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shopping streets, ride in rickshaws along the esplanades and gardens on the waterfront, and sip long cooling drinks at the celebrated "Galle Face" hotel. It was generally believed that our final destination was Egypt, though I had been told by a close friend, associated with the "Hororata's" Agents in Sydney, that we were going to England. This information proved correct, for on our arrival at Aledandria we were transferred across the jetty to the Royal Mail Line luxury liner "Aragon", which had accommodated General Sir Ian Hamilton's headquarters during the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign. As she already had a few hundred English soldiers aboard, and the Commanding Officer of Troops was a British Regular Army Colonel, she was a "wet" ship, over which the vote-catching Australian politicians had no authority. It was a very hot day and a few of our thirsty fellows, who had been on the "Hororata" for six weeks and had had nothing to drink but stewed tea and stale water, felt a bit gay after the first one-pint issue.
The "Aragon" zig-zagged her way through the submarine infested Mediterranean Sea to Gibraltar to pick up some homing "odds and sods" of the garrison, and then continued uneventfully on to Devonport on the South Coast of England. A lively band played felicitous tunes and airs as we moved into our berth, and a waiting train whizzed us smoothly through the verdant park-like countryside for a few hours, in the mild June sunshine, until we detrained at Salisbury Plains in Wiltshire. We then marched a few miles to occupy one of the fully hutted barrack blocks that had been originally built to accomodate the Canadian Expeditionary Force, before it went to France.
After a week of settling-in all hands were given four days disembarkation leave to visit relatives or to go up to see the sights of London. I took a room at the newly opened Regent Palace Hotel at Piccadilly Circus, and for company, joined up with two brother officers staying at the Strand Palace. We were young and unattached with plenty of spending money, and we set out to thoroughly enjoy all that London