Mena Camp, when I saw it at daybreak on the morning of 4th December, consisted of a score of tents scattered about in a square mile of desert, and perhaps a thousand men lying in their great-coats, asleep in the sand, their heads resting on their packs. The men of the 5th Battalion—those that are left of them—are not likely to forget that march out from Cairo on the night of the 3rd-4th, and the subsequent days of settling down to camp, and the greetings they gave to regiment after regiment as they came crowding into the camp. On the night the first troop trains came into Abbu Ella station, near Cairo, which was the siding on the southern side of the city, it was cold and sharp, but a bright moon came up towards midnight. Outside the sprinkling of Staff officers present to meet the train was a line of dusky faces and a jabbering crowd of natives. Electric trams buzzed along outside the station yard, and after the men had been formed up and detrained, they had a few minutes to get, from a temporary coffee-stall, some hot coffee and a roll, which, after the journey, was very much appreciated. It was nine o'clock. Guides were ready waiting. Territorials they were, who had been in Cairo for some time, and they led the men out on a long 10-mile march to Mena Camp. Baggage was to go by special tram, and it went out, under guard, later.

Less a company of the 5th which had been sent forward as an advance party from Port Said, the battalion set out, pipes and bands playing, through the dimly seen minaretted city. These Australians will remember the long, hearty cheers they got as they tramped past the Kasr El Nil Barracks, situated on the banks of the River Nile, where the Manchester Territorials turned out to do honour to the new army in Egypt. Across the long Nile bridge and through Gezirah, down a long avenue of lebbock-trees, out on the main road to the Pyramids, the troops marched, singing, chipping, smoking, their packs getting a wee bit heavier at each step. Life on board ship had not made them as hard as they believed, and by the time they left the gem-studded city behind and turned on to the road that ran between irrigated fields they began to grow more silent. Overhead, the trees met in a vast arabesque design, showing only now and then the stars and the moon. The shadows on the path were deep, dispersed for a few seconds only by the passing electric trams, which the men cheered. Then they began, as the early hours of the morning drew on, to see something of the desert in front of them and the blurred outline of the Pyramids standing there, solemn sentinels, exactly as they had stood for over six thousand years. They grew in hugeness until the troops came right to the foot of the slope which led up to their base. Their thoughts were distracted from the sight by the advance party of their own battalion coming to meet them and conduct them through a eucalyptus grove (what memories of a fragrant bush!) along a great new-made white road, and through the sand for the last quarter of a mile to their camp lines. Was it any wonder, therefore, in the face of this, that when at dawn next morning I came amongst the troops they were still lying sleeping, and not even the struggling rays of the sun roused them from their slumber?

How cheery all the officers were! Gathered in one tent, sitting on their baggage, they ate the "twenty-niners," as they called the biscuits ("forty-threes" they had been called in South Africa), with a bit of cheese and jam and bully beef. There was the Padre, Captain Dexter, and the Doctor, Captain Lind, Captain Flockart, Major Saker, Captain Stewart, Lieutenant Derham, and Lieutenant "Billy" Mangar, and scores of others, alas! now separated by the horror of war. That morning their spirits were high, and as soon as possible most of the regiments set out on what might be called an exploration expedition to the ridges of hills that ran along the eastern side of the camp, and above which peeped the Pyramids in small triangles. That day, I must say, little effort was made to settle down to camp, and the 5th, pioneers that they were, was the first Australian regiment to scramble over the ancient holy ground of Mena, the City of the Dead and burial-place of the forgotten monarchs of ancient Egypt. But what could be done? Tents had not yet arrived, and it was, indeed, weeks before all the troops were under canvas, though in the meantime they made humpies and dugouts for themselves in the sand with the help of native matting.

I turned back from the hill, dotted with whooping Australians, to watch another battalion march into camp, one of the New South Wales regiments of Colonel M'Laurin, and saw the wheeled transport drawn by mules (the horses, of course, being yet unfit for use after so long a sea voyage) almost stick in the sand, until shoulders were put to the wheel and they got the heavy vehicles to the lines. The whole camp had been laid out by the engineers on the Staff of the General Officer Commanding (General Sir John Maxwell) the week before. It must be remembered that barely a week's notice was given of the landing of the great overseas force, and it was one of the happy features of the troops' arrival in Egypt that they found arrangements so far advanced as they were. I remember walking along the white road, which a couple of steam-rollers were flattening, into the desert. The stone was being brought on a string of camels from quarries in the hills. Lines of small white stones marked where the road was going to lead right through the centre of the camp. It was a rectangle at that time, branching off from the Mena road through an orchard belonging to the Mena House Hotel, where the main road ended abruptly at the foot of the Pyramids; hard it was, too, as any cement, and each day lengthening, with cross sections sprouting out further into the desert. A loop of the electric tramway was being run along by one side of it, a water-pipe by the other, to reservoirs being constructed in the hills. Nevertheless, I cannot help commenting that the site of the camp lay in a hollow between, as I have said, two rows of hills running south into the desert and starting from a marsh in the swampy irrigation fields. Later on, the follies of such a site were borne out by the diseases that struck down far too high a percentage of the troops during their four months' residence there.

Day after day, enthralled, I watched this encampment growing and spreading out on either side of the road, creeping up the sides of the hills, stretching out across the desert, until the furthermost tents looked like tiny white-peaked triangles set in the yellow sand. The battalions filed into their places coming from the seaboard, where twelve ships at a time were discharging their human cargoes; while each day ten trains brought the troops up 130 miles to the desert camps. After the men came the gear, the wagons, the guns, the horses. For this was the divisional camp, the first divisional camp Australia had ever assembled. It was, also, the first time that Major-General Bridges had seen his command mustered together. With his Staff he took up his headquarters in a section of Mena House for use as offices, with their living tents pitched close by. This was the chance to organize and dovetail one unit into another, work brigade in with brigade, artillery with the infantry, the Light Horse regiments as protecting screens and scouts. The Army Service Corps, Signallers, Post Office, all came into being as part of a larger unit for the first time. The troops became part of a big military machine, units, cogs in the wheel. They began to apply what had been learnt in sections, and thus duties once thought unnecessary began to be adjusted and to have a new significance.

Of course, it could not all be expected to work smoothly at first. For some six weeks the horses were not available for transport work, and so the electric tramway carried the stores the 10 miles from the city, and brought the army's rations and corn and chaff for the animals. Donkeys, mules, and camels were all to be seen crowding along the Pyramid road day and night, drawing and carrying their queer, ungainly loads.

Besides Mena Camp, two other sites had been selected as training areas for the army corps, which, as I have said, was commanded now by Lieut.-General (afterwards Sir William) Birdwood, D.S.O. One of these was at Zeitoun, or Heliopolis, some 6 miles from Cairo, on directly the opposite side of the town—that is, the south—to the Mena Camp; while the other was situated close to an oasis settlement, or model irrigation town, at Maadi, and lying just parallel with Mena Camp, but on the other (eastern) side of the river, and some 12 miles distant from it. Zeitoun was the site of the old Roman battlefields, and later of an English victory over an Arab host. In mythology it is recorded as the site of the Sun City. The troops found it just desert, of rather coarser sand than at Mena, and on it the remains of an aerodrome, where two years before a great flying meeting had been held. For the first month, only New Zealanders occupied this site, both their infantry and mounted rifles, and then, as the 2nd Australian and New Zealand Division was formed, Colonel Monash's 4th Brigade (the Second Contingent) came and camped on an adjacent site, at the same time as Colonel Chauvel's Light Horse Brigade linked up, riding across from Maadi. Then into the latter camp Colonel Ryrie led the 3rd Light Horse Brigade.

As sightseers I am satisfied that the Australians beat the Yankee in three ways. They get further, they see more, and they pay nothing for it. Perhaps it was because they were soldiers, and Egypt, with its mixed population, had laid itself out to entertain the troops right royally. It must not be thought I want to give the impression that the Australian soldier, the highest paid of any troops fighting in the war, saved his money and was stingy. On the contrary, he was liberal, generous, and spoiled the native by the openness of his purse. Some believe that it was an evil that the troops had so much funds at their disposal. It was, I believe, under the circumstances—peculiar circumstances—that reflects no credit on the higher commands, and to be explained anon. It would be out of place just at the moment to bring any dark shadow across the bright, fiery path of reckless revelry that the troops embarked on during the week preceding and the week following Christmas. It was an orgy of pleasure, which only a free and, at that time, unrestrained city such as Cairo could provide. Those men with £10 to £20 in their pockets, after being kept on board ship for two months, suddenly to be turned loose on an Eastern town—healthy, keen, spirited, and adventurous men—it would have been a strong hand that could have checked them in their pleasures, innocent as they were for the most part.

In all the camps 20 per cent. leave was granted. That meant that some 6,000 soldiers were free to go whither they wished from afternoon till 9.30 p.m., when leave was supposed to end in the city. Now, owing to lax discipline, the leave was more like 40 per cent., and ended with the dawn. Each night—soft, silky Egyptian nights—when the subtle cloak of an unsuspected winter hung a mantle of fog round the city and the camps—10,000 men must have invaded the city nightly, to which number must be added the 2,000 Territorial troops garrisoning Cairo at the time that were free, and the Indian troops, numbering about 1,000. The majority of the men came from Mena and from the New Zealand camp at Zeitoun. The Pyramids Camp was linked to the city by a fine highway (built at the time of the opening of the Canal as one of the freaks of the Empress EugÉnie), along the side of which now runs an electric tramway. Imagine officials with only a single line available being faced with the problem of the transport of 10,000 troops nightly to and from the camps! No wonder it was inadequate. No wonder each tram was not only packed inside, but covered outside with khaki figures. Scores sat on the roofs or clung to the rails. Generally at three o'clock the exodus began from the camps. What an exodus! What spirits! What choruses and shouting and linking up of parties! Here was Australia at the Pyramids. Men from every State, every district, every village and hamlet, throughout the length and breadth of the Commonwealth, were encamped, to the number of 20,000, in a square mile. An army gains in weight and fighting prowess as it gains in every day efficiency by the unitedness of the whole. Now, the true meaning of camaraderie is understood by Australians, and is with them, I believe, an instinct, due to the isolated nature of their home lives and the freedom of their native land. When the troops overflowed from the trams, they linked up into parties and hired motor-cars, the owners of which were not slow to appreciate the situation. They tumbled ten or twelve into these cars, and went, irrespective of speed limits, hooting and whirring towards the twinkling city. And when the motors gave out, there was a long line of gharries (arabehs), which are open victorias, very comfortable, and with a spanking pair of Arab steeds, travelling the 10 miles to the city.

Imagine, therefore, this Pyramid road arched with lebbock-trees that made a tunnel of dark living branches and green leaves. By five o'clock night had fallen, coming so suddenly that its mantle was on before one realized the sun had sunk behind the irrigated fields, the canals, and the waving sugar-canes. Imagine these men of the South, the warm blood tingling in their veins (and sovereigns jingling in their pockets), invading the city like an avalanche!

So much was novel, so much strange and entrancing in this city of Arabian fables. Cairo presents the paradox of the Eastern mind, and the reverse nature of events and incidents amused and excited the imaginations of the Australians.

By midnight had commenced in earnest the return of the troops along that great highway, an exodus starting each night at nine o'clock. Again was the tram service inadequate, nor could the motors and gharries cope with the rush of the men back to the lines before leave expired. Donkey-men filled the breach with their obstinate asses, and the main streets were crowded with wild, shouting troops as a drove of twenty or thirty donkeys went clattering past, whooping Australians on their backs, urging on their speed to a delicate canter. But it was hard work riding these donkeys, and a 10-mile ride brought resolutions not to again overstay leave or, at least, to make adequate arrangements for return by more sober and comfortable means. The main highway such nights became a stream of flickering fire. The motors picked their way at frantic speed through the traffic, past the burdened camels and loaded carts of rations and fodder for the camp. No speed was too high; the limit of the engines was the only brake. By great good fortune no disaster occurred: minor accidents were regarded as part and parcel of the revels.

Whatever may have been the attitude of the military authorities when the troops landed and up till Christmas week, the very first day of the New Year saw a vast change in the discipline of the camp. It was really a comparatively easy matter, had a proper grip been taken of the men, to have restrained the overstaying and breaking of leave that occurred up till New Year's Day. Mena Camp, situated 10 miles from the city in the desert, with only one avenue of practicable approach, required but few guards; but those guards needed to be vigilant and strong. True, I have watched men making great detours through the cotton-fields and desert in order to come into the camp from some remote angle, but they agreed that the trouble was not worth while. Once, however, the guards were placed at the bridge across the Canal that lay at right angles to the road and formed a sort of moat round the south of the camp, and examined carefully passes and checked any men without authority, leave was difficult to break. From 20 it was reduced to 10 per cent. of the force. General Birdwood's arrival resulted in the tightening up of duties considerably, while the visit of Sir George Reid (High Commissioner for the Commonwealth in London) and his inspiring addresses urging the troops to cast out the "wrong uns" from their midst, at the same time bringing to their mind the duty to their Country and their King that lay before them still undone, settled the army to its hard training. He, so well known a figure in Australia, of all men could give to the troops a feeling that across the seas their interests were being closely and critically watched. After a few weeks of the hard work involved in the completion of their military training, even the toughening sinews of the Australians and their love of pleasure and the fun of Cairo were not strong enough to make them wish to go far, joy-riding.