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THE BIG FIGHT


[Illustration: Captain David Fallon, M.C.]




    THE BIG FIGHT

    (_Gallipoli to the Somme_)

    BY
    CAPT. DAVID FALLON, M.C.

    [Illustration]

    NEW YORK
    W. J. WATT & COMPANY
    PUBLISHERS




    Copyright, 1918, by
    W. J. WATT & COMPANY


    PRESS OF
    BRAUNWORTH & CO.
    BOOK MANUFACTURERS
    BROOKLYN, N. Y.




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER                                PAGE
        I. FROM AUSTRALIA TO THE FRAY         1
       II. FROM AUSTRALIA TO THE FRAY        15
      III. GALLIPOLI                         35
       IV. THE GHASTLY LANDING               48
        V. HOLDING ON                        64
       VI. GIVING UP GALLIPOLI               79
      VII. COMPLIMENTS OF THE KING           97
     VIII. AN INTERMISSION                  106
       IX. NO QUARTER                       113
        X. TRAPPING SAPPERS                 126
       XI. SPOTTING                         143
      XII. “RAZZLE DAZZLE”                  157
     XIII. MOQUET FARM                      167
      XIV. SPIES                            185
       XV. “WOODFIGHTING”                   201
      XVI. THE PLAY SIDE OF WAR             220
     XVII. THE RAT IN THE NIGHT             233
    XVIII. THE WORST ORDEAL                 248
      XIX. BLIGHTY                          274
       XX. HONORED BY THE KING              287
      XXI. THE GRAY MOTHER                 298




THE BIG FIGHT




CHAPTER I

FROM AUSTRALIA TO THE FRAY


When great historians with their learned pens shall come to set forth
the complete story of the most sweeping and horrible war the world
has ever known, I figure they may perhaps have need of such evidence,
information and material as a man like myself can give. I mean a man
who has been through the red hell of the vast conflict in places where
it has flamed most fiercely, a soldier who has been eye-witness of its
superb heroisms, its stupendous tragedies, scientific marvels, has
undergone its tense emotional and psychological experiences, bears
on his body its wounds, has seen at first hand with the amazement
all civilization has felt, the cowardice, bestiality, utter moral
abandonment to which a nation may fall in a mad dream of the conquest
of the world.

My name is David Fallon. I am of the County Mayo, Ireland. And I’d
ask your pardon for a word or two by way of boasting in stating that
my ancestors for a pretty-long journey back into history, have always
figured in the man-sized battles of their generations. My father, a
naturalist, rushed away from gentle scientific pursuits in 1870 to bear
arms for France against the Prussians. And it isn’t only because I’m
Irish that I fought to get into this present big fight--and I did fight
to get into it--but for the pertinent and additional reason that it was
in France father met Mlle. Sarah Voltaire who not very long thereafter
became Mrs. Fallon.

And small wonder, with my boy’s mind stirred so many an evening by the
exciting stories of the Franco-Prussian battles my father and mother
would tell us of in the glow of the old library fireplace, that I had
no trouble electing the course of my life. I left the University
of Dublin to enlist in the British army. I joined a Northumberland
regiment, Nov. 19, 1904, and the military examiners were not at first
quite so enthusiastic about the performance as I was for I offered
them no Hercules. I was then only eighteen years old, a little under
medium height and slim as a whalebone. A weighing machine as far as I
was concerned escaped with the small effort of marking one hundred and
ten pounds. But I was sound of eye, tooth, blood and heart and so they
cordially handed me my uniform--even if they did have to trim off the
sleeves of the tunic a bit.

It is only fair I should say for myself that I was a rather good
boy--that the temptations besetting youths in the army have never
left their marks on me. Not, believe me, that I was a sanctimonious
kid--a good many miles away from that. But I was lucky in having a
keen love of athletics and a pride of achievement in many branches of
sport. There’s nothing like such a disposition to keep a boy clean and
straight. Soccer, Rugby, swimming, wrestling, running--the opportunity
for such games and contests was constant in the army and made me
devoted to military life.

And boxing! Good heavens, the whalings I took! But by the same token,
the whalings I handed out! There is no use my telling myself that
just about here I should be content to hide my light under a bushel
somewhat. I’ll not do it. The fact is I rose to the dizzy splendor of
champion featherweight of the British Army in India.

Just a few words more in order to place myself at the time when the
vast war began. I saw brief, uneventful service in China, then spent
years in India, took part in many of the “hills scraps,” sporadic
uprisings of the mountain tribes, dangerous and exciting enough
encounters we regarded them then, petty memories now; stood before
Lord Minto, then Viceroy, in Calcutta, 1908, and received from him the
Indian Frontier medal, was promoted to sergeant-major and with the rank
of staff sergeant major was detailed to the Royal Military Academy
at Dunstroon, New South Wales, as instructor in athletics, general
physical exercises, deportment and bayonet drill. This was my station
when Germany began its brutal attack upon its neighbors.

And let me say right here that while in any event Australia would have
made a sturdy response to Britain’s call, what Germany can put into its
long-stemmed, china-bowled pipe and “smoke it,” is that were it not
for the appalling, cowardly, barbarous crimes committed against the
defenseless--the women and children of Belgium, there would never have
been, as there has been, such tremendous outpouring of fighting men
from splendid Australia; 400,000 of them out of a population of men,
women and children numbering 5,000,000! All volunteers, you understand?
It is the volunteer record of the war--not forgetting Canada’s mighty
showing of 550,000 out of a population of 7,000,000!

It was not until Germany gave atrocious evidences of her disregard
of humanity, not until its army had stalked in its giant size, a
red-stained, moral idiot, through little Belgium, crucifying old men
and women and children to the doors of their homes, ravishing girls
and women, murdering the parents who tried to protect them; not until
this enormity of degeneracy had passed into the history of mankind, did
Australia take fire.

I know because at the very beginning of the war I was sent out to
Sydney and Melbourne as a whip for enlistment--made scores of speeches
daily in halls, parks, street corners and other public places. My
hearers were many and they were earnest and thoughtful but deliberate
as well. Enlistments came and numerously but not with anything
approaching a rush. Your prospective soldier debated a good deal with
his own personal interests, before he signed up.

But after Belgium! The crowds I addressed took the arguments for
enlistment away from me--made the talk themselves, swarmed to join.
Social ranks broke completely and almost instantaneously. Everybody
flocked to the army--artists, actors, lawyers, merchants, clerks,
larrikins, miners and the men from the vast, open places of Australia.

[Illustration: “British blood is calling British blood”]

Brothers are these last in every degree of character to the American
and Canadian miners, ranchers, trappers, cowboys; they are big, lean,
brave, boyishly chivalrous men, shy of women but adoring them, willing
to play romping dog any old time to win the smile of a child or the pat
of its little hand.

It must stand as one of the most picturesque features of the war--the
great distances these men traveled to the centers of population to
offer their services to avenge the slaughter of the helpless in Belgium
and to fight for the honor, prestige and life of the Gray Mother of the
Empire.

Take for instance, John Wilson, gold prospector. He came out of the
wilderness, fifteen hundred miles to Sydney, to join the colors; four
hundred of it on horseback, one hundred of it literally hacking his way
through a dense, trackless forest of giant gum and eucalyptus trees
until he got to Bourke, whence, once a fortnight, a train leaves for
Sydney. Thousands and thousands of John Wilsons made their way to the
cities.

And from the distant islands of the Archipelago--Samoa, Fiji, Cocos,
Madras, when the news of Germany’s infamy seeped into the men far in
the interiors--the traders and planters in oils and nuts, the hunters
of birds of paradise--they came out through the swamps, paddled their
way on jungle rivers laboriously but tirelessly, determinedly to the
coast and put themselves aboard the first ships obtainable. There
occurred at this time a great shortage in crews for these ships, so
that some were threatened with being held up for days or weeks for lack
of men. Many well-to-do patriots, amply supplied with funds to meet
the expense of a trip in the first cabin, signed up as stokers, seamen
or deck-hands in order to expedite the journeys from the islands to
Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne or other coast communities where they might
join the army.

And the larrikins, the hooligans, “hard guys” of the cities,
gangsters, youths and men of lives abandoned to drink, drugs and other
vices--Germany’s unspeakable cruelty in Belgium even stung such as
these out of their indifference. In the early days of enlistment we
had managed to win precious few of this class to the service. The
majority of them had been sullen and derisive to our appeals to join
the colors.

“Wot’s all this flaming war about, anywye? Blast the blooming war, I
ain’t got nothin’ to fight about.”

That had been the characteristic response.

But the piteous images of children with bleeding, severed throats, of
tiny human bodies dismembered, of decent girls and women subject to the
foulest acts of vicious cowardice, sent the larrikins to us seething
with rage and resolved, as it was especially hard for men of this sort
to resolve, to accept the strict discipline of army life for the chance
to spill the blood of the horror-makers of Europe.

As to these same larrikins, if you please, I would like to set down
some more. Scrubby they came to us, most of them, pallid, undersized,
some of them wretchedly nervous from drinks, drugs, under-feeding, bad
teeth, all manner of irregularities of life due to poverty, due to
vice.

But, “by the living God that made” them, once you’d repaired
them--fixed their teeth, fed them, exercised them, made bathing instead
of a drunk a daily habit with them, once, in short, that you’d properly
set them up and, excuse the emphasis, but they made the damnedest best
soldiers of the lot.

Not that the professional men, business men, open-air men who went
into the ranks were not as heroic. A hundred incidents of the splendor
of bravery that men of all classes displayed crowd my memory to take
swift, sharp issue with the idea. But you see the larrikin--the
designation used to be one of contempt with me but is something pretty
close to affection now and I should say with several other thousands
of officers as well--comes to you with the devil’s own experience of
hard-knocks. He knows hunger, thirst, the misery of cold, of pains and
aches he has no doctor to allay. And I would point out that one of
these boys who has survived such conditions with a physique left good
enough to get him into the army, must have started life with the flesh
and blood make-up akin to the steel armor-plates and entrails of a
dreadnaught. So when you take him and give him only half a brushing-up,
the readiness of his response would (may I borrow the expression of an
Ally?) certainly jar you. His face gets pink, his chest sticks out, the
sneer he wore becomes a smile, the contemptible trickery he used to
work turns to good-natured, practical jokes. He is childishly amazed to
find that his comrades--the man who was a lawyer at home, or the other
who was a tradesman or the very wonderful person who was a well-known
feature in vaudeville and even--Gawd blime me! his captain likes him.
And once he believes that--knows it and feels it then (another draft
on an Ally) you’ve “got something!” The very gang training he has had
when he banded with his pals to fight and cheat the law, that gang
spirit with all its blind devotion is at the nod of his officer. He’ll
go to hell for you even when he knows there is not much or any chance
of coming back, and if all of his kind, whether out of Whitechapel, the
purlieus of Canadian cities or the slums of Australia who have done
that very thing of going into hell and not come back, might be called
on parade it would be a big procession. Yet not of grief-stricken or
agonized men but they who walk with fine, clear, steady eyes, and
countenances wonderfully cleansed.

To move a little ahead of that day in a then fast-approaching October
when the first twenty-thousand of us sailed away to get into the big
muss, I’d like to tell a little story of the only larrikin I know of
who fell flatly down on his job.

They had made him, to his fierce disgust, the Lord high keeper of a
carrier pigeon. He was a person who wanted to get into the fight--Anzac
for Boche, yes, two Boches or three. But here he had been made
custodian of the carrier pigeon. He had never had a chance at a Boche.
He must trail his officer at the rear of charging men. He must have the
pigeon in its little box ready, so that should the officer command, the
pigeon could have a neat little message as to reinforcements or success
tied to his little leg, be released from the box when he would shoot
up straight as an arrow above the roar and smoke of battle and home
his way to the rear, dropping into a box at the commandant’s trench
or dug-out station and when he dropped into the box causing a very
sharp toned little bell to ring--a tone so sharp as to cut through the
thunder of guns.

Well, one night on such a charge the officer missed his larrikin and
not long afterward the pigeon for whom the larrikin had so long been
valet, plopped into his little box at the commandant’s dug-out, making
the sharp gong clang incisively. The battle was roaring fearfully, but
the commandant got the ring, retrieved the pigeon, slipped the little
message roll off its slender leg, spread the message, swore first and
then laughed.

“What is it?” his aide asked eagerly.

“I should,” said the commandant, “have him arrested and shot, but I
don’t think I will.”

“Who?”

“Capt. ----’s larrikin.”

“Why?”

“Look at the message he’s sent by the pigeon.”

The aide read a message written in the heat of the engagement, but with
the stencil-neatness that larrikins acquire in the military schools:

“I am tired of carrying this dam bird and have gone into the fite.”

            No signature.




CHAPTER II

FROM AUSTRALIA TO THE FRAY (_Continued_)


That carrier-pigeon soldier had my sympathy for I had undergone his
same sensation of exasperation at the very beginning of things. This
was when I heard back in August, 1914, that because of proficiency
as physical instructor and drill master, it was the intention of my
superiors to keep me at post at the Royal Military College at Dunstroon
in New South Wales--keep me there to fit other men to go into the
fight. I am no bloodthirsty demon and I am no brother to the Hun, but
having been a professional soldier all my life what could you expect me
to be but hopping mad when it would appear that I wasn’t going to get
in the greatest fight of history, when it looked as if all of the huge,
smashing fight I would see would be from the side-lines? Surely that
would be a great deal like asking a prize-fighter to accept a job as a
dancing master!

Well, I was Irish enough to battle for what I considered my rights.
I kicked strenuously. These kicks got something of sympathy from my
immediate superiors and so found their way higher until finally I was
in actual correspondence in the matter with Mr. Pierce, Australia’s
Minister of Defense. To him I set forth my case vigorously and often
and if he was, perhaps, somewhat amused at my insistence he was just
enough to take into consideration the good points I offered for myself,
my long service, my Indian Frontier medal, and in the end, to accept
my own estimate, that I would be of greater value handling men on the
actual front than being school master to the rookies at home. There
were among the professional soldiers, I further pointed out to him,
older men as able as I in training men and who had families dependent
upon them, whereas I was not then thirty years old, and possessed no
close family connections who would suffer materially if I should go the
way that so many splendid, brave officers and men of my country and
of France had already traveled--to the hospitals, the German prison
camps or those rough-and-readily builded, nobly impressive, shell-swept
graveyards which had come to existence in France.

Now, perhaps, had I been clairvoyant, had I been able to see ahead what
was shortly to come--the savage, awful experience in Gallipoli, the
murderous, weary days and nights in Flanders and the Somme, the long
suffering, the tremendous scientific ferocity of it all, well, perhaps
I might not have tried so hard to bring the Minister of Defense to my
way of thinking. And, yet, while ducking the appellation of hero as I
would duck a Boche bomb, after all, I think that with present knowledge
of what comes to a man in this great war and what can come to him, I
would still have tried for my chance to play my part in the great game.
What soldier worth the name would not?

Well, soon enough there came a day that found us--the First Division of
the Australian Expeditionary Force--on our way. We had no clear idea
of whither we were bound. We thought for the most part that we were
going straight to the fighting in France. There were thirty transports
in all. My own crowd, about twelve hundred strong, were aboard the
_Themistocles_, a converted White Star Liner that formerly traveled
between Australian ports and Aberdeen, Scotland, a goodly-sized ship
she was of 13,000 tons. From every other port of size in Australia
other troopships had come laden. At Sydney the entire thirty were
mobilized and with the Australian fleet comprising some of Britain’s
greatest dreadnaughts, a complement of Japanese destroyers and a French
cruiser or two we set forth on fairly smooth seas.

At all the ports where the populace got hints of the time of sailing
of the ships there were great demonstrations and likewise impromptu
demonstrations of liveliest enthusiasm met us whenever we appeared
parading on the streets, to say nothing of the crowds that came to
cheer us at drill in our camps.

For by October, Australia had come to know how tremendous and
frightful a war Germany had planned, how viciously and hatefully
Germany had resolved to strike at the very life of the British Empire
and Australia began to realize that if the British Empire went under,
she herself would eventually have the Hun at her own throat.

It wasn’t only the news of the mammoth operations which had started in
Europe that brought this realization. Things had happened “at home.”
The German propaganda secretly, maliciously taking advantage of a
democratic country’s open hospitality, had effected bomb outrages, and
worked insidiously to bring about strikes in the coal and iron mines
and strikes on the railroads, had worked the same despicable “below the
belt” tactics in the Archipelago as she has in America. And the cables
were constantly bringing news of fresh, cowardly outrages upon the old,
and the women and the children of Belgium!

The firmness of Australia’s premier, the effectiveness of Australia’s
police in its cities and of the Government’s secret agents as well
(once the German propagandists had revealed their hands) soon
began securely to tie these same hands of the promoters of German
frightfulness. But the people by this time had been worked to a
towering rage and as we started away in our troopships, great crowds
in the cities were riotously asserting their resentment. They wrecked
scores of German shops, battered them into ruins and put them to the
torch.

With none of us knowing that Gallipoli was ahead we settled down to
make our ocean voyage. Where--we didn’t know at the time it was to
take us, but we did make it as enjoyable as might be in crowded bunks
and where we were forever touching elbows on the jammed decks. Men
never sailed on an expedition of war in better spirits and greater
confidence. The regular soldiers and amateur soldiers were about evenly
divided, but the amateurs were swiftly coming into line in physical
fitness and expertness in drill. Still there were some funny incidents
due to the novelty of the life that many of our men were leading. As
for instance, a little deck sentry, whom I approached one day and who
looked at me and said: “Are you an officer?”

“Can’t you tell that from my uniform?” I said, nodding toward the
sergeant-major’s chevrons on my arm.

“Well, then,” he said, suiting the action of the word, “I suppose I
will have to chuck you a blooming salute.”

We got together for all kinds of athletic fun--wrestling, potato and
wheel-barrow races, running races, but principally the sport was
boxing. Then there were serious-minded men who liked the sports all
right, but organized a sort of debating society. There were no lack of
interesting principals for this organization. There were professors
from the Australian universities, Captain Knyvett for example, who had
been the professor of psychology at the University of Brisbane, and
there were scores of his class. The debating club discussed everything
from Sanskrit to how to fry an egg or bayonet a Boche.

One of two great excitements of our journey was furnished by “Bushy
Bill,” a reckless larrikin of Melbourne. Bushy declared one evening
a few minutes after dark that he could do something that would stop
the whole fleet. We asked him what his little notion might be, but he
declined to tell. He said, however, that he was willing to wager a
pound that he could succeed in his threat. Somebody took him up and the
instant he did so “Bushy Bill” put up his pound note and also pressed
into the hand of a friend all other money and valuables that he had
in his pockets and without another word, hopped over the taffrail and
into the sea. Naturally the cry went up immediately of “Man overboard!”
Noisy signals were exchanged between ships of the fleet, searchlights
began to play widely in all directions, and afterward we learned that
in every other ship of the fleet, where like ourselves everybody
was on tenterhooks in expectancy of a raider’s attack, the _Emden_
possibly, orders were swiftly signaled for the ships to deploy. The
_Themistocles_ stopped and backed. Meanwhile, two soldiers had gone
over the side for the rescue of “Bill,” believed to have been suddenly
stricken with insanity. Following the two men who plowed through the
waves to his rescue, a boat was lowered.

Bill was all laughter and excitement when he was hauled aboard,
enthusiastically claiming to have won his bet, which was promptly paid,
but then Bill did some prompt paying. This was in the way of entering
on a six-months’ sentence in the brig, which held him for weeks also in
the guard house when our division got to Egypt.

Only the next day came a more thrilling event. This was when our
wireless told us that the depredations of the vicious raider, the
_Emden_, had been brought at Cocos Island to a swift end by the
_Sydney_.

Of course, there was tremendous rejoicing. On all the boats, at all
the “parades” (the assembling of the soldiers for afternoon drill),
the news of the sinking of the _Emden_ by the _Sydney_ was “read out.”
Commanders made no effort to stifle the cheers that arose.

One of the boys composed a parody on “Tipperary” to celebrate the
event, which we sang with greatest vim and vigor all the way to
Gallipoli and afterward. It was worded this way:

    “It’s a long, long way to Cocos Island,
              It’s a long way to go,
    It was there the _Sydney_ met the _Emden_,
              And made old Kaiser Bill swear,
    It’s a long, long way to Cocos Island,
              But the _Sydney_ boys got there!”

You can imagine that aboard this crowded ship, with men of all types
and character, and with all the rough play aboard, that it would not be
just the sort of a place for a girl. Yet we had one aboard. We didn’t
know it for some time after we were out, because little Betty Grainger,
in devotion to her sweetheart, had not only cut off her long, golden
locks, but had deliberately roughened her hands with toil, the more to
make good her disguise as a boy. Somewhere she had secured a uniform.
In those days the uniforms were of all manner of irregularities;
anything in a color and shade of khaki would serve. The very style
of military uniform belted with a skirt effect of the coat and loose
riding breeches would enable a girl to successfully disguise herself.
Betty did until one night when the men were playing a romping game
of “tilt the cart,” wherein your idea was principally to upset your
neighbor by a quick grasp of the legs and a heave of him over your
shoulder. When an unsuspecting rookie grabbed Betty and sought to
“tilt the cart” she uttered a most unmanly scream. The men gathered
around to further “rag” this effeminate boy when Betty gave further
evidence of her real sex by bursting into tears and scratching their
faces. And then “Long Jack” Kennedy, of Melbourne, suddenly sailed
into the men surrounding her, forgetting the camouflage that Betty
sought to enact, picked her up in his arms and faced the crowd with an
outburst of oaths. That settled it. Betty, who had registered as George
Grainger, was known for what she was. But even the authorities of the
ship felt no bitterness toward Betty. She was given over to the care of
a company of nurses aboard the _Themistocles_, and tried very hard to
make herself useful, but because of the deception she had practiced the
commander ordered her put off at Perth.

We had a short stop and walk around Colombo and then at Suez. Four
days later found us in an even stranger environment for Australians.
We had landed at Cairo--the first Australian Expeditionary force,
part of General Birdwood’s Division which besides our contingent,
comprised the 29th English Division (regulars). The Zion Mule Corps, a
detachment of French troops, four regiments of Ghurkas, several native
Indian regiments and the Indian Supply and Transport corps. Although
no efforts were made to put up barracks or permanent buildings, it
was soon evident that we were to be kept in our Egyptian camp for
some period of time. The magnitude of the commissary arrangements,
the settlements of the regiments into a general plan of a large and
permanent encampment, made this only too plain. We had all been hoping
and cheering for our advent to France. At this time we were, as I
believe, merely held by Lord Kitchener to further our training. For the
conquest of Gallipoli--that red hell of disaster--was not in the books
of our commanders.

German propaganda of the foulest and most awful sort swiftly made its
appearance at Cairo. German agents (medical men in this case) we were
afterward to learn, had gone among the women of the port, and advised
them for their own protection to submit to inoculations that would
armor them against the advent of the great thousands of soldiers. They
were told the Australians would of a certainty spread a strange and
deadly plague. In reality these agents inoculated the women with the
most awful disease, and in this way laid a plot of destruction against
our forces, which I am sorry to say met with some degree of success
before the discovery of the infernal plan.

Moreover, German propagandists had corrupted countless of the
proprietors of the small resorts where liquor and gambling were to be
found, had instilled all the inhabitants and keepers of bazaars in
the native village of Cairo with ideas of secret assassination of our
men for gain. Also after the arrival of our soldiers these insidious
workers did all they could to promote an enmity between the natives
and the Anzacs. The result of this campaign was nearly as sinister as
that of the inoculation of the women. Our men on leave were drugged
and secretly murdered, their bodies made away with, with a skill that
defeated all efforts at tracing the crimes. It is a fact that at
least two hundred and fifty of the first division of Anzacs encamped
at Cairo never returned to their regiments, and no trace of what had
befallen them, which doubtless was most sinister, has ever come to our
exact knowledge to this very day. So thoroughly had the natives been
instilled with an enmity toward us that the atmosphere and conditions
between us became intolerable. The natives assumed a surly and
insulting aspect toward us, and we in turn, I presume, swaggered and
frowned and treated them with growing sharpness. With the full extent
of the villainy that had been plotted and achieved against us in the
matter of afflicting hundreds of our men with horrible disease and of
assassinating fully two hundred and fifty others, there came a night
when resentment burst forth among a large company of the Anzacs and
took the shape of a fierce, violent and deadly reprisal.

The men secretly collected, armed themselves with revolvers, secured
paraffin and oil torches, and some even took up bombs.

They rushed through the native section of the city especially among
its disreputable resorts, and did their utmost to destroy it utterly
by the flames of their torches, and where resistance was met, did not
hesitate to use their fire-arms and bombs to kill. It was a night of
horror in Cairo. But the crimes against us had been more terrible than
the revenge. This summary and deadly action discredited the secret
German agents and their influence and brought about from the natives
a subserviency and desire to propitiate the Anzacs equal to their
attitude of enmity before. It was a drastic measure that was taken, but
under the circumstances, it may be left to the judgment of the reader
as to its justification.

There was intensive drilling in our cantonment, called Mena Camp,
near the Pyramids of Gizeh, but just the same we found time for the
indulgence in many sports, especially horse racing, camel and donkey
riding, hunts for buried treasure among the sacred tombs of the
ancients, and one party of the boys really returned to camp with a
genuine mummy for a prize.

But nevertheless, life became monotonous and we were all anxious and
alert for an opportunity to show ourselves in the fighting. It was
coming soon enough, though we didn’t exactly know it then. But we
realized that action was soon to begin for us when 10,000 men--500
of my own attachment aboard the _Euripides_, set sail under a convoy
of twenty war ships, including the great _Queen Elizabeth_, _Prince
of Wales_, _Tiger_, _Triumph_ and French boats in the early part
of April, for Lemnos Island in the Greek Archipelago. The physical
aspects of this