Part 01: Alan Fraser Fry letters, 8th August 1914- 28 January 1917 - Page 160
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[Page 160]
Corps at Matarich, about 1 mile from our Camp here. The alarm was sounded in Camp, and inside 45 minutes there were thousands of troops lined up with full equipment, twenty four hours rations, and 50 rounds of ball cartridges. Pretty quick work, eh? Well, we were ordered to proceed to the Camel Camp. The niggers in charge of the Camels were all on strike for higher wages or something of the sort, and had left the Camels to look after themselves, with the result that they began to stray away, all over the place. To give you some idea of the size of the Camp, there are about 12,000 Camels there. We were ordered to fix bayonets and extend all around the Camp, and then drove all the natives at the point of the bayonet into a large compound. There people are very excitable, and it takes very little to cause a riot. They were very sullen when