"My real name," he said, "is George White, but on the regimental roll it reads 'White, George.'"
CHAPTER IX[ToC]
"FEENISH"
It must have been about the sixth week that I was in Egypt that one of the Australians came over to my bed and told me that my name was on the list of men to go to England by the next boat. I was allowed up for two hours in the afternoon; and when I got up I looked at the list, and found my name there. An orderly from the stores came in and asked me for a list of clothing I needed. He came back in about an hour with a complete uniform and kit. The sister told me that I was to go to England the next morning. At ten o'clock the next day I was taken out to the little clearing station in the square, and put in with a lot of other men on stretchers. An officer came around and inspected our kits. A little later a sergeant from the pay office gave each man an advance of twelve shillings. After that the loading began. A line of about twenty ambulances filed out of the yard and through the malodorous byways of Alexandria to the waterfront. Here we were put aboard the hospital ship Rewa, an old rocky tub that had been an Indian troopship before the war. I learned this from an old English regular in the stretcher next me. He had seen her often before, and had made a trip from England to India in her once. The Rewa was so full of men that the latest arrivals had to go on deck in hammocks. The thought of a trip across the Bay of Biscay as deck passenger on the Rewa was not very attractive, but our fears on this point were soon allayed by one of the ship's officers. We were not going to England on the Rewa, he said. We were going to Lemnos Island, and in Mudros Bay we should transship into the Aquitania. When we had cleared Alexandria Harbor, the wind had freshened considerably. All that night and the next day we pitched and rolled heavily. The second night, when we had expected to reach Mudros Bay, we were still twenty-four hours away from it. Canvas sheets had to be rigged above the bulwarks to prevent the spray from drenching the men in the stretchers on deck. The next day a good many men were sea sick, and it was not till the next evening that the storm abated. Even then it was too rough to get close to the big ship. We did try to get near her once, and succeeded in getting one hawser fast, but the wind and tide drove us so hard against her, that the captain of the Aquitania would take no more risks and ordered us off. We had to lay to all that evening, and the next morning. At noon the wind died down enough to begin the transshipment from the smaller ships. We waited while seven other hospital ships transferred their human freight, and then moved up near enough to put gangways between the two boats. The change was effected very expeditiously. We were soon transferred, and settled in our new quarters. I was in a ward with some Australian troops on the top deck. Board petitions had been run up from it to the promenade deck, making a long bright, well ventilated corridor. There was only one drawback on the Aquitania. The sister in charge of our ward did not like Colonials, and made it pretty plain. She was rather a superior person who did not like to dress wounds. We were to make two stops before we arrived in England, I was told; one at Salonica to take on some sick, the other at Naples for coal. The Salonica stop took place at night. We did not go into the harbor; probably it was not deep enough for the Aquitania. The sick were taken aboard outside. We came to Naples early one fine Sunday morning. As we went into the harbor, I could see through the window Mt. Vesuvius, smoking steadily. We were in Naples at the same time as the big Olympic, and the Mauretania, the sister ship of the Lusitania. It was the time that the Germans had protested that the British hospital ships carried troops to the Dardanelles on the return trip. The neutral consuls in Naples went aboard the Olympic and Mauretania that Sunday and investigated. The charge, of course, was unfounded. An Italian general and his staff came aboard our ship and were shown around the wards. He was a dapper little man, who gesticulated vehemently and bowed to all the sisters. The sister who did not like Colonials was speaking to him when he came through our ward. She was trying to impress him with the excellent treatment our wounded received. She pointed out each man to him, in the same way a keeper does at the zoological gardens.
"They get this every evening," she said, indicating the supper we were eating. "And what is this?" she said, looking at some apricot jam on a saucer on my bed.
"Apricot jam, sister," I said, then added sweetly, in my best society fashion, "We get it every evening." I might have told her that I had had it not only every evening, but every noon and morning while I was on the Peninsula.
"And what is this?" she said, pointing to the cup in my hand. "Is it tea or cocoa?"