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[Page 45]
so all steam was put on & we arrived on the scene but another ship had got there first & picked up some of the lascar crew but the ship had gone down anyway
we arrived safely & got on board an Ambulance Train bound for Cairo in good spirits, but our spirits were damped on arrival at Cairo as more ambulances were waiting & we were put into No 3 Hospital for a week or ten days & then boarded again & passed out to join the Battalion again which after being at Zeetoun for a week I joined up the Battalion at Moascar on the Desert after a long ride in open trucks, we stopped at Tel-El-Kebir for lunch & then went on again & as the Battalion was on its way back we waited 3 days, & when they came in we went back to our old companies again, this was the month of March 1916 & on 17th March St Patricks Day we left Moascar for Alexandria en-route for France.
we got on Board a fine ship & we arrived at Marseilles on March 25th & got in a Troop train at 9-30 pm for along journey of two days & three nights, but before going on the Train the people of Marseilles asked that we should march through the streets & as we had been on the boat about 8 days we did not mind, only that the Cobble stones in the French streets are not too good for the feet that had got used to the roads of Egypt. But the people of Marseilles gave us a good reception & threw flowers to us & called out Les Brave's Australiens
We stopped at several places on the long journey from the south of France to the North & the people seemed to be greatly interested in us wearing the Australian Hats, we must have been about the first Aussies they had seen that way