From Africa

"PIM" Man Finds Tahiti in Western Desert

gELWYN HUGHES, of the “Pacific

Islands Monthly” and more recently of the RAAF, now attached to the Royal Air Force in the Middle

East, writes interestingly from Cairo :

TWO items in the September “PIM” stirred my fading memories of the Pacific.

There is an article about the Yanks being charged for coconut trees cut down in military operations in the Pacific.

When I was at an American mess in Italy recently, waiting for the weather to clear up for take-off, I glanced through some of the top-rank magazines that were scattered around. Came across the fol lowing lugubrious, somewhat stretched item in August issue of “Esquire’s” small sister, “Coronet”: “Family Tree: On a French-owned island in the Solomons Group, the US Army chopped down a number of palm trees to build an airfield. The French men promptly submitted a bill for dam ages for exactly twice the number of trees destroyed. Asked why, they pointed out that coconut palms are said to be either male or female, and added, ‘So for every palm tree cut down, Messieurs another dies of a broken heart!”’

TAHITI Contingent, page 9, also re minds me. Midway across North Africa, on the borders of his two Libyan colonies, Tripolitania and Cyre naica, Mussolini erected a huge baroque archway to mark the boundary. A colossal thing, visible for miles across the sandy wastes, it straddles the ribbon of road way running to the frontiers of Egypt They say Benito planned to link this road with a proposed highway across Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia, when Hitler eventually would allow him to expand the Roman Empire, if and when* The Eighth Army was all through this Libyan country, and, in the course of time, the British Tommies naturally came to call the monument “Marble Arch,” after their own in London, lust as the’v christened other spots “Knightsbridge” (where a disastrous tank battle was fought), “Oxford Circus” and half-a dozen other familiar names that figure on to-day’s maps.

You can enter either side of the arch’s pylons and climb up a series of iron rungs to the landing at the top of the arch where reclines a giant metal statue of a nude male; then you can claw up another flight to reach the very top of the edifice.

It became the practice of troops pass ing through that way to write, scratch or paint their names, etc., all over the interior walls. The place is absolutely covered with them—every name in a tele phone book!

While this pile stands, it will never be forgotten by all those who look over it that the native Tahitians, from their Free French islands on the other side of the world, played an active part in the African campaign, the first step along the road back to victory: for, hitting you smack in the eye as you pause for breath on the first landing, are the foot-high letters “TAHITI.” in tar on a white-grev concrete background, for all to see. Above is the name of the Tahitian soldier who Perpetuated the name of his homeland, but his name has been partly obliterated now bv others, with their rank and appellation.

I’ve come across all sorts of odd things in my travels which have brought back

memories of the Pacific, but this was one isolated spot I never thought would have a link, however tiny, with the South Seas.

YOU’LL already have seen accounts of the assassination in Cairo of Lord Moyne. British Resident Minister in the Middle East. I renumbered him from the days of his pygmy “discoveries” in TNG and the articles we ran establishing that Father Kirschbaum had originally contacted those tribes. I saw Moyne only a week before his death, with Churchill, when “Wfnnie” passed through Egypt on his way home from Moscow— you may have seen their photos together in the newspapers.

RECENTLY, I visited several parts of Greece and saw most of Athens, the Acropolis, the Parthenon, etc. The Greeks have been suffering badly from shortage of food, though the Allies are rushing in shipment after shipment to relieve the situation, just as the BBC announced.

The currency position, after the Nazis were driven out , was fantastic; the drachma, normally worth around a half penny, was inflated to astronomical fig ures in relation to the pound and dollar, since the Nazis had flooded the country with paper money. For instance, it cost something over 500,000,000 drachma to buy the meagre daily ration of bread! After a while, the Greeks just chucked away any bills they had under 1,000 drachma.

I saw a woman drop about 20 bills as she was counting out a huge pile to pay admission to a cinema, after the British authorities had things moving again. The notes blew into the street —no one in the queue bothering to retrieve them!

To me. the political situation in Greece looks very ticklish indeed —it’s still a toss-up whether King George II will

return there. They’re going to hold a plebiscite one of these days The KKE (Communists), and EAM (Leftist) Parties appear strong and militant; every second building in Athens seems to have a slogan painted by one of them, and the hammer and sickle insignia daubed in red was everywhere you turned However, I don’t think the bulk of the Greek people are behind these Left-wingers, and I hazard an opinion that the country will settle down eventually with a modified consti tution and Government, with old George back there. I guess that’s the way shrewd, democratic Papandreou (present Premier) will try to work it. Time will tell.