Reader, I am not out to describe Cairo. For one thing, space forbids; for another, I reckon I amn't a boss hand at descriptive writing; and, lastly, you can get as much of that kind of thing as you want in the guidebooks. But I should like to point out three places you should really pay a visit to the first time you blow into the old City: the Citadel, the Museum, and the Tombs of the Mamelukes; add to these the Zoo, and the Hezekieh Gardens on a Sunday afternoon, and you won't regret it. It is a gay city, is Cairo; a bad old city, but, above all, an intensely interesting one. You will there, it is true, find vice, dirt, and immorality flaunted openly, the trimmings all shorn away. But you needn't stop and look, you know—(you will, all the same). And "to the pure all things are pure." Besides, when away from home things often strike you from a vastly different standpoint. You are out to "do" Egypt; you have paid to "do" it—then "do" it by all means. But take my tip, and exercise a wise discretion when writing to the folks at the old farm. Or don't write—just mail them the guidebooks.
CHAPTER V
DAY BY DAY
As time went on we grew more and more accustomed to our Eastern life. With the passing of the weeks the weather became warmer, until it dawned on our O.C. at last that, in the interests of his men's health, he would have to ease off work a bit in the heat of the day. So it came to pass that the bigger part of our training was carried out in the early morning and at night, the long desert marches in the afternoons being pretty well cut out. No one regretted it; those wallaby trots pulled blasphemy and sweat out of the chaps in about equal proportions. Besides, they were by this time in hard fighting trim; fit to go for a man's life. It was quite an everyday occurrence for the crowd to come into camp off an eighteen or twenty mile foot-slogging jaunt with all on, have tea and a wash-up, and then trot into Cairo to spend the evening. That shows the kind of training they were in.
But it wasn't "all work and no play." We had amusement and recreation in plenty, between concerts at night, tennis, football, etc. on the desert by day. We even ran a gymkhana once, and played polo and wrestling on horseback—with donkeys as mounts. I don't think they enjoyed it (the donkeys, I mean), and some of the competitors got in the way of each other's clubs, and showed it. But the spectators were tickled, and I fancy the natives sized us up as all mad—or tanked. Add to this boxing, and Church Parade on Sundays, and you will have a fair idea of how we put in time when we weren't training. The latter was the least popular; it was held out on the desert where there wasn't a vestige of shade. It's almost impossible to sleep in the full glare of an African sun.
As a rule we had Saturday afternoons off, also Sunday from the conclusion of Church Parade, besides an odd whole day or two, for which we had to get a special pass. Sometimes a fellow got the chance of going in to Cairo to fetch back a prisoner from the military jail. In this connection I remember forming one of a corporal's guard dispatched into the city to bring out a couple of chaps who had been run in by the pickets for getting shikkared and playing round some. The O.C. let them off with a caution—and a week later one was made a sergeant while the other got his commission! Still, they were good boys, so the fellows only laughed.
We were reviewed several times during our stay in Egypt—once by Sir Ian Hamilton. Oh, the dust of those marches past! They had the cinema going on us at the saluting point, but I'll take my oath they "snapped" more dust than soldiers. We were dressing by the centre—at least we were supposed to—but the line was hidden in such rolling clouds of suffocating desert topsoil, that it was a matter of speculation as to where the centre actually was. However, we marched as uprightly as the soft going would allow, mounted our fiercest touch-me-if-you-dare-look, and as the chaps actually in range of the camera averaged over six feet in height right through, I guess we looked some fighting men, and no error. It was a day of tropic heat, we had been kept standing-to for over a couple of hours with full packs up, so our expression wasn't to say curate-like—as a mob of Gippy hawkers and sightseers who happened to get in the line of march at one time seemed to think, for they turned tail and bolted like a harem of scalded tabbies. At first it used to amuse us the way the citizens of Cairo stared at the Australasian troops; the place was simply dry-rotted with sedition, but after our chaps took it over there was jolly little talk of native risings or such-like. Of course, there were little isolated pow-wows now and then, but they always ended in such an all-fired jamboree that the tenderfeet effendis and solemn-faced pashas thought the bottom had fallen out of hell, and concluded to give the game best. Our chaps had their own way of tackling the beggars. And it worked O.K.
At another time we were paraded in hollow square and addressed by the Honourable "Tom" McKenzie, High Commissioner for New Zealand, and Sir George Reid, representing Australia. They had come out from London, and, needless to say, they got a boncer welcome from the boys. The Maoris made the dust fly and set the desert shaking with a big haka of greeting. Altogether things went off kapai, and I fancy the two representatives of the "Fatherland" (both real sports and white men) enjoyed themselves. Anyway, the men from Down Under were real glad to see them; and when addressing the Division the speakers soon showed that the pleasure was mutual.
It would be about this period that the Australasian forces began to be called "The Ragtime Army." I never knew who started the name, but anyway it stuck. Then some johnnie, gifted with the faculty of rhyme-stringing, took it into his head to compose a set of verses dealing with our daily life and training in Egypt, every verse ending with the words, "Only an Army standing by." This title also stuck, and it was quite an everyday occurrence for the infantry to march out of camp to the sung and whistled tune of the "Army standing by." The fact was, that the fellows were by this time trained to the hour; they were sick of the dust, heat, and flies of Egypt, and were longing to be up and doing. They had had as tough a gruelling as men could be put to, and were beginning to ask what was the good of it all if they were going to be kept "standing by" in a God-forsaken hole on the edge of the desert. You see, rumours were in the air; true, these "wireless" messages, it was proved, almost all emanated from a rather unsavoury source (the Anzacs will recognise the locality), but they travelled round the whole camp with most disconcerting frequency until one never knew what to believe and what not. And one of these rumours oft repeated was to the effect that the Australasians were destined to form the permanent Army of Occupation in Egypt. Hence the growing feeling of discontent, the constant grousing, and the daily lament of "Kitchener hasn't got any use for us; we're a 'Ragtime Army,' 'An Army standing by.'" But Kitchener knew what he was about. He generally does, come to think of it. He expected a lot from that ragtime push—and I reckon he was satisfied.
There has been a lot of rot written and said about the lack of discipline in the Australian and New Zealand forces. There was discipline, although not quite the same brand as that of the British Army. It is true they didn't cotton on to saluting as an amusement, and you can lay a safe bet they never will. But what of it? Their own officers didn't press the point, knowing the class of men they commanded. At the same time those officers knew that the rough diamonds under their orders would play the game right to the last man; that they would fight like lions in their own devil-may-care, reckless way—and, if need be, die like men, with a careless jest or muttered oath on their lips. I say there was the highest form of discipline in the Australasian Army—the discipline that called on a man to die, if necessary, that his comrade might live. Let the order go forth that a certain position was to be held at all costs. Was it lost? No—except over the dead bodies of the holders. Has a single instance come to light in which even a platoon of Australian or New Zealand troops abandoned their trench and bolted? No, even when out of ammunition and unable to reply to a murderous fire. What was it that caused first one line and then another of those big Australian Light Horsemen to charge to certain death at Quinn's Post? Discipline! War discipline! The kind that counts. They didn't salute much (except when in an unusually good humour—or outside a big drink), even their own officers, but they would follow those officers to certain death—and well the officers knew it. They were just big, hard-living, hard-drinking, over-grown boys: not exactly saints or respectable church-going citizens, I fear. But they were white right through—even if they sometimes did go looking for trouble! And there wasn't anything on the Gallipoli Peninsula could show them the way when it came to scrapping. They were absolutely the grandest fighting men that God ever put breath into! You saw it in the square set of their jaws and the grim, straightforward glance of their eyes. But parade-ground soldiering wasn't much in their line, nor the cheering crowds either.