The Ottawa Journal from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • Page 12

12 Canadian Alpine AS, By JOHN STEINBECK. CopyriCbt. 1M3. New York Trlbun and Tha Ottawa Journal. ALGIERS (via London) Algiers Is a fantastic city now.

Always a place of strange mixtures, it has been brought to a nightmarish mess by the influx of British and American troops and their equipment Now jeeps and staff cars nudge their way among camels and horse-drawn cars. The sunshine is blindingly white on the white city, and when there is no breeze from the sea the heat is intense. The roads are lined with open wagons loaded high with fresh-picked grapes, with military convoys, with Arabs on horseback, with Canadians, Americans, Free French native troops in tall red hats. The uniforms are of all colors and all combinations of colors. Many of the French colonial troops have been Issued American uniforms since they had none of their own.

You never know when you approach American khaki that it will not clothe an Arab or a Senegalese. Language is a Mixture. The languages spoken in the streets are fascinating. Rarely is one whole conversation carried out in just one language. Our troops do not let language difficulties stand in their way.

Thus you may see a soldier speaking in broad Georgia accents conversing with a Foreign Legionnaire and a bumoosed Arab. He speaks cracker, with a sour French word thrown in' here and there, but his actual speech is with his hands. He acts out his conversation in detail. His friends listen and watch and they answer him in Arabic or French and pantomime their meaning, and oddly enough they all understand one The spoken language is merely the tonal background to a fine bit of acting. Out of it comes a manual pidgin that is becoming formalized.

The gesture for a drink is standard. Gestures of friendship and anger and love have also become Standard. The money is a definite problem. A franc is worth two cents. It is paper money and comes in five, ten, twenty, fifty, one hundred and one thousand franc notes.

The paper used is a kind of blotUng paper that wads up and tears easily. Money Wet and Gummy. Carried in the pocket, it becomes wet and gummy with perspiration, and when taken out of the pocket often falls to pieces in your hands. In some stores the wui not accept torn money, which limits the soldier, because most of the money he has is not only torn but wadded and used till the numbers on it are almost unrecognizable. A wad of money feels like a handful of warm wilted lettuce.

In addition there are many American bills, the so-called invasion money, which is distinguished from home money by having a gold seal printed on its face. These bills feel cool and permanent compared with the Algerian money. A whole new tourist traffic has set up here. A soldier may. buy Troops baskets, bad rugs, paintings on, cloth, just as he can at Coney Island.

Many G. L's with a magpie instinct will never be able to go home, such is their collection of loot They have bits of battle debris, knives, pistols, bits of shell fragments, helmets. In addition to their colored baskets and rugs. In each case' the collector has some one at home in mind when he makes the purchases. Grandma would love this Alger lan shawl, and this Italian bay onet is just the thing to go -over with the French bayonet he brought home from the last war.

Suddenly there will come the order to march with light combat equipment, and the little masses of collections will have to be left with instructions to forward that will never be carried out, Americans are great collectors. The next station will start-the same thing all over again. The terraces of the hotels are crowded at o'clock. This Is the time when people gather to get a drink and to look at one another. There is no hard liquor.

Cooled wine and lemonade and orange wine are the standard drinks. There is some beer made of peanuts, which does have a definite peanut flavor. The wine is good and light and cooling, a little bit of a' shock to a palate used to bourbon whisky, but acceptable. On these terraces the soldiers come to sit about little tables and to meet dates. The French women here have done remarkably Well.

Uncle Charley's fireplace, along Their shoes have thick; wooden THE OTTAWA JOURNAL? SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1MX Prepare to Carry Battle to Europe's Mountain; Ranges t'l Canadian troops are using vast areas of the Rockies as a a training ground in the techniques of high altitude fighting, preparing for what may come in Europe. Advanced classes work among treacherous snow bridges and crevasses. Roped together for safety, men cross one by one. i if An oldtimer in this kind of tactics is Captain Rex Gibson, staff officer, Petawawa, Ont. A native of Alberta and a veteran of the Great War, Capt.

Gibson has scaled eight of 10 highest peaks in the Canadian Rockies. Steinbeck Finds Ala ers Giddy Whirl of Color i A Canadian infantryman in the Rockies gets a foretaste of what, may Jace troops in. Europe. He guards high mountain passes with a Bren gun. soles, but they are attractive, and the few clothes they 'have are clean and well kept Since there is little material for dyeing the hair or bleaching it, a new fash-Ion seems to have started.

One lock of the hair is bleached and combed back over the unbleached part It has a strange and not unattractive effect About o'clock the streets are invaded by little black Wog boys with bundles of newspapers. They shriek, "Stabs Stralpes, Stahs 'n The army newspaper Is out again. This is the only news most of our men' get. In fact, little news comes here. New York and London are much better informed than this station, which is fairly close to action.

But it seems to be generally true that the closer to action you get the more your interest in the overall picture diminishes. Soldiers here are not so much interested in the trend of war as the soldiers are In training camps at home. Here the qualities of the mess, the animosities with the sergeant, the price of wine are much more Important that the world at war. This is a. mad, bright dreamlike place.

It is probable that our soldiers will remember it as a whirl of color and a polyglot babble. The heat makes your head a little vaguep-so that impressions run together and blot one another up. Outlines are hazy. It will be a curious memory when the soldiersi try to sort it out to tell about after the war, and it will not be strange if they Improvise a bit Conscript Priests In Baltic Countries LONDON, Aug. Stockholm reports said today that all Latvian' and Lithuanian priests, except those supporting the Nazis, had been conscripted for army service.

Many young priests deserted and joined the partisans in forests. fcbV FEAJsl' WOULD -41 yry sacks if i hadn't. -S )VA GOTTEN! MEK TO TEAK iJ-A op out? comber am' go HQMef, By. 8ft.AU. Christopher, Army Public Relations.

With an eye on the mountain bastions guarding Hitler's Europe, the Canadian through the co-operation of the Alpine Club of. Canada, initiated at this spot in July, the first full-scale training of mountain troops. Fresh out of the tough Army battle school at Wainwright, about ISO men of an Ontario regiment scrambled over rock, ice and snow to the tops of the peaks and learned the ways and mobds of Inside The whole unit ascended Mount Kerr in the. President Range about 18 miles from Field, B.C, in the heart of the Canadian A climb, they ranged up the snow and glacier-clad base of the great rock' like veterans in a scene reminiscent of Klondyke days. Schemes were carried out at some of the highest altitudes the Army- has ever Weapons of various types were toted up glistening, hundreds-of-feet deep glaciers, over mile-long rocky moraines formed-by the action of ice, and up jagged precipitous cliffs.

Heavy steel-studded mountain v. 4 I' i 1M Supplies are brought in to the troops in training, by pack-horses which have to ford turbulent, cold streams Horses can operate 1 where motor transport would be useless, but it is an arduous business at Rocks and boulders. clutter the bottom of the streams, make footing hazardous. Canadian Infantrymen Know; Mountain Fighting Technique boots were issued to the men. In addition they were supplied with parkas', ropes, and ice-axes.

The burning: sun, reflected by. the i made colored indispensable as well as sunburn f. Taking the course were soldiers from the Maritimes, eastern' Ontario, including Hamilton, Peterboro, Oshawa'and the western provinces. Of the 25 instructors, seven were crack American Alpinists and two of Swiss descent Most have had experience in! Europe. Eric of the Alpine Club of Canada, was in charge of the Instructors.

Capt E. R. Gibson, of Petawawa Military Camp who last year accompanied an American Army expedition up Mount McKinley, high est peak in North America, was among the Mountain barriers. and the lack of experienced Alpine troops were a serious handicap to the Allies in early stages of the war. Train ing in mountaineering not; only assures that soldiers will be able to tackle such country with as.

surance and confidence, but also. it means a great deal of profit able experience that will come in handy at any time. May Allow Some Canadian Distilleries To Return to Whiskey Distilling i- Canadian distilleries may soon be allowed to return to whiskey distilling on a small scale, The Journal was Informed today. Having filled every inch of available storage space with alcohol for industrial and war purposes, distilleries are more or less at a standstill until the Government acts, it was said. The possibility that they may return to whiskey production is seen in the announcement made early this week in the United States by War Production Board head, Donald Nelson, that American distilleries "might" be al lowed to distill whiskey because of the same conditions that exist In Canada.

uisuuing ox wniskey is more important to Canada than the United States; it, was pointed out because the Dominion enjoys a large export trade in that com modity. The production of a limited supply of whiskey at the present CHANCe HAD OP Rabbi Finds Lost Tribe In India By T. STEELE. Chicago Daily News Ferris SeTTka. NEW DELHI, Aug.

28. A -forgotten" colony, of Indian Jews, with a history more than- eight centuries old, has been rediscovered and resuscitated by an American Army, chaplain. Rabbi Abraham Dubin, of Flushing, LX Dubin is one of a group of American chaplains, Jew and Gentile, Catholic and Protestant, who are working with American armed forces in India and China. Arriving, in India, he discovered that some 13,000 Jews in this country had nd rabbi, had practically lost contact with Jewry, and wee fast becoming assimilated by other Indian sects. Tnie Indian Jews are mostly chocolate-skinned, like their fellow-countrymen, and shew few Semitic characteristics: Most of them are laborers and miserably poor.

Almost none art In business. Rabbi Dubln's efforts to revive the self-respect of this Jewish community have been strikingly sue-' cessfuL Frequently, he conducts joint services between Indian Jews and-Jewish American and British soldiers. One of Dubln's most striking meetings was 'the July 4th service when an international congregation of TOO prayed for rain for the drought-ridden area of India. Rain fell in bucketfuls five days later. time would be a benefit to Canada, it was said, because immature liquor would not be sold in the post-war period.

'At the time the announcement was' made several months ago that all whiskey distilling would be banned, authorities said there was enough whiskey in storage to last thirsty Canadians from two to three years. Government officials are glvins; the matter considerable thought, but no action is expected until the U. S. makes the first move, MOUSE. AWK? I 3A5 I.

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