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[Page 4]
Egypt
26.7.15 – Disembarked inside breakwater (Port Suez) at about 9.30 a.m. With a squeaking and grinding of wheels we moved out into the desert … the land through which we travelled appeared to be thoroughly irrigated and exceptionally fertile. Passing through huge palm groves, fields of maize and other cereals, I was sensibly appreciative of the industry shown by the inhabitants in their attempt to turn the arid desert to some use. We arrived at Heliopolis at about six o'clock.
27:7:15 – Reveille at 5. Helipolis, I find, is regarded by the natives as a Holy Town. What a mixture of humanity is here! – Arabians, Soudanese, French, Italian, Swiss – in fact, all the polyglot crowd of Northern Africa. What a shrill cacophony greets our ears – the bargaining natives swarm round us with their goods and exhort us to buy at extravagant prices. As we sit at breakfast, small Arab boys, dirty and ill-clothed, cry for "bachsheesh" and grovel and scramble in the dust for cigarette ends.
Cairo
31:7:15 – Visited Cairo during afternoon. This Hell or [on] earth, alluring and repulsive in its vice, crime and tartuffism, cannot be described here. Enough to say that prostitution, beastiality, drunkenness and crime are its chief characteristics. All the sinister temptations lurk here to catch the unwary. Sordid and debauched, Cairo is a pestilential cesspit, a creator of evil, and a destroyer of souls.
1:8:15 – How wonderful is the fascination of the place! Though nauseating beyond description, something draws you on, and so the Master Fiend finds plenty of victims. His greedy talons are about everywhere.
12:8:15 – I write by dull candle light in the dark shades of our tent. Around me my comrades earnestly discuss the chances of the future and their serious faces and talk alternately merry, happy-go-lucky, and lurid in its expressiveness, betray their determination to carry things out with a big heart and to the end – "Do or die" is our motor.
13:8:15 – Rumours and rumours of war. The whole camp is seething with excited expectancy. "Off on Sunday" is The General thing.
16:8:15 – Entrained at Zeitoun – embarked on s/s "Saturnia" – left Alexandria about 9 p.m.
At Sea
18:8:15 – This morning I am struck by the extreme calm and beauty of the blue Mediterranean, and how peaceful a scene it must be to the roaring torment of war which is being raged not many miles ahead. To-day we are at rest "on the calm bosom of a summer's sea" – to-morrow, aye, to-morrow, perhaps the dread torpedo will send us to the bottom unwarned. A great risk, but how great is the spirit of our troops. Happy and debonair, they sing like so many larks on a bright April morn and their hearts are big and strong.
Lemnos
19:8:15 – Arrived at Lemnos at daylight – a hive of shipping – warships, troopships and merchantmen.
21:8:15 – This morning I have counted over 100 ships at anchor in the Bay – Mudros Bay, as it is called. It appears from the ship to be a circular bay of good proportions. The shore line is mostly tenanted by the military … the bay forms an excellent base.
Left Mudros at 5 p.m. for Gallipoli on s/s "Osmanieh". Arrived at Anzac at about midnight. Long before our arrival we could distinctly see the flash and hear the roar of the big guns fired from the warships off shore. It was a clear moonlight night, we were "all lights out" and we sped along the surface of the moonlit sea like a black phantom of the night. Quite