Our disappointment in not being allowed to proceed straight to the front in France was somewhat mitigated by the news that we were to train and wait beneath the shadows of the mighty Pyramids at Cairo. On the ground where Napoleon, addressing his troops, reminded them that 'forty centuries looked down upon them' and awaited their achievements, we trekked through the sand, sweated through the hot days and shivered during the cold nights, as we camped amid sand which is always either very hot or cold. There was a hard winter's work for padres here who desired to do something to counteract the evil attractions of Cairo for the troops. The reality was, however, always tinctured with the romantic glamour of Egypt and the Nile.
There was Vieux Cairo—the ancient Forstad—with its undoubted earliest Christian Church; the place to which we can say with almost certainty that Joseph and Mary came with the Infant Christ. Wanderings amid the antiquities of this ancient place full of Coptic traditions, and an occasional mingling with the multi-coloured crowds gathering among the Bazaars[Bazaars] of the Monsky, somewhat relieved the tedium of evolutions amid the eternal sand of the Libyan Desert.
A hard three days' manœuvring was set over against the interesting fact that we fought our sham battles at Sakkara, the City of the Dead, and our Brigade signallers flashed or flagged their messages from the Step Pyramid—the very oldest building in the world to-day.
'Going down to Egypt' had the same dangerous fascination for us as for the ancient Israelites, and padres had to be modern Isaiahs, warning the men of the languorous seductions which Egypt in modern times, as in ancient, holds out to men of a sturdy race.
Then came the never-to-be-forgotten day when we marched out of our Mena Camp, headed by our bands—away from the sand of the desert, and on through the crowded streets of Cairo, singing, 'Advance, Australia Fair' and 'Good-bye, Cairo.' We were going to fight, and we were glad. We had left the back-block townships away beyond sunset for this very purpose: to strike a blow for Old England.
That we were going to strike a blow at the heart of the Turkish Empire made it all the more thrilling. Whether we would succeed or not we could not tell, but we knew that we were going to strike hard. No ancient crusaders ever felt higher enthusiasm than did we amid the marshalling of the armada of transports at Alexandria. Then, with Pompey's Pillar looking down upon us, we sailed away from the city of Alexander the Great, passed the Pharos and out to the blue Mediterranean.
Whither bound? We hardly knew, but in those days, when padres stood upon the higher decks and spoke to the men in their ranks below in the deep well decks of those huge transports, the romance of it all impelled them to call men to high endeavour and heroic faith. We had to 'do censor' on this voyage, and we found that the men's letters were surcharged in almost equal quantities with reality and romance. They complained that they had to sleep on an iron deck, eat iron rations, and, to crown all, some one said, 'We are commanded by a General called Iron Hamilton.' But they felt the glory of it, and displayed the spirit of adventurers.
With St. John's Patmos in sight, with its white buildings on the summit of the hill, we steamed on for Lemnos. Lemnos, the island to which, in Greek myth, Jove's son was hurled from heaven, in disgrace, and where the Greek army called on its way to the Trojan War, was beautiful to us after the hot sands of Egypt.
We manœuvred on shore among the most beautiful wild flowers, and we sailed in Mudros Bay around the formidable battleships[battleships] of a mighty allied fleet.
Those were romantic days for the padre. Everything one said was flavoured with the seriousness of last words and final exhortations. The last Communion service, and the last service on the huge flagship of the A.I. Force, the Minnewaska[Minnewaska], is something to remember. On April 11 the topic was 'Consecration.' 'And Joshua said unto the people, Sanctify yourselves; for to-morrow the Lord will begin to do wonders among you.' The lesson was the story of the preparation of Joshua's army for the crossing of the Jordan. Knowing how desperate was our enterprise, we girded ourselves for the attack, and whatever the result of our campaign may have been—and we shall not know that fully until the war is over—we can claim that we obeyed the word which said, 'When ye come to the brink of the water of Jordan, ye shall stand still in Jordan.' How many of our brave fellows on the brink of the water of the last Jordan stood firm on that bit of land we wrested from the Turk?