REVIVAL IN EGYPT

A large proportion of the sick and wounded invalided from Gallipoli became familiar with one or other of the Alexandria hospitals. I spent a week at Victoria College, which had become No. 17 General Hospital, with Sister Neville, whose devotion to duty the Battalion had learnt when at Khartum, as Matron. Thence I went to No. 10 Convalescent Hospital at Ibra-himieh, once the stately house of an interned German called Lindemann but now converted into a comfortable home under the care of Mr and Mrs Scott. British leniency still reserved its tempting orangery for the use of local Huns. It is the English way.

When the evacuation of Gallipoli was contemplated, every hospital was cleared as far as possible of inmates, and I was one of the many officers who in early December were turned adrift either to the hotels of Alexandria or the great waiting camps of Mustapha and Sidi Bish.

The mere narrative of a holiday period at Alexandria has no public interest. We learnt to know Levantine and Egyptian mentality better than ever. When at Khartum an Egyptian dobey (washerman) had amused us by soliciting Regimental custom in preference to his competitors, not on the ground that he washed clothes better or charged less, but solely, he said, because the other dobeys were "terribly wicked men." So at Alexandria, every pedlar was the one honest follower of his craft. Yet its population is more European than Egyptian. The shops were full of the picture post cards of Italy and France, and portraits of Venezelos were to be seen everywhere, adorned with the pale blue and white national colours of Greece. Probably Mr Lloyd George's fame enjoys even wider bounds. I have seen his likeness enshrined in wattle huts at Omdurman and Wadi Halfa.

I touched unfamiliar minor issues of the War on the two occasions when I sat as a member of the military court, which sits for the purpose of enforcing proclamations issued by the supreme British military authority in Egypt, and thus tides over the time that has to pass before the Capitulations are abolished and a regular system of uniform justice established. A day thus spent at the Carracol Attarine gives a fine insight into the blessings of British occupation.

Most of the cases that I heard turned on the adulteration and falsification of liquors. Egypt has had no licensing laws; and no effort to apply elementary principles of fair dealing to the drink trade had apparently been made until initiated under military law for the protection of the troops. Foreign wine dealers at Alexandria consequently flooded the market with spurious liquor, concocted from the weirdest raw materials. The only genuine claim they could set up for their merchandise was that it was at all events alcoholic. Owing to the utilisation of refuse beet and potatoes, alcohol is cheap in Egypt. By blending pure alcohol to the extent of anything up to ninety per cent. of the whole concoction with any particular paste or colouring matter, it is open to wine dealers to pass off any liquid as the most popular of wines or spirits. Case after case came before the court, of beer made of alcohol and powder; wine of colouring matter, alcohol and paste; brandy of "essences"; and bitters of "Chinese elixirs." The falsifying appliances came from Europe, but the bogus labels, which described those poisons as "specially adapted for invalids and bottled in Glasgow, Scotland," or even offered 25,000 francs to any who could prove that so-called Greek "Koniak" was not "the pure juice of the grape," were amusingly Levantine. British justice is sweeping away these pitfalls for the soldier and sailor.

Egypt was at this time a centre of Anzac relaxation. To have explored the tombs of the kings with a New Zealander, paced the roof of the Cairo Citadel with Australians, and watched the colonial celebrations of Christmas in the Alexandria streets is a political education. No Englishman after the War will be ignorant of that golden New World, where all the labour is well paid, all hours of work are limited, and all shops close at noon on Saturdays. In any competition for the glory of being God's own country

"Australia will be there."

We were, however, at war. As a field officer, I had the duty of attending the burial of British soldiers in the Christian cemetery at Alexandria on Christmas Eve, 1915. Since the outbreak of the War the graveyard had extended from its original site, prettily shaded by foliage, over an adjacent waste of sand and rubble, where over 2500 of our men who died of wounds or disease at this base had already at this date been laid to rest. Here sleep many Manchester Territorials. In the midst of many graves, identified only by numbers, a black cross recalls the memory of Mundy, one of our gallant Company Sergeant-Majors.

On the 30th December 1915 I left Alexandria for the Dardanelles on the Arcadian, Sir Ian Hamilton's old ship, once most luxurious of steam yachts but destined to be torpedoed on the 15th April 1917 in these same waters. It carried some details for the various Divisions still believed to be holding Cape Helles. We sailed in long zigzags through a rough sea to within a few hours' distance from Lemnos. We were then ordered back by wireless to Alexandria, landing there, much to our chagrin, on the 6th January 1916. Two days later Cape Helles was evacuated. It was never known whether our departure from Egypt had been a piece of bluff designed to cloak the impending move from Gallipoli, or a sheer accident arising from ignorance at Alexandria of the true intentions of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force Headquarters.

From the date of the Arcadian's return down to the end of January, the large waiting drafts at Alexandria remained in tantalising inactivity, in spite of the passage of the Gallipoli survivors southward through Alexandria. The East Lancashire details forgathered at Mustapha on the site of the famous victory of 1801, and near the pretty white obelisk that commemorates Sir Ralph Abercromby. The time was filled as best could be by route marches, history lectures and various competitions, until at last we had orders to rejoin the Division. We moved from Sidi Gaber station to Cairo, and thence by trams to Mena, where, with "forty centuries" looking down upon us, we found what was left of the Manchester Territorial Brigade, then under General Elliott's command. The Battalion numbered close on 300 men.

Our stay at Mena was short, for infinite labour was now urgently needed on the Sinai Peninsula. In the early stages of the War, the Suez Canal had been treated as itself the main obstacle to an attack on Egypt. Outlying posts like El Arish had been abandoned, and Sinai left almost bare of defences. This policy accounts for the ease with which the Turks had actually gained the Canal bank in February, 1915. It was now recognised that defensive lines should run on the Asiatic side of the Canal in order to make it impossible for any invader to come within gunshot of the waterway. Three possible routes were open to the enemy. The northerly coast road by El Arish and Katia was the best, and enjoyed a Napoleonic tradition, but naval co-operation made its defence easy. A central track ran from El Audjo at the end of the main Palestine railway embankment to Bir Hassana, and might be used against Ismailia. A southerly approach was possible through Akaba and Nekl, and thence by the main pilgrims' road, the Darb El Haj, to Suez.

The Division was now to be employed in creating some of the new posts of defence, by which all such dreams of attack were to be dispelled. The strategy was passive, but it paved the way for the offensive undertaken in the ensuing summer.

On the bitterly cold night of the 1st February 1916 we left Mena. Before noon on the 2nd we reached Shallufa sidings. In the evening we crossed the Canal, and bivouacked in gathering darkness on a desert site known later as Shallufa Camp. The days of rest were over.