4
The next morning on waking up, that song still echoing in our ears, we were hull down. Only a vague disturbance in the blue showed where Malta had been, and but for the tattoo which irritated slightly, it might have been one of the Thousand and One Nights. We arrived at last at Alexandria instead of Gallipoli. The shore authorities lived up to the best standards of the Staff.
They said, “Who the devil are you?”
And we replied, “The —— Division.”
And they said, “We’ve never heard of you, don’t know where you come from, have no instructions about you, and you’d better buzz off again.”
But we beamed at them and said, “To hell with you. We’re going to land,”—and landed.
There were no arrangements for horses or men; and M.L.O.’s in all the glory of staff hats and armlets chattered like impotent monkeys. We were busy, however, improvising picketing-ropes from ships’ cables borrowed from the amused ship’s commander and we smiled politely and said, “Yes, it is hot,” and went on with the work. Never heard of the —— Division? Well, well!
Hot? We had never known what heat was before. We thought we did lying about on deck, but when it came to working for hours on end,—tunics disappeared and collars and ties followed them. The horses looked as if they had been out in the rain and left a watery trail as we formed up and marched out of the harbour and through the town. We bivouacked for the night in a rest camp called Karaissi where there wasn’t enough room and tempers ran high until a couple of horses broke loose in the dark and charged the tent in which there were two Colonels. The tent ropes went with a ping and camp beds and clothing and Colonels were mixed up in the sand. No one was hurt, so we emptied the Colonels’ pyjamas, called their servants and went away and laughed.
Then we hooked in and marched again, and in the middle of the afternoon found Mamoura—a village of odd smells, naked children, filthy women and pariah dogs—and pitched camp on the choking sand half a mile from the seashore.
By this time the horses were nearly dead and the only water was a mile and a half away and full of sand. But they drank it, poor brutes, by the gallon,—and two days after we had our first case of sand colic.
The Staff were in marquees on the seashore. Presumably being bored, having nothing earthly to do, they began to exhibit a taste for design and each day the camp was moved, twenty yards this way, fifteen that, twelve and a half the other, until, thank God, the sun became too much for them and they retired to suck cool drinks through straws and think up a new game.
By this time the Colonel had refused to play and removed himself, lock, stock and barrel, to the hotel in the village. The Adjutant was praying aloud for the mud of Flanders. The Orderly Officer made himself scarce and the Battery Commanders were telling Indian snake stories at breakfast. The sergeants and the men, half naked and with tongues hanging out, were searching for beer.
The days passed relentlessly, scorching hot, the only work, watering the horses four times a day, leaving everybody weak and exhausted. At night a damp breeze sighed across the sand from the sea, soaking everything as though it had rained. The busiest men in the camp were the Vet. and the doctor.
Sand colic ran through the Division like a scourge, and dysentery began to reduce the personnel from day to day. The flies bred in their billions, in spite of all the doctor’s efforts, loyally backed up by us. The subalterns’ method of checking flies was to catch salamanders and walk about, holding them within range of guy ropes and tent roofs where flies swarmed, and watch their coiled tongues uncurl like a flash of lightning and then trace the passage of the disgruntled fly down into the salamander’s interior. Battery Commanders waking from a fly-pestered siesta would lay their piastres eagerly on “Archibald” versus “Yussuf.” Even Wendy would have admitted that it was “frightfully fascinating.”
Every morning there was a pyjama parade at six o’clock when we all trooped across to the sea and went in as nature made us. Or else we rode the horses with snorts and splashings. The old hairy enjoyed it as much as we did and, once in, it was difficult to get him out again, even with bare heels drumming on his ribs.
The infantry, instead of landing at Alexandria, had gone straight to the Dardanelles, and after we had been in camp about a fortnight the two senior brigades of Gunners packed up and disappeared in the night, leaving us grinding our teeth with envy and hoping that they wouldn’t have licked the Turk until we got there too.
Five full months and a half we stayed in that camp! One went through two distinct phases.
The first was good, when everything was new, different, romantic, delightful, from the main streets of Alexandria with European shops and Oriental people, the club with its white-burnoused waiters with red sash and red fez, down to the unutterable filth and foul smells of the back streets where every disease lurked in the doorways. There were early morning rides to sleepy villages across the desert, pigeons fluttering round the delicate minarets, one’s horse making scarcely any sound in the deep sand until startled into a snort by a scuttling salamander or iguana as long as one’s arm. Now and then one watched breathless a string of camels on a distant skyline disappearing into the vast silence. Then those dawns, with opal colours like a rainbow that had broken open and splashed itself across the world! What infinite joy in all that riot of colour. The sunsets were too rapid: one great splurge of blood and then darkness, followed by a moonlight that was as hard as steel mirrors. Buildings and trees were picked out in ghostly white but the shadows by contrast were darker than the pit, made gruesome by the howling of pariah dogs which flitted silently like damned souls.
The eternal mystery of the yashmak caught us all,—two deep eyes behind that little veil, the lilting, sensuous walk, the perfect balance and rhythm of those women who worshipped other gods.
Then there was the joy of mail day. Letters and papers arrived regularly, thirteen days old but more precious because of it. How one sprang to the mess-table in the big marquee, open to whatever winds that blew, when the letters were dumped on it, and danced with impatience while they were being sorted, and retired in triumph to one’s reed hut like a dog with a bone to revel in all the little happenings at home that interested us so vitally, to marvel at the amazingly different points of view and to thank God that although thousands of miles away one “belonged.”
Then came the time when we had explored everything, knew it all backwards, and the colours didn’t seem so bright. The sun seemed hotter, the flies thicker and the days longer. Restlessness attacked everybody and the question “What the devil are we doing here?” began to be asked, only to draw bitter answers. Humour began to have a tinge of sarcasm, remarks tended to become personal and people disappeared precipitately after mess instead of playing the usual rubbers. The unfortunate subaltern who was the butt of the mess—a really excellent and clever fellow—relapsed into a morose silence, and every one who had the least tendency to dysentery went gladly to hospital. Even the brigade laughter-maker lost his touch. It had its echo in the ranks. Sergeants made more frequent arrests, courts-martial cropped up and it was more difficult to get the work done in spite of concerts, sports and boxing contests. Interest flagged utterly. Mercifully the Staff held aloof.
The courts-martial seemed to me most Hogarthian versions of justice, satirical and damnable. One in particular was held on a poor little rat of an infantryman who had missed the boat for Gallipoli and was being tried for desertion. The reason of his missing the boat was that she sailed before her time and he, having had a glass or two—and why not?—found that she had already gone when he arrived back in the harbour five minutes before the official time for her departure. He immediately reported to the police.
I am convinced that she was the only boat who ever sailed before her time during the course of the war!
However, I was under instruction—and learnt a great deal. The heat was appalling. The poor little prisoner, frightened out of his life, utterly lost his head, and the Court, after hours of formal scribbling on blue paper, brought him in guilty. Having obtained permission to ask a question I requested to know whether the Court was convinced that he had the intention of deserting.
The Court was quite satisfied on that point and, besides, there had been so many cases of desertion lately from the drafts for Gallipoli that really it was time an example was made of some one. He got three years!
Supposing I’d hit that bullying sergeant in the eye in Flanders?