Roman Ruins, Sabratha, Libya

  

                                                                                                        Letter No 66

AUST. No 34171 

LAC Cooney, JF 

No. 3 Squadron 

R.A.A.F. 

MIDDLE EAST

 12^th Feb. ‘43

 

 

Dear Mum,

                  I have just crawled out from under the blankets & so I am dropping you these few lines before I get under them again.

                   We were all laying in bed this morning trying to decide whether to get up for breakfast or not, because it was so cold & windy, & one of our tent poles broke in halves so we had to get up & fix it, otherwise I think we would have gone on a fast until dinner time.

                  Ever since we arrived at this ‘drome the sky has been overcast, the wind has been blowing a gale & every now & again we have a heavy shower of rain. Our kites are still back with the rear flight because the rain has made this ‘drome unserviceable for a month or more & so we will probably move in a day or so. Yesterday afternoon the Dr., being the only officer with us, organized a trip to the Roman ruins at Sabrata

(NOTE: See Sabratha Roman Ruins, Libya) These ruins are over two thousand years old & some Italian museum cranks have been doing quite a bit of excavating there.

                   Considering how old the place is it is in a marvelous state of preservation & many parts have recently been reconstructed by the Italians to show what it was like originally. Unlike most ruins we have seen it consists of a full city of about a mile by a mile & a half. From what we could gather from the caretakers waving of hands & jabbering we understood that there was an amphitheatre, a palace, a parliament house, a church & all the homes. The amphitheatre was about a hundred & fifty feet high at the back of the “stage” & consisted of tiers of solid marble, hand carved pillars & in front of this was a semicircle of seats (stone) about 40 feet high.

The palace was the most marvelous place of all in regards to hand carved marble because the entire walls were covered in it & some of the designs were beautiful.

All that remains of the parliament house is about thirty marble pillars, twenty feet high, that originally held up the roof but now are just pointing into space.

Behind the parliament is an old Roman road that has been uncovered & the caretaker told us it goes east about 600 miles to Cyrenne & about the same distance west but with time it has been covered with sand.

All that remains of the church is the floor & the altar & around this has been built a museum. The floor is of mosaic construction & the mani part of it is a huge peacock & its tail is in about thirty different colours. All around the edges are every type of bird imaginable & all of them are about two & a half feet high. On the walls of the museum are reproductions of the walls of the church all in mosaic. So much for the ruins.

I haven’t sent the parcels yet but will do so as soon as I can get one of the officers to censor them. I have included Betty’s evening bag in the square parcel, otherwise, everything is for you. The copy of the “Libyan Log” is under the tin.

I told you some time ago that we had been payed in a different type of money but when we buy anything in Tripoli we get our change in Iti Lira & Centavos. This means we are getting into small change properly because there are twenty-four Lira in a shilling & hundred Centavos in a Lira & one hundredth part of a half-penny is not worth very much at all.

That’s all for to-day Mum but will write again shortly.

 

Much love to Dad & Betty

                                    Lovingly Yours

                                                      Frank

 

                                                                     Betty's evening bag sent from Tripoli