But what, perhaps, interested me beyond all else was the view which, on my return journey, I obtained from the summit of a hill, of the position of the Turkish guns at the back of Achi Baba. With my glasses I could see them perfectly plainly, and could actually make out the gunners as they served the guns. With a powerful telescope this would have made a most excellent observation station, as all the Turkish movements at the back of Achi Baba could be plainly seen from this Imbros hill.
When I left Headquarters at Imbros I took passage on a trawler which called in at Anzac, where the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps were dug into the ridges.
I had, of course, a good view of the position they held on the precipitous cliffs and hills which rose in successive sierra-like ridges from the very seashore, and I could then adequately realise the tremendous feat they had performed in gaining a footing on these heights against such a brave and well-armed foe as the Turks.
I had met the Australians before in March, when I had paid them a visit in their romantic camping-ground under the shadow of the Pyramids, and it was in the same month that I met, on the verandah of Shepheard's Hotel, in Cairo, the chief medical officer to the Australian Army, Surgeon-General Williams, whom I had met in South Africa and London some fifteen years previously.
Thinking that he would remember me, I sat down beside him and opened the conversation by saying: "Any chance of a billet with you, General?"
He looked rather blankly at me and said: "Not a ghost of a chance unless you are an Australian. Who are you anyhow?"
I then told him who I was, upon which his face lit up with welcome, but he would not believe that I could be the same man, and asked me to remove my headgear so that he might have a good look at me, as he said I had grown ten years younger.
"How do you manage to keep your youth?" he demanded.
"Oh," I replied, "it is easily done. An uneventful life and no worries," at which the General, knowing something of my travels and adventures, winked, ordered a couple of whiskies and sodas, and over these we had a long talk about things past, present and to come.
General Williams took me round the hospitals and kitchens out at Mena Camp, where we inspected the ambulances and other things under his charge, and I was much impressed with the completeness with which Australia had equipped the magnificent fighting force which she had sent to the aid of England.