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[Page 47]
were allowed, by 8 oclock we were all on our way to Alexandria, & I'll bet this much that a finer body of troops never left Ale Cairo than the old 1st Div. every man was as hard as nails & trained to the hour I was one of the smallest men in our Battalion, that will give you an idea of what they were like, & every man was cocksure of himself, of being able to beat any man be he Turk or German, & frightened of nothing with legs on it, & that was the sort of spirit with which we landed. We slept most of the way between Cairo & Alexandria, for we were tired & sleepy, we arrived at Alexandria just before dinner, & our ship was waiting of us, she was the Headquarters boat & had all
the staff on her, "Minnewaska" was her name, she was a fine ship of about 16 000 tons, & they were busy loading horses, motors, guns, ammunition & etc on her.
We had a rotten place to sleep on her terribly crowded, all the boats were the same, Len & I slept on deck every night, it was beautiful on top, though it rained fairly heavy at times, the food was not of the best either, but no one growled, for this was what we volunteered for & so we put up with it, as best we could. All that day & the next we were busy loading stores & things they even put some motor cars aboard. On the 7th, the staff came aboard it consisted of Generals Bridges Walker, Birdwood Godley Car-