“You’re bound for Egypt for just one job: To beat the enemy and help bring conclusive victory for the Allied Nations. To do that, you’ve got to use your brains as well as your body. As an American soldier, you’ll also become a sort of Ambassador for your country. Wherever you go, people are going to judge the United States by you… We’ve got a fairly good reputation in the world at large right now. Don’t spoil it. Make it better… Egypt hasn’t declared war on the Axis: but she is friendly to the United Nations. Dr. Goebbels and every one of his aides is working to switch that friendship. The enemy wants you to make mistakes, and so he is working day and night, with his propaganda. He wants you not to get along with your partners – the soldiers of our Allies who are in Egypt. But most of all, he wants you to make mistakes with the Egyptians. He hopes that, perhaps unwittingly, your manners will offend them, that you’ll trample clumsily on their customs, that you’ll insult their religion, and that you’ll make mistakes about their social attitudes and political beliefs… In order to conduct yourself well in the eyes of the Egyptians, you need to know a little about Egypt, of course. Well, what does an average American know about it? Sure, it has pyramids — and palm trees — and people ride on camels. We’ve all seen travel movies. And the children of Israel fled from Pharaoh across the Red Sea to the Promised Land. We know that much from our Bibles. But that’s hardly enough to equip you as a one-man good-will mission. Thousands of books have been written about Egypt, but no one of them can tell you all about the country. It’s too big and too different from anything Americans know about. So, a different sort of guidebook has been prepared for your information, giving in brief ABC form, a few of the things that may interest you and some of the things you need to know. If you exercise a normal amount of curiosity, you’ll soon find out more about the land of Egypt than is possible to put in any guidebook”
Prepared by Army Information Branch, Army Service Forces, United States Army, 1943
Digitized by Central University Libraries, Southern Methodist University