Cool as Cucumbers

If climate scientists are right -- and there is no good reason to doubt them -- the heat waves we're experiencing in Europe are going to become more frequent. Last year I used a heat wave as an excuse for two consecutive posts : A Chess Board Is a Stage (July 2018; '♫ We're having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave ♫'), and Chess Greetings. This year I hope to use it only once.

How do you combine chess with the idea of hot? A web search returns many pages on the idea of 'hot girls' who play chess. Since that sort of sexism isn't appropriate to a blog 'For All Ages', what other ideas are there? The following photo does it for me.

Chess in the African Desert

The original eBay auction pegged the photo to 'WWII', but eBay sellers are not always knowledgeable historians. The fellow smoking the pipe has some sort of insignia on his helmet that probably dates the photo, but I have no idea what it means. More importantly, how do these guys stay so cool? Is it just a state of mind?