I limited the term of service, and gave every soldier a furlough as soon as he was reported to be efficient. When the first contingent of 2000 men received railway passes to their villages, I was assured by the Cairenes that few would return, but every man returned punctually. I introduced a postal order system, and the soldiers remitted home a portion of their pay, 2½d. a day. Later, when Hallam Parr asked for six soldiers to go with him to the Sudan, his whole battalion stepped forward.
We drilled five days a week, for the Moslems kept Friday as their Day of Rest, and I insisted on Sunday being kept as such. My action was based on the firm conviction formed in India, twenty years earlier, from my intimate knowledge of natives, that, putting one’s own feelings aside, it is an error to allow any soldiers to believe that their officers are without Religion.
I worked from daylight to 5 p.m. every week-day, when I played polo three times a week, and on the other days lawn tennis, one hour a day being devoted to the study of the Arabic language. Being an interpreter in Hindustani the characters presented no difficulty, but my desire to learn Arabic grammatically was damped when I saw there were seven hundred irregular conjugations.
I kept myself by regular exercise in tolerable health, but in June slight attacks of fever became more frequent, and His Highness the Khedive gave me leave to proceed to England for two months. In the middle of July I left for Suez, to catch a homeward-bound steamer; Grenfell and the officers commanding units saw me off, and out of mistaken kindness forbore to mention there had been a case of cholera in the barracks at Abbassieh the previous night. When I got to Zagazig the stationmaster told me there were several cases in Cairo, so I telegraphed to the Khedive, that I should not be out of the canal for three days, and trusted he would recall me if the cholera became Epidemic in the army, adding that whether he telegraphed or not, if I were not satisfied, I should return from Port Said. I was intercepted, however, by a launch sent after me, shortly after we passed Ismailia, and finding a special train waiting for me, reached Cairo twenty-four hours after leaving it.
The Khedive and his Ministers went to Alexandria, and Sir Edward Malet, Valentine Baker Pasha, and I practically ruled Egypt during the Epidemic. Strong measures were necessary, for some of the Egyptian authorities had established a cholera camp on the Nile, immediately above the intake of the Cairo waterworks, and it was difficult to induce adequate sanitary arrangements amongst a people who are by religion, and by inclination, Fatalists. The losses in the army were not very great, and they had the inestimable advantage of attaching the Fellaheen soldiery to the British officer. The Egyptian officer, except in some few instances, did not show to advantage.
His Highness the Khedive returned from Alexandria without his Ministers when the cholera became serious, and calling at my house at six o’clock in the morning, asked me to take him over the hospitals. These were under Dr. T. Dyke Ackland, on whom fell the responsibility of dealing with the epidemic, for Captain Rogers,[259] the principal medical officer, had been recalled to the British Army for the emergency. The Khedive, whatever he felt, behaved well, but the senior Egyptian officers would not go near the hospitals, much less the patients, except with a surrounding of drugs, supposed to be prophylactics, and an Egyptian resented my rebuke for his sending a soldier still alive to the mortuary, saying, “He will be dead in a few minutes.”
The British officer not only nursed the cholera-stricken patients day and night, performing every menial service, but in many cases washed the corpses prior to interment. Lieutenant Chamley Turner, in spite of having only slight colloquial knowledge of the language, so endeared himself to the stricken men of his camel Company that several of them when dying threw their arms round his neck. He must have infused some of his spirit into his men, for General Brackenbury wrote, dated 4.2.85, “The Egyptian Company is doing invaluable service.”
When the Epidemic was nearly over, Turner[260] contracted the disease, and I had him brought to my house, where he soon recovered under the skilled attention of Dr. Rogers and the careful nursing of Walkinshaw.
From the cholera time, on, the Fellaheen soldier trusted the British Officer.[261]
By the middle of August the cholera had died out, and I went to England for two months, keeping up my study of Arabic on the voyage, assisted by Mrs. Watson, the wife of an officer whom I had got out as Surveyor-General, or Chief business man. His wife knew the language well, although mainly self-taught.