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.