One of two great excitements of our journey was furnished by “Bushy Bill,” a reckless larrikin of Melbourne. Bushy declared one evening a few minutes after dark that he could do something that would stop the whole fleet. We asked him what his little notion might be, but he declined to tell. He said, however, that he was willing to wager a pound that he could succeed in his threat. Somebody took him up and the instant he did so “Bushy Bill” put up his pound note and also pressed into the hand of a friend all other money and valuables that he had in his pockets and without another word, hopped over the taffrail and into the sea. Naturally the cry went up immediately of “Man overboard!” Noisy signals were exchanged between ships of the fleet, searchlights began to play widely in all directions, and afterward we learned that in every other ship of the fleet, where like ourselves everybody was on tenterhooks in expectancy of a raider’s attack, the Emden possibly, orders were swiftly signaled for the ships to deploy. The Themistocles stopped and backed. Meanwhile, two soldiers had gone over the side for the rescue of “Bill,” believed to have been suddenly stricken with insanity. Following the two men who plowed through the waves to his rescue, a boat was lowered.
Bill was all laughter and excitement when he was hauled aboard, enthusiastically claiming to have won his bet, which was promptly paid, but then Bill did some prompt paying. This was in the way of entering on a six-months’ sentence in the brig, which held him for weeks also in the guard house when our division got to Egypt.
Only the next day came a more thrilling event. This was when our wireless told us that the depredations of the vicious raider, the Emden, had been brought at Cocos Island to a swift end by the Sydney.
Of course, there was tremendous rejoicing. On all the boats, at all the “parades” (the assembling of the soldiers for afternoon drill), the news of the sinking of the Emden by the Sydney was “read out.” Commanders made no effort to stifle the cheers that arose.
One of the boys composed a parody on “Tipperary” to celebrate the event, which we sang with greatest vim and vigor all the way to Gallipoli and afterward. It was worded this way:
“It’s a long, long way to Cocos Island,
It’s a long way to go,
It was there the Sydney met the Emden,
And made old Kaiser Bill swear,
It’s a long, long way to Cocos Island,
But the Sydney boys got there!”
You can imagine that aboard this crowded ship, with men of all types and character, and with all the rough play aboard, that it would not be just the sort of a place for a girl. Yet we had one aboard. We didn’t know it for some time after we were out, because little Betty Grainger, in devotion to her sweetheart, had not only cut off her long, golden locks, but had deliberately roughened her hands with toil, the more to make good her disguise as a boy. Somewhere she had secured a uniform. In those days the uniforms were of all manner of irregularities; anything in a color and shade of khaki would serve. The very style of military uniform belted with a skirt effect of the coat and loose riding breeches would enable a girl to successfully disguise herself. Betty did until one night when the men were playing a romping game of “tilt the cart,” wherein your idea was principally to upset your neighbor by a quick grasp of the legs and a heave of him over your shoulder. When an unsuspecting rookie grabbed Betty and sought to “tilt the cart” she uttered a most unmanly scream. The men gathered around to further “rag” this effeminate boy when Betty gave further evidence of her real sex by bursting into tears and scratching their faces. And then “Long Jack” Kennedy, of Melbourne, suddenly sailed into the men surrounding her, forgetting the camouflage that Betty sought to enact, picked her up in his arms and faced the crowd with an outburst of oaths. That settled it. Betty, who had registered as George Grainger, was known for what she was. But even the authorities of the ship felt no bitterness toward Betty. She was given over to the care of a company of nurses aboard the Themistocles, and tried very hard to make herself useful, but because of the deception she had practiced the commander ordered her put off at Perth.
We had a short stop and walk around Colombo and then at Suez. Four days later found us in an even stranger environment for Australians. We had landed at Cairo—the first Australian Expeditionary force, part of General Birdwood’s Division which besides our contingent, comprised the 29th English Division (regulars). The Zion Mule Corps, a detachment of French troops, four regiments of Ghurkas, several native Indian regiments and the Indian Supply and Transport corps. Although no efforts were made to put up barracks or permanent buildings, it was soon evident that we were to be kept in our Egyptian camp for some period of time. The magnitude of the commissary arrangements, the settlements of the regiments into a general plan of a large and permanent encampment, made this only too plain. We had all been hoping and cheering for our advent to France. At this time we were, as I believe, merely held by Lord Kitchener to further our training. For the conquest of Gallipoli—that red hell of disaster—was not in the books of our commanders.
German propaganda of the foulest and most awful sort swiftly made its appearance at Cairo. German agents (medical men in this case) we were afterward to learn, had gone among the women of the port, and advised them for their own protection to submit to inoculations that would armor them against the advent of the great thousands of soldiers. They were told the Australians would of a certainty spread a strange and deadly plague. In reality these agents inoculated the women with the most awful disease, and in this way laid a plot of destruction against our forces, which I am sorry to say met with some degree of success before the discovery of the infernal plan.
Moreover, German propagandists had corrupted countless of the proprietors of the small resorts where liquor and gambling were to be found, had instilled all the inhabitants and keepers of bazaars in the native village of Cairo with ideas of secret assassination of our men for gain. Also after the arrival of our soldiers these insidious workers did all they could to promote an enmity between the natives and the Anzacs. The result of this campaign was nearly as sinister as that of the inoculation of the women. Our men on leave were drugged and secretly murdered, their bodies made away with, with a skill that defeated all efforts at tracing the crimes. It is a fact that at least two hundred and fifty of the first division of Anzacs encamped at Cairo never returned to their regiments, and no trace of what had befallen them, which doubtless was most sinister, has ever come to our exact knowledge to this very day. So thoroughly had the natives been instilled with an enmity toward us that the atmosphere and conditions between us became intolerable. The natives assumed a surly and insulting aspect toward us, and we in turn, I presume, swaggered and frowned and treated them with growing sharpness. With the full extent of the villainy that had been plotted and achieved against us in the matter of afflicting hundreds of our men with horrible disease and of assassinating fully two hundred and fifty others, there came a night when resentment burst forth among a large company of the Anzacs and took the shape of a fierce, violent and deadly reprisal.