want are some trifling personal remarks, some laughter, and your shape. Let us not underestimate the last. I have seen many female wogs, donkeys, and camels, but I have wished, before sleeping, for the shapes of none of these. Let us not underestimate the second--- first lesson in the worship of God, who is deserving of long-neglected worship. And let us have fitting talk, trifling and personal. We shall not otherwise get on, you and I, for we must find again a common ground and here only is where we can begin. You will not want to hear my history nor I yours, though we may indeed be eager to tell them. They may come later when we are one and can go back over our paths, if we wish, together.

Further, I am afraid that I shall be forgetful of friends who made no noise themselves, being too busy with their work; of men who watched the running of their own blood and jested to break the pity of those near them; of men of simple hearts and minds who, after two years in the desert, wished, without complaint and without hope, for two days in a city. I am afraid to question whether you will have forgotten the tears of unadorned, untold and untellable misery that run and will continue to run in rivers in other lands not many miles away. And I am afraid that you and I both may forget to look for what we yet may do in remembering the little we have tried.

Well, darling, I shall not speak my fears, and I shall hope you will not see them or, seeing them, speak of them. They are written because the self-conscious mood is on me and because there are many female wogs, donkeys, and camels about but not you nor any female shape like you.

Joe.

The SS EL NIL numbered in its cargo more precious than gold the 62 AFS men of the December 30th Unit and 80 Canadian Nursing Sisters. To provide some measure of daytime entertainment for the Sisters, certain members of the AFS published a bi-weekly newspaper, THE SIREN. Joseph (Buzz) Frank was one of the editors. Among other items, he used to contribute poems to the paper. Such as:--

Now, we trust, you are fully prepared for:

DRIVING AN AMBULANCE doesn't always consist of driving an ambulance. Forgetting maintenance (a nasty but persistent habit), there are such aspects involved in being a true member of the AFS as performing the social amenities under all conditions, practicing proper wartime etiquette, being a jolly chap, etc. etc. These range from using the correct inflection in saying, "good show" to . . . and therein lies my story . . . and my problem.

During the recent Axis boomboomerang, I was stationed with a veteran unit on the Southern Sector. (The main difference between the Northern and the Southern Sectors is, I think, a tendency in the former to say, ". . . you all" rather than the terser northern phrase.) The Medical Officer was an Irishman, a dashing mixture of Celtic twilight and Egyptian noon. He had what is laughingly referred to as a "sense" of adventure, plus a charming flair for being a Jekyll in a Hyde milieu. And I? Suffice it to say that the red badge of the AFS clung to my shoulder, its traditions barnacled my brain.

The Germans' original gambit happened to take place (not to mention win and show) in our specific neighborhoods and area of very fluid lines and stomache. It was accompanied by the usual Nazi sound and fury of bombs, shells, flares, secret weapons, and whatnots---and by one damned tootin' who obnoxiously persisted in taking pot and rifle shots at the ambulance, thinking no doubt it was a staff car (Swiss)..This continued for several extremely elongated hours, during which time an assortment of British trucks then guns, then more guns, then still more guns, then tanks rumbled past us. And meanwhile the MO; "I don't like to retreat at night". Far was it from me, AFSer that I was, to leave a party early. Finally came the dawn; we retreated, the ambulance being the last car to leave. ( German gunfire, in the early hours, is not accurate.)

As it grew lighter, the MO promptly suggested we stop for breakfast, Far was it from, ASFer that I still was, to refuse an invitation. So breakfast we did --- in a spot sinisterly devoid of vehicles. Never did a watched pot take so long to boil. So much for the social amenities and obvious etiquette phases. And now we are ready to consider a problem in military de rigueur that would, among other things, leave Emily at the Post. The problem: how to respond to a repeat invitation. Are you ready?

The next few days were, for us, comparatively quiet --until we joined a Column. The function of a Column is, in a highly un-Doric way, to harass the enemy and any stray American ambulance drivers. After a few days of being thus annoyingly successful, the Mo decided that our lives were nonetheless becoming too rutted. He suggested a trip in his Jeep. I accepted. (Correct, eh?) We set out from a point, not far from the enemy, and, during the course of the afternoon, went from not far to near to very near to Evers to Chance. The first stop was a hill overlooking the enemy flank --- an ugly spectacle. An investigation party arrived just in time not to find us. "What next?" smirked the MO. "Oh, I don't care", was my flippant moan in reply.

And so, heading South and West, we at length came to the Egyptian equivalent of whet happened to America after the fall of 1929. Here we disembarked and proceeded to examine the flora (strange escargo), and through a glass (darkly) to investigate a bite of fauna to our West, which was marked with a swastica. At this point, a subversive deus ex machinna hove into view in the form of a herd of rampant gazelles. Now, I have nothing against gazelles; in fact, I rather like them. They have lovely eyes. But these specific gazelles, whom I dislike intensely, happened to be running in a westerly direction. And, to coin a phrase, when a gazelle runs, it runs. The MO bounded back into the Jeep, closely followed by a plaintive me; and off we set in frenzied pursuit. After about five miles (covered in less than ten minutes), we hadn't caught the gazelles, but we were gaining on them. And gaining on a German armored car. The MO's sporting blood, unlike mine, was way up: "Ah, the thrill of the chase", he murmurred, as we hurtled over rocks and ridges, humps and very hollows. Just when we were roaring into the fatal stretch, the gazelles swung East. So did we. So did the armored car.

"Captain", I said, in my most scrupulous Hahvahd accent, "don't look now, but there's some one behind you". Fortunately, he looked. As ye sow so shall ye reap; and we were about to be reaped. The worthy MO waved a friendly farewell to the limpid-eyed gazelles, then began to concentrate on speed --- as did the old armored car. We out-concentrated, for, after giving the fox's answer to "Yoicks, yoicks!", the MO really impaled the accelerator on the floor. Going over rough country at 60 mph, is no picnic, even a picnic with flies and spinach. For the first time in my formerly young life, I was, for one precarious moment, hanging on to a fast-moving car by only one eyebrow. A worried one. (The rest of the time, both eyebrows, as well as a couple of arms and legs, did the trick.)

Well, wrote he pantingly, we outraced our pursuers.

In a melodramatic finish, we roared over the crest of a hill, dodged the fire of a startled English tank, and finally sidled back to our starting point.

"Ah", said the MO exultantly, while I oozed myself out from amongst bits of Jeep, "Jolly good afternoon, what? We must do it again some time."

"Must we?" I said.

NIGHT ATTACK by Thomas DePew

SYRIAN SCRIBBLINGS by William John Miller

ADVENTURES IN THE MIDDLE EAST by Philip Dakin

HOSPITALIZATION OF AFS PERSONNEL by Christopher Morley, Jr.

 

AFS News Bulletin, No. 4

Index