"Yes, sir," I answered.
"All right," he said; "you're posted to B Company."
That night, it appeared in orders that "Lance-Corporal Gallishaw has embarked with the battalion, and is posted to B Company for pay." The only comment the colonel made on the affair was to say to the adjutant, "I've often heard of men leaving a ship when she is going on active service, but I've never heard of men stowing away to get there." Thus I went to work in the orderly room; and in the orderly room I stayed until we arrived at Alexandria, Egypt, and entrained for Cairo. At Heliopolis, on the desert near Cairo, we went into camp. There I joined my company and drilled with it, and bade good-by to the orderly room and all its works.
Scene at Lancashire Landing, Cape Helles[ToList]
We stayed in Egypt only ten days or so to get accustomed to the heat, and to change our heavy uniforms and hats for the light-weight duck uniforms and sun helmets, suitable for the climate on the Peninsula of Gallipoli. The heat at Heliopolis was too intense to permit of our drilling very much. In the very early morning, before the sun was really strong, we marched out a mile across the desert, skirmished about for an hour or so, and returned to camp for breakfast. The rest of the day we were free. Ordinarily we spent the morning sweltering in our marquees, saying unprintable and uncomplimentary things about the Egyptian weather. In the late afternoon and evening, we went to Cairo. About a mile from where we were camped, a street car line ran into the city. To get to it we generally rode across the desert on donkeys. Every afternoon, as soon as we had finished dinner, little native boys pestered us to hire donkeys. They were the same boys who poked their heads into our marquees each morning and implored us to buy papers. We needed no reveille in Egypt. The thing that woke us was a native yelling "Eengaleesh paper, veera good; veera good, veera nice; fifty thousand Eengaleesh killed in the Dardanelle; veera good, veera nice."
About a quarter of a mile across the desert from us was a camp for convalescent Australians and New Zealanders. As soon as the Australians found that we were colonials like themselves, they opened their hearts to us in the breezy way that is characteristically Australian. There is a Canadian hospital unit in Cairo. One medical school from Ontario enlisted almost en masse. Professors and pupils carry on work and lectures in Egypt just as they did in Canada. It was not an uncommon thing to see on a Cairo street a group composed of an Australian, a New Zealander, a Canadian, and a Newfoundlander. And once we managed to rake up a South African. The clean-cut, alert-looking, bronzed Australians, who impressed you as having been raised far from cities, made a tremendous hit with the Newfoundlanders. One chap who was returning home minus a leg, gave us a young wallaby that he had brought with him from Australia. One of our boys had a small donkey, not much larger than a collie dog, that he bought from a native for a few shillings. The men vied with each other in feeding the animals. Some fellows took the kangaroo one evening, and he acquired a taste for beer. The donkey's taste for the same beverage was already well developed. After that, the two were the center of convivial gatherings. The wallaby got drunk faster, but the donkey generally got away with more beer. When we were certain we were to go to the front, a meeting was held in our marquee. It was unanimously decided that not a man was to take a cent with him—everybody was to leave for the front absolutely broke—"to avoid litigation among our heirs," the spokesman said. The wallaby and the donkey benefited. The night before we left the desert camp, they were wined and dined. The next morning, the kangaroo, bearing unmistakable marks of his debauch, showed up to say good-by. We were not allowed to take him with us, and he was relegated to the Zoo in Cairo. The donkey, who had been steadily mixing his drinks from four o'clock the afternoon before, did not see us go. When we moved off, he was lying unconscious under one of the transport wagons.
Although we took advantage of every opportunity for pleasure, we had not lost sight of our real object. We were grateful for a chance to visit the Pyramids, and enjoyed our meeting with the men from the Antipodes, but Egypt soon palled. The Newfoundlanders' comment was always the same. "It's some place, but it isn't the front. We came to fight, not for sightseeing."