An letter had been received from one of the Lancashire Fusiliers based in Egypt to his parents in Manchester
” we arrived in Heliopolis under very trying conditions, pitch dark no food or drink and no tent accommodation, we lay down in the sand …. After about four hours we wondered around until it was light , here we found a canteen where we purchased some warm beer and some cheese and hard biscuits …I never enjoyed a better meal in my life.”
He spoke of sandstorms, terrific heat and being billeted next to Punjabis, Gurkhas and Sikhs, the Gurkhas, he said threw their food away on the first night as the shadows of our men crossed their mess while it was being cooked and they wouldn’t eat it.
He described visiting Cairo which was described as wonderful, full of different nationalities , the buildings beautiful, the slums horrible , ‘ beggars here are innumerable dressed, wearing rags crying alms for the love of Allah”
A man from Ashton described the retreat of the British forces from Antwerp. Home on seven days leave, he spoke of a forced march of thirty five miles before being put up in a cemetery using the graves as beds.
He of the trenches, of getting little sleep and that 10 minutes after evacuation , the trenches were blown up by German artillery shells
The previous weeks meteorite which had caused much alarm across the region was found at Standish. It was discovered by farm labourers, who dug the object out. Eighteen inches in diameter and weighing thirty pounds , however it’s whereabouts, much to the disgust of Manchester’s Godlee observatory, were no longer known
A verdict of manslaughter was made in the death of a forty year old labour we from Ardwick, who died at the infirmary after being assaulted in the Bridgewater Hotel .
A man had been charged with his death, Peter Rushworth, a labourer from Oldham after an altercation at a lodging house in the town.
More wounded men arrived in the city, one hundred and forty of them , many Scottish soldiers.
The streets from Mayfield station towards Whitworth Street, were crowded with well-wishers in all sic hundred had arrived in the last four days.
