Item 06: Letters sent by Robert Christian Wilson to his family, 1918-April 1919 - Page 336
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[Page 336]
[Page only partly transcribed as it is a typewritten copy of previous pages starting at Page 315.]
22nd Dec. 1919 [1918]
I sent you a short note last week - now I'm up in Cairo once more I'll tell you about the trip up here. This is Sunday morning, a beautiful cool sunny day - just the ideal weather for a sight-seeing holiday.
I left the hospital on Monday crossed over the harbour in a little steamer (only a few minutes trip) and then came on through Port Said, to the Rest Camp on the beach, north of the town.
The initiating ceremony into the camp always amazes me - no matter how many times you have been there before, you must fall in the moment you arrive, in front of orderly room, and have the Riot Act read to you. This Riot Act consists of about 4 pages of standing Camp Orders, and as the Sergt who reads them has done so about three times a day for goodness knows how many months, he knows them pretty well off by heart, so when he begins to read them, he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and then pours out torrents of words, without pause, meaning, or rhyme, in a long endless flow until suddenly you hear "Shun! Dismiss" and you realize that