OCR Text |
Show Yankees Sizzle In Red -Hot Iran Supplies for Russia Rushed In Temperatures Up to 150 Degrees. WITH THE PERSIAN GULF SERVICE COMMAND In one of the hottest places in the world, the heat is on in the gulf region and Americans arming and provisioning the Red army through the vital Iranian corridor can take it. Despite temperatures such as none of them ever experienced before, they are keeping up the schedule of deliveries to Soviet Russia over truck and rail routes with a surprisingly surpris-ingly low rate of heat cases. Here where the weather men would have no end of grim fun keeping keep-ing hourly temperature records, there is little scientific recording yet, but an ordinary thermometer exposed ex-posed in the afternoon easily tops 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Shaded, it hovers between 120 and 130 degrees. Ice a Precious Thing. Refrigeration is scarce, ice is a precious thing and there are no soft drinks. Rationed beer gave out before be-fore the heat really started. Crude air conditioning in field hospitals hos-pitals the only air conditioning available is considered successful when it keeps the temperature below be-low 100. Persian Gulf Service command hospitals need fever thermometers of higher graduation than the regular regu-lar 108-degree instruments because the temperature of heat victims is likely to run past 108 degrees, which already is 9.4 above normal. The treatment for heat cases is to bring the body temperature down as quickly as possible. Stricken men, under sheets or towels, are drenched with ice water,1 placed in front ol electric fans and cold drinks are given them. One hospital has an air-conditioned unit containing 24 beds where a temperature tem-perature of 60 or 70 degrees may be maintained, but there is only one of these in Iran. Apart from hosing with water, these structures are conditioned with fans and "desert coolers," screened ' frames loosely packed with excelsior, excel-sior, which is kept wet continually from dripcans. Through this the fans draw the outside air. Fans have been virtually monopolized by the hospitals. Metal Too Hot to Touch. - Most of the Persian Gulf Service command personnel lives now in thick-walled barracks, though 1,000 men still are under canvas. In the gulf and desert districts men work split shifts, spending the afternoons in their quarters. The touch of a belt buckle, collar ornament or metal button to the bare flesh, even out of the sun, is enough to make a man jump. Most men have put away the brass identification iden-tification disks supposed to be worn around the neck. Men sleep naked, covered with wet towels, or with their mattresses soaked. A man can launder his shirt on the way to a shower and don it dried when he has finished his bath. Water standing in pipes must be run off before a shower to avoid scalding. scald-ing. About the only benefit from the heat is the dearth of flies, which in June were so bad that men had to talk close-lipped to keep them from their mouths, and standing at attention at-tention was an agony. |