Some of the Australians and New Zealanders had already got the call, but we of the Light Horse still waited—growing more and more impatient every day. I have vivid recollections of a captain swearing. I have still more vivid recollections of a certain private's reminiscences. It was generally thought that he had spent some time in hell, or Booligal, so familiarly did he speak of the infernal regions. I remember his saying—but no, I will not repeat it.
Chiefly do I remember the riot. It seemed that something must be done to stir the authorities up; and some of the "hot heads" got up a riot in Cairo. They went into Cairo singing "There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night"; and sure enough there was. It was not meant to be quite so hot as it turned out. Things have a way of shaping themselves sometimes. Nobody could tell afterwards exactly how it all happened; but before the night was spent some houses had been burned down, some shots had been fired and some men had been wounded. There were some Australians, some New Zealanders, some Maoris and a few Territorials in it. And it all happened so simply. Some publicans and other sinners presumed to treat the Maoris as "niggers." This was too much for the New Zealanders, and they began to pull some of the furniture out of a public-house, and to make a bonfire of it in the street, the while the Maoris danced a war dance round it.
One or two other bonfires were started. The native police rolled up and kept the crowd back, one of the police inspectors remarking that it would be a good thing for Cairo if a few more of the "dens" were burned down. "I've been wishing for a fire among these rotten tenements for a long time," he said, "and now the fire-engines are coming, and it looks as if they'll be saved again!"
The fire-engine came clattering up the street. The soldiers raided it. In self-defence the firemen repelled the attack with the fire-hose. The soldiers renewed the attack and, reinforcements having arrived, captured the hose and turned it on the firemen, completely routing them. Then they cut the hose up—and the Maoris went on with their "haka."
But in the end, of course, law and order had to prevail. Other engines came upon the scene, escorted by a squadron of Territorial Dragoons. The soldiers cooled down. The fires were put out. There's a lot more about this battle of the Wazir, but I cannot tell it.
Not creditable, of course. Not quite the sort of thing they had been sent there for. But human nature is human nature, and a crowd of soldiers is a crowd of soldiers, and bad grog will make the best of soldiers bad, especially in Cairo; and the evil that's in men must come out of them as well as the good. Hence to call the Maoris "niggers"—well, who can blame the New Zealanders for resenting it, and who can blame the Australians for siding with the New Zealanders, or the Territorials for assisting their Oversea brethren, when we have Mr. Asquith's own word for it that "Who touches them touches us"? Not creditable!—but human nature—British brotherhood! And high spirits, and the chafing under the monotony of camp life in Egypt! Trooper Bluegum, at all events, long ago forgave them. The same men were among those who were to create for themselves and their country, in the words of General Ian Hamilton, "An imperishable record of military virtue." Many of them are no more. Maoris and all have given their lives cheerfully for their Empire and the sacred cause of Right. Let us remember their virtues and forget their faults.
There came a day when there was sudden movement in the camp. General Birdwood had arrived—one of Kitchener's "hard riding" generals, with a wonderful string of medals and decorations—and there were other "signs of the zodiac" pointing to our early departure. When at last, at the "Stadium," Colonel Ryrie announced to us of the 2nd Light Horse that we were to make ready, you could have heard the cheering miles away. The residents of Ma'adi, when they heard it, thought peace had been declared!
It was the arrival of our Australian wounded back from the Dardanelles that settled it. It was a wrench to leave our horses behind—the dear old horses that we petted and loved, the horses that were a very part of us—but it had to be done. When we saw our fellows coming back with their wounds upon them—when we heard of what they had been through—when we listened to their story of that wonderful landing on Gallipoli on April 25, and of the wild charge they made up the frowning hill—all of us, to a man, begged to be sent to the front as infantry! We were Light Horsemen, and we hadn't been trained as infantry, but it didn't matter—we were soldiers of the King!
I saw the Red Crescent train as it steamed in loaded with the wounded, and I went to the base hospital to see and chat with the men who knew now what war was—the men who had clamoured so impatiently for so many weeks to be sent where "the fighting" was, and then came back again to be nursed in an Egyptian hospital! Yet they were happy. They had "done their bit." They smoked cigarettes and yarned about their experiences. I watched the slightly wounded ones marching from the train to the hospital—an unforgettable sight. Most of them were shot about the arms or scalp. Their uniforms had dried blood all over them, and were torn about where the field doctors had ripped off sleeves or other parts to get at the wounds. As they marched irregularly along, one young fellow with his arm in a sling and a flesh wound in the leg limped behind and shouted out: "Hey, you chaps, don't make it a welter!"
Our men were just splendid in the fight. An Imperial officer who has been all over France and Flanders said that Colonel Maclagan's Australian Brigade was the finest brigade of infantry in the whole of the Allied armies. That was praise indeed. And I remember another fine tribute that was paid to them. "No troops in the whole world could possibly have done better than those magnificent Australian infantry. They performed the impossible. In the face of exploding mines and withering fire from machine guns, shrapnel and rifles, they stormed the hills and, with bloody bayonets, routed the Turks and Germans." That was a tribute the more valuable because it was not an Australian who spoke, neither was it an Englishman, but a Frenchman. It was the remark of a French naval officer who watched the landing of the Australian Division on Gallipoli. And when the whole tale was told the world saw how rightly our boys deserved all that was said of them.