The American pyramidals were better at this time of year, for although very hot during the day they were easy to stake down and hold against the sandstorms. The British tents were of light cotton cloth, made in India, solely for shelter from the sun. They were the wall type, not waterproof and were double, that is, with an inner roof and wall usually blue or purple in color. It was best to dig them in against wind. You simply excavated as far down as the wall of your tent was high, parked the tent in the hole and filled sand down around it. This made the shelter windproof and you were low enough to be safe against most bomb bursts in case of air attack.
[...]
Lumber was worth its weight in silver and for months every board was precious.
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Everything, built by frenzied Egyptian workmen, was on the verge of collapse. They were capable of good work, but seemed to think that they had to go so fast they couldn’t be bothered with the details.
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About the only trucks we had access to were a batch of Canadian Ford farm trucks, with stake and slat bodies, rear wheel drive only. These came to us someway through the R.A.F. and were all painted and scarred up. Some had German crosses plainly visible under the R.A.F. cocardes painted on cabs for aircraft identification. They had been captured and recaptured, used around the desert for a couple of years. Many had been copiously ventilated by strafing fire from planes. The tops of all were dented in from the common habit of the desert soldier of sitting on the cab whenever possible. Except for the right-hand side steering drive these were familiar to our drivers and we got along fairly well. When we had any.
[...]
I never expect to be as cold as I was that winter in Egypt, on the burning desert, of fiction.