I had Mr. D. Gye, who was lent to me from the Egyptian Ministry of Finance; Messrs. Carver and Maclaren, expert bankers and cotton-brokers; and the two brothers, Messrs. C. and I. Rolo, whose business house is known not only in Egypt, but also in the greater part of the world.
I was, indeed, lucky in getting such good men who loyally seconded me in everything and quickly mastered the details necessary for the running of the Corps; nor did they spare themselves during those four weeks of slavery which we together put in while getting the men ready for active service.
In addition to these British officers, I had, as I have already stated, eight Jewish officers. One of these, Captain Trumpledor, had already been a soldier in the Russian Army, had been through the siege of Port Arthur, where he had lost his left arm, and had been given the Order of St. George (in gold) by the Czar for his gallantry and zeal during that celebrated siege.
Among the N. C. O.'s and men I had every conceivable trade and calling; highly educated men like Mr. Gorodisky, a Professor at the Lycée in Alexandria, and afterwards promoted to commissioned rank; students of Law, Medicine, and Divinity; mechanics of all kinds, of whom I found the tinsmith the most useful. Even a Rabbi was to be found in the ranks, who was able to administer consolation to the dying and burial rites to those who were struck down when death came amongst us before the enemy in Gallipoli. I also discovered among the enlisted soldiers a fully-qualified medical man, Dr. Levontin, whom I appointed our surgeon after having obtained permission to form a medical unit.
Through the kindness and practical sympathy of Surgeon-General Ford, the Director of Medical Services in Egypt, I soon had a hospital in being, with its tents, beds, orderlies and sanitary section.
Altogether we were a little family unit complete within ourselves.
I divided the Corps, for purposes of interior economy, into four troops, each with a British and Jewish officer in command; each troop was again divided into four sections with a sergeant in charge, and each section was again subdivided into subsections with a corporal in charge; and so the chain of responsibility went down to the lively mule himself—and, by the shades of Jehoshaphat, couldn't some of those mules kick!! Sons of Belial would be a very mild name for them.
One of the first things to be attended to was to find a suitable place upon which to train the men and mules. I eventually secured an excellent site at Wardian from Brigadier-General Stanton, then commanding at Alexandria. Here we pitched our tents and went into camp on April 2nd, 1915.
It was no light task to get uniforms, equipment, arms, ammunition, etc., for such a body of men at short notice, but in a very few days I had my men all under canvas, my horses and hundreds of mules pegged out in lines, and the men marching up and down, drilling to Hebrew words of command.
Never since the days of Judas Maccabæus had such sights and sounds been seen and heard in a military camp; indeed, had that redoubtable General paid us a surprise visit, he might have imagined himself with his own legions, because here he would have found a great camp with the tents of the Children of Israel pitched round about; he would have heard the Hebrew tongue spoken on all sides, and seen a little host of the Sons of Judah drilling to the same words of command that he himself used to those gallant soldiers who so nobly fought against Rome under his banner; he would even have heard the plaintive soul-stirring music of the Maccabæan hymn chanted by the men as they marched through the camp.