Some of the Australians and New Zealanders had already got the call, but we of the Light Horse still waited—growing more and more impatient every day. I have vivid recollections of a captain swearing. I have still more vivid recollections of a certain private's reminiscences. It was generally thought that he had spent some time in hell, or Booligal, so familiarly did he speak of the infernal regions. I remember his saying—but no, I will not repeat it.

Chiefly do I remember the riot. It seemed that something must be done to stir the authorities up; and some of the "hot heads" got up a riot in Cairo. They went into Cairo singing "There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night"; and sure enough there was. It was not meant to be quite so hot as it turned out. Things have a way of shaping themselves sometimes. Nobody could tell afterwards exactly how it all happened; but before the night was spent some houses had been burned down, some shots had been fired and some men had been wounded. There were some Australians, some New Zealanders, some Maoris and a few Territorials in it. And it all happened so simply. Some publicans and other sinners presumed to treat the Maoris as "niggers." This was too much for the New Zealanders, and they began to pull some of the furniture out of a public-house, and to make a bonfire of it in the street, the while the Maoris danced a war dance round it.

One or two other bonfires were started. The native police rolled up and kept the crowd back, one of the police inspectors remarking that it would be a good thing for Cairo if a few more of the "dens" were burned down. "I've been wishing for a fire among these rotten tenements for a long time," he said, "and now the fire-engines are coming, and it looks as if they'll be saved again!"

The fire-engine came clattering up the street. The soldiers raided it. In self-defence the firemen repelled the attack with the fire-hose. The soldiers renewed the attack and, reinforcements having arrived, captured the hose and turned it on the firemen, completely routing them. Then they cut the hose up—and the Maoris went on with their "haka."

But in the end, of course, law and order had to prevail. Other engines came upon the scene, escorted by a squadron of Territorial Dragoons. The soldiers cooled down. The fires were put out. There's a lot more about this battle of the Wazir, but I cannot tell it.

Not creditable, of course. Not quite the sort of thing they had been sent there for. But human nature is human nature, and a crowd of soldiers is a crowd of soldiers, and bad grog will make the best of soldiers bad, especially in Cairo; and the evil that's in men must come out of them as well as the good. Hence to call the Maoris "niggers"—well, who can blame the New Zealanders for resenting it, and who can blame the Australians for siding with the New Zealanders, or the Territorials for assisting their Oversea brethren, when we have Mr. Asquith's own word for it that "Who touches them touches us"? Not creditable!—but human nature—British brotherhood! And high spirits, and the chafing under the monotony of camp life in Egypt! Trooper Bluegum, at all events, long ago forgave them. The same men were among those who were to create for themselves and their country, in the words of General Ian Hamilton, "An imperishable record of military virtue." Many of them are no more. Maoris and all have given their lives cheerfully for their Empire and the sacred cause of Right. Let us remember their virtues and forget their faults.

There came a day when there was sudden movement in the camp. General Birdwood had arrived—one of Kitchener's "hard riding" generals, with a wonderful string of medals and decorations—and there were other "signs of the zodiac" pointing to our early departure. When at last, at the "Stadium," Colonel Ryrie announced to us of the 2nd Light Horse that we were to make ready, you could have heard the cheering miles away. The residents of Ma'adi, when they heard it, thought peace had been declared!

It was the arrival of our Australian wounded back from the Dardanelles that settled it. It was a wrench to leave our horses behind—the dear old horses that we petted and loved, the horses that were a very part of us—but it had to be done. When we saw our fellows coming back with their wounds upon them—when we heard of what they had been through—when we listened to their story of that wonderful landing on Gallipoli on April 25, and of the wild charge they made up the frowning hill—all of us, to a man, begged to be sent to the front as infantry! We were Light Horsemen, and we hadn't been trained as infantry, but it didn't matter—we were soldiers of the King!

I saw the Red Crescent train as it steamed in loaded with the wounded, and I went to the base hospital to see and chat with the men who knew now what war was—the men who had clamoured so impatiently for so many weeks to be sent where "the fighting" was, and then came back again to be nursed in an Egyptian hospital! Yet they were happy. They had "done their bit." They smoked cigarettes and yarned about their experiences. I watched the slightly wounded ones marching from the train to the hospital—an unforgettable sight. Most of them were shot about the arms or scalp. Their uniforms had dried blood all over them, and were torn about where the field doctors had ripped off sleeves or other parts to get at the wounds. As they marched irregularly along, one young fellow with his arm in a sling and a flesh wound in the leg limped behind and shouted out: "Hey, you chaps, don't make it a welter!"

Our men were just splendid in the fight. An Imperial officer who has been all over France and Flanders said that Colonel Maclagan's Australian Brigade was the finest brigade of infantry in the whole of the Allied armies. That was praise indeed. And I remember another fine tribute that was paid to them. "No troops in the whole world could possibly have done better than those magnificent Australian infantry. They performed the impossible. In the face of exploding mines and withering fire from machine guns, shrapnel and rifles, they stormed the hills and, with bloody bayonets, routed the Turks and Germans." That was a tribute the more valuable because it was not an Australian who spoke, neither was it an Englishman, but a Frenchman. It was the remark of a French naval officer who watched the landing of the Australian Division on Gallipoli. And when the whole tale was told the world saw how rightly our boys deserved all that was said of them.

What a terribly expensive business it was all to be! How many brave Australians and New Zealanders—yes, and Englishmen, Frenchmen and Indians—were yet to be sacrificed! It is well that the Great Ruler over all, Who holds us in the hollow of His hands, does not permit poor mortals to see into the future. The "forcing of the Dardanelles"—the words were on the lips of all of us and were printed in newspapers all over the world—it seemed only a matter of a little while, and then——

Great is the British Navy, magnificent are its officers and men, but hellish was the work of "forcing the Dardanelles." You remember how the Goliath and the Irresistible went down. You remember how a great French ship—the Bouvet—was sunk. You remember the mines that came down the waters, and the shore torpedoes, and the strength of the Turkish forts, the power of the Turkish guns, erected and manned by German officers. The Navy could not force the Dardanelles alone! It was necessary to have the co-operation of land forces. Perhaps the operations should never have been begun until the Army was ready to co-operate. I do not know; it is not for me to judge.

General Sir Ian Hamilton first visited the Dardanelles and carried out a reconnaissance on one of the warships and then came to Egypt—a lightning visit—and our forces began to move. Australia, for the first time, was right up against the Hun! South Africa was a picnic to it.

There were spies everywhere. There were spies in the transports, spies amongst the interpreters, spies in the supply depots. The Turks, or rather their German officers, were kept informed of every move the Allies made. They knew exactly the hour of disembarkation and the places of landing. They learned all the Australian bugle calls and used them with telling effect. The French landed and formed up as if on parade, and then, with beautiful precision, marched on and drove the enemy before them. The British, despite the fusillade which greeted them on landing, were steady as veterans and there was no hope of withstanding their landing.

But there was an electric quality about the charge of the Australians that inspired panic in the Turkish trenches. Fiercely angry at the loss of several of their officers, they charged with fixed bayonets, not waiting for supports.

One charge was led by a doctor; another by a priest. Several times they charged so fiercely that they looked like getting out of hand. Scorning cover, they also scorned rifle fire. They scaled the steel-lined heights like demons. It was the bayonet all the time. One huge farmer actually bayoneted a Turk through the chest and pitchforked him over his shoulder. The man who performed this feat was a huge Queenslander—Sergeant Burne, of the 9th Battalion, who was afterwards wounded and returned to his Australian home—a man whose modesty is as great as his size. We smiled at first when we heard the story, and people in England and Australia read of it with amazement. But Sergeant Burne, standing over six feet high, and massively proportioned, looks quite capable of the feat. He himself tells the story in these words: "It is not a case for me to take any credit at all," he said. "I was in the platoon that landed first on the right. Our lieutenant was the first man to get ashore—and as game a man as ever faced fire. I followed him. I was ordered to take in hand a line of Turkish sharpshooters who were causing a lot of trouble. There was also a machine-gun on the hill. Somebody had to stop it. Myself and two lads went up, and we stopped it. That's all. There were ten Turks there. We got the Turks and we got the machine-gun, but I lost my two lads. They were only boys, but let me tell you the Australians are the best fighters in the world. One of the lads 'fixed' the German officer who was working the machine-gun. The Turks were higher up than we were, and I suppose that is how I was able to throw one of them over my shoulder. It's an old trick that is taught in the Guards."

Sergeant Burne once served in the Irish Guards, and he carries a scar on his forehead, the result of a blow from the butt-end of a rifle at Rhenosterkop, during the South African war. He had been living in Australia for about six years when the Great War broke out, and he was one of the first to answer the Empire's call. His stay on Gallipoli was short, for on the same day as that on which he performed the feat of which I have written he received a bullet in the shoulder.

"It was a very short experience," he said, "but I'll be back there again."

And that was, and is, the spirit of them all.

It is sad to think that so many senior officers lost their lives right at the outset of the fighting in the Dardanelles. Australia could ill afford to lose men like Colonel Onslow Thompson, Colonel MacLaurin, Major F. D. Irvine and Colonel Braund. Colonel MacLaurin was in the act of warning soldiers to be certain to keep behind cover when he was shot in the head. He was hurriedly conveyed to the rear, but only lingered half an hour. Curiously enough, he had a presentiment that he would be killed, and mentioned it to one of our Light Horse officers just before leaving for the Dardanelles.

It was a wicked trick that resulted in the slaughter of so many gallant men of the 1st (N.S.W.) Battalion. They had been holding the line splendidly, despite shrapnel and maxim fire and rifles, and had repulsed several attacks by the enemy. Then a message was passed down the line for the battalion to attack and capture the guns in front. Not doubting the genuineness of the order, the battalion charged, only to be met with a withering fire, which immediately told them that a trap had been set.

Their leader, Colonel Onslow Thompson, was killed instantaneously by a cannon shot which struck him in the head. He was one of the first to volunteer in Sydney when war broke out. Colonel Arnott knew that Colonel Onslow Thompson was a splendid Light Horse officer, and begged of him to wait for a mounted regiment. "No," he replied, "I'm going, and I'll take the first chance that offers."

The casualties among the officers were tremendous—brave men who led Australia's soldiers in that awful charge! And among the bravest of them were the young officers from the Duntroon Military College that stands amid delightful country surroundings near the capital of Federated Australia that is now in the making in the Mother State of New South Wales. These young fellows fought in a way that showed their native courage and the excellence of their training. Only the year before, when Sir Ian Hamilton, as Inspector-General of the Oversea Forces, visited Australia and inspected these lads who were training for the army at Duntroon, as the representative of the Sydney Morning Herald I remember seeing them laugh and cheer when Sir Ian Hamilton, on leaving Duntroon, jokingly wished them "plenty of wars and rapid promotion." And it seems only a few days since we were dancing and flirting in a Cairo ballroom. Now many of them lie sorely wounded at the base hospital, and several will never again hear the rÉveillÉ. But the College will not forget its firstfruits offered up so gladly for empire. Officers and men, it was all the same—they went to their death with a cheer for King and Country. I heard an Imperial officer, newly returned from Flanders, say that the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade was the finest brigade of infantry in the whole of the allied armies. In physique they were far superior to any of the British, French, or Belgian troops. Whether this be true or not, there is no doubt that the sturdy Thirds under Colonel Maclagan fought like Trojans on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and covered themselves with glory. Incidentally, I might mention, some of them never fired a shot during the fierce fighting of April 25. They simply trusted to the cold steel, and flung themselves at the Turkish trenches. The 1st Brigade (Colonel MacLaurin), the 2nd (Colonel McCay), and the rest of the Australians and New Zealanders fought with equal valour, but the brunt of the attack was borne by the Thirds. So many hundred gallant lives was a heavy price to pay for a footing in Gallipoli, but those impetuous charges, absolutely irresistible in their fury, would, we knew, bear rich fruit, for the Turks could never again withstand a bayonet charge by the Australians.

It was noteworthy that only a few thousand prisoners were taken. I asked one of the 1st Battalion boys (Lieutenant-Colonel Dobbin's command) why that was. He replied: "How could 12,000 of us take prisoners when we were up against 35,000?"

And through it all our Army Medical Corps did yeoman service. Several stretcher-bearers were shot, for they dashed forward too soon to succour the wounded. The doctors were right up in the firing-line all the while. Colonel Ryan and some other doctors were attending to serious cases on the beach, where the landing was effected, and snipers shot two orderlies who were assisting, one on each side of the colonel.

I doubt if there was a single branch of the service that did not suffer and share in the glory of that charge.

General Bridges handled his gallant Australians with consummate skill. He seemed to anticipate the Turkish attacks. His dispositions for defence were brilliant. Then General Godley and his New Zealanders landed and threw themselves into the fray. General Birdwood came and took charge of the Australian, New Zealand Army Corps ... A.N.Z.A.C.! From that fateful day, April 25, Anzac has been a name to conjure with.