CHAPTER FIVE

‘He Knows How to Make Soldiers’:

Preparing the 7th Battalion

AUGUST 1914–APRIL 1915

AN EXPEDITIONARY CONTINGENT was expeditiously organised. It was called the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). Its infantry division consisted of three brigades: one from New South Wales, the second from Victoria, and a third from the other four states. Command of the Victorian brigade was given to J.W. McCay. Talented and industrious, ambitious and irascible, McCay was not yet 50 but already had an impressive array of achievements to his credit as a teacher, solicitor, militiaman, and politician. This was in spite of his uncanny flair for alienating people unnecessarily.

On 14 August Harold Elliott was appointed to command the 7th AIF Battalion, one of the four battalions in McCay’s 2nd Brigade. Elliott, by far the youngest of the sixteen original AIF battalion commanders, had already been considering which officers he would like to have in any battalion led by him. He had even drawn up a provisional list. After being notified by McCay of his appointment, he quickly contacted the men at the top of his list. Among them was Walter McNicoll, headmaster of Geelong High School. ‘Look here Mac’, said Elliott, ‘I have been appointed to a battalion command — will you come as my second?’ ‘Certainly’, replied McNicoll.

Other militia officers approached by Elliott acquiesced as readily as McNicoll, but he was disappointed by the unavailability of some that he wanted. The territorial composition of the 7th Battalion influenced his selections. His unit had specific recruiting zones; some were familiar to him from his militia years (Essendon/Moonee Ponds and Parkville/North Carlton), but most were not. Concluding that comradeship and morale within his battalion (and, as a result, its proficiency) would be enhanced by maintaining pre-war associations between its officers and men as far as possible, he decided to incorporate these links into the unit’s internal structure right from the outset. Accordingly, the eight companies of the battalion were each given their own geographical affiliation. Volunteers coming forward from Brunswick and Coburg were to form A Company; enlisters from Parkville and North Carlton would belong to B Company; men from the Goulburn Valley and north-eastern Victoria would join C Company; from Essendon and Moonee Ponds, D Company; from Footscray, Spotswood and Bacchus Marsh, E Company; from Castlemaine, Kyneton and Daylesford districts, F Company; from Bendigo, G Company; and from Echuca, Swan Hill, the Murray Valley and north-western Victoria, H Company.

This arrangement ensured that his objective would be met as far as the rank and file were concerned, but what about the officers? Pursuing the territorial ideal would inevitably involve the appointment of officers he hardly knew, and he was acutely aware that the selection of appropriate officers was crucial to the ultimate effectiveness of his battalion. Elliott tackled this problem with characteristic decisiveness. He sent telegrams to the militia commanders of the areas militarily unfamiliar to him, asking each of them to forward a list ranking in order of merit the officers and NCOs volunteering in his region. Within 24 hours he had received some replies, had asked some officers from rural Victoria to come to Melbourne, and had started interviewing them. He became so engrossed in this process that he forgot a scheduled meeting with McCay, who was predictably irate (Elliott could hardly pretend he would have displayed equanimity himself if a subordinate had been too busy to remember an appointment with him).

Slightly more than half the officers selected by Elliott for the 7th were well known to him. He was especially pleased that four he particularly liked were eager to serve under him again — 31-year-old Williamstown engineer Jimmy Johnston, architect Geoff McCrae and the widely esteemed Henderson brothers, 22-year-old Rupert and 20-year-old Alan. Lawyer Charles Mason had been a lieutenant in the same bushmen’s unit as Elliott during the Boer War as well as a captain in the Essendon Rifles; schoolteacher Charles Denehy had been a lieutenant in both the pre-war 60th and 58th Battalions. Also from the 58th came W.L. ‘Birdie’ Heron, Jack Scanlan, Earl Chapman, Bert Heighway and handsome, strapping Claude Swift — each young, keen, unmarried second lieutenants who were leaving clerical jobs behind them. Other officers chosen by Elliott after years of close militia association with him included 28-year-old Alf Jackson, Longwood farmer Fred Tubb and 29-year-old bank clerk Bert Layh. It was a tribute to Elliott’s ability that all these men, who were most familiar with his capacity, personality, and methods, were very willing to serve under him in the perilous challenges of real conflict. The three members of the board of inquiry investigating the regrettable clash between Elliott and T.W. White — McNicoll, Layh, and Rupert Henderson — all accepted positions in the 7th.

The officers appointed to the 7th who had not served with Harold Elliott in a militia unit would at least have heard of him before August 1914. However slight their acquaintance beforehand, they soon knew him very well indeed. To lead E Company, the men from the western suburbs, Elliott chose Captain E.A. McKenna and two Footscray residents, 23-year-old chemist Les Blick and Irish-born Shannon Grills, an assistant factory manager. A 21-year-old university student, Bob Weddell, was placed in charge of F Company. Allotted to G Company were dentist Herbert Hunter, a renowned Bendigo identity who had been an outstanding athlete and footballer, and two other Bendigo men, 24-year-old clerk Stan de Ravin and 26-year-old lawyer Eric Connelly. That golden city was also represented in the 7th Battalion by Chris Finlayson, who became its adjutant. Elliott gave command of H Company to the town clerk of Echuca, Captain Ivie Blezard, who had enlisted (like Elliott) as a trooper in the Boer War; with Blezard in H Company were Lieutenants Charles Davey of Kerang and Denehy (then of Rutherglen).

While Elliott was busy choosing his officers, the hundreds of volunteers presenting themselves at enlistment centres around Victoria ensured that there would be no shortage of men for those officers to lead. To be eligible for the AIF these volunteers had to be between 19 and 38 years of age, in good health, at least five feet six inches tall, and able to achieve a minimum chest expansion of 34 inches. On 17 August Fred Tubb, a shortish extrovert who had already been notified by Elliott that he was to be the 7th Battalion’s transport officer, addressed about two dozen young men from Euroa. ‘Tubby’ (as he was widely known, though in physique he was the opposite) told them he had been authorised to recruit local volunteers for the AIF, and he wanted to give them some advice before they committed themselves. The war would be no picnic, he assured them; some would be returning disabled, some would not be returning at all. ‘It might sound awful’, he added, ‘but I feel I should warn you because you’re all so young’. ‘What about you?’ one of them countered. Tubb was frank: ‘I want the chance to win a Victoria Cross’. Besides, he added, ‘I’ve never been to England’ and ‘I’ve got no ties, I’m not worried’. A few of Tubb’s listeners were deterred by his sobering advice. The remainder accompanied him to the pre-embarkation training camp at Broadmeadows.

Colonel Elliott interviewed one of these Euroa lads, labourer Clarrie Wignell, and quickly sensed that the strongly built 16-year-old before him had lied about his age. The conversation, according to Wignell, went something like this:

‘How old are you?’

‘Nineteen.’

‘When were you born?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You don’t know? Surely you know.’

‘Well, when you’re a newborn baby you don’t know that.’

‘Don’t act like a newborn baby now, we don’t want newborn babies in the bloody battalion. Why can’t you tell me when you were born?’

At this point Wignell blurted out that his family was not well off, and he had been doing tough work from an early age; he was used to roughing it, he was handy with a rifle, and he could match anyone at swinging an axe or a pick and shovel.

‘Attention! Height?’

‘Six foot and half an inch’.

‘Weight?’

‘Thirteen stone.’

‘It’s not for me to say you’re a liar, you’re just as much a man as I am.’

So Clarrie Wignell was in, but his Euroa mate Billy Morgan’s interview with Elliott ended differently. ‘Sorry, son’, concluded Elliott. Morgan, bitterly disappointed, protested immediately: ‘you took my cobber and he’s nearly a year younger than me’. ‘Well, he’s a better liar than you are’, responded the colonel.

On 19 August Elliott’s unit, having reached about half its nominal strength, joined the other three fledgling battalions of the 2nd Brigade for an arduous march from Victoria Barracks to Broadmeadows. They were in motley clothes, their marching was primitive, and many of them found twelve miles of ‘dusty, foot-wearying trudge’ a gruelling challenge, but they were buoyed by the ovation they received from thousands of enthusiastic onlookers along the way.

The Broadmeadows training camp on first acquaintance was ‘a green plain rather high and wind-swept, with rows of pine trees and an old homestead’. A privately owned property of some 150 acres located about half a mile from the main road to Sydney, it had been offered by its owner to the Defence authorities, and was in the process of being rapidly transformed. The local shire had been trying unsuccessfully for years to obtain a decent water supply in the area; the army managed to have over four miles of pipe laid and water flowing within five days. A telephone connection was hastily installed, post and telegraph facilities were established, and even the nearest railway station a mile away was swiftly upgraded.

Elliott lost no time in getting down to the business of producing a different kind of transformation. His aim was to mould the hundreds of individualistic civilians under his charge into the makings of a cohesive fighting unit in a few short weeks. Addressing the 7th Battalion officers and NCOs shortly after their arrival at Broadmeadows, he declared that the raw material at their disposal was equal in quality to the essence of Cromwell’s famous Ironsides, ‘whose proud boast it was after fifteen years of service that during that period no enemy had ever seen their backs’. It was their task, he declared, to make the 7th as outstanding as the Ironsides. The notion that Australians were not amenable to military discipline was nonsense, he insisted. On the contrary, provided the reason for discipline was given and understood, they would submit to it eagerly. He assured them he would be imposing the strictest discipline, which would not only maximise the battalion’s proficiency but also, he believed, make the 7th Battalion second to none as a unit within the whole AIF.

He was as good as his word. His men began a rigorous training routine. They were up early for pre-breakfast physical exercise, often a jog-trot to the station and back. This was followed by a combination of drill, marches, shooting practice, manoeuvres, and lectures for the rest of the day and sometimes during the evening as well. Through it all their commander was a dominating presence and the toughest of taskmasters. Exacting and explosive, he exhorted them and exhausted them as he demonstrated by his every action that he regarded the proper preparation of the 7th Battalion for combat as an undertaking of the utmost importance. The battalion began to take shape and assume an identity of its own. It was allotted the colours brown and red (soon to be referred to as ‘mud and blood’).

Adverse weather accentuated the arduousness of the training regime. During long route marches torrential downpours drenched the battalion. Poor drainage and heavy pedestrian traffic turned the rich clay soil into a quagmire. Saturday 19 September ‘was a terrible day out here’, Geoff McCrae told his mother; ‘we were all soaked through and were ploughing through the rain and mud from nine in the morning until 4.30 in the afternoon’. With drying facilities inadequate, before long throat complaints were almost universal. Elliott himself had to go home to Dalriada for a weekend to recuperate. It was all too depressingly reminiscent of Langwarrin in 1900, but at least he could use his experience of that unhappy precedent to avoid making similar mistakes; he was certainly prepared to act decisively on issues affecting the welfare of his men. He firmly believed that his months as a private and corporal with the bushmen, when he had a real taste of what it was like to be at the bottom of the military hierarchy, were immensely valuable to him as a commander. ‘One learns exactly what the men have to put up with, and can learn to do things and the need for doing things for their welfare as one can learn in no other way’.

Those who joined the 7th Battalion had varying motives for enlistment. Some felt strongly that Australia was obliged to aid Britain, a sentiment shaped by educational influences, by social conditioning and in many instances by family links as well. Others who were in tedious jobs or unemployed were motivated more by a sense of adventure and the once-in-a-lifetime prospect of travel overseas. A proportion felt the need to impress or escape from particular women. Many made a spontaneous decision to be in it with their mates. Most were probably influenced by the prevailing wisdom — which Harold Elliott evidently accepted — that the war would not last long.

They came to the battalion from different backgrounds. When the captain of Melbourne Grammar enlisted, classes were suspended in his honour; the whole school swarmed down St Kilda Road to Victoria Barracks, and cheered as Billy Kent Hughes arrived in the first group of volunteers. After being accepted into the 7th Battalion, he soon impressed Elliott. Promoted to sergeant in E Company, Kent Hughes found himself dealing with mettlesome livewires from the industrial strongholds of Footscray and Williamstown, a world away from the rarefied, affluent ambience of Melbourne Grammar. Enthusiasm for the cause was no less evident in the western suburbs, where the ranks of ‘the Bulldog Company’ were filled ‘with great exuberance’. Kent Hughes handled the challenge of his new environment well. His company made him an honorary member of the Waterside Workers’ Federation.

While the 7th Battalion had its share of tough characters and hard cases, they were complemented by young men of uncommon idealism. Having promised his mother that he would say his prayers each night, 16-year-old Clarrie Wignell did so only after lights out with a blanket over his head, but the intimidating presence of worldly larrikins and ruffians did not deter 19-year-old Wangaratta postman Albert Coates from kneeling down in front of them to say his prayers before turning in on his first night at Broadmeadows. Very familiar faces to Elliott were Sergeant Jack West, a noted footballer who had played with George Elliott in the University team, and Ken Walker, whose sister Lyn was George’s girlfriend. Walker’s closest mates, Bill Elliott (no relation) and unassuming, absent-minded Ellis ‘Teena’ Stones, were among the numerous stalwarts of St Thomas’s Harriers Club in Moonee Ponds who joined the 7th Battalion. Another, Jim Bowtell-Harris, was to become one of the battalion’s best-known personalities, but his initial encounter with his battalion commander at Broadmeadows was anything but auspicious:

‘What is your name?’

‘Bowtell-Harris, sir’.

‘Hyphened name, eh? No hyphens in this battalion — your name is Harris.’

Morning roll-call on 25 August revealed that the 7th Battalion had reached (and in fact exceeded) its allotted numerical strength. It did so before any other battalion in the 2nd Brigade, largely because Elliott waived the stipulation that volunteers without militia experience had to be rejected. This instruction had caused difficulties and delays, which in his view hampered the 7th more than the other 2nd Brigade battalions as its recruiting areas were more widespread than theirs, and included regions where militia units had never existed. He therefore resolved to overlook it when evaluating volunteers who were suitable in all other respects.

When McCay found out about Elliott’s recruitment policy, however, he took a dim view of it. The brigadier directed Elliott to discharge everyone without the requisite experience; Elliott spiritedly defended his approach. Eventually they compromised. McCay would suspend judgment for three more weeks; if he could then identify the men who lacked the necessary experience, Elliott promised to discharge them. Meanwhile, as the men continued with their demanding training schedule, Elliott reminded them that the battalion was over strength. This was a powerful incentive: to be sent home unwanted in the atmosphere then prevailing was tantamount to disgrace. At the end of the three weeks Elliott paraded his battalion, and they marched past the brigadier. Afterwards McCay confessed, to his astonishment and Elliott’s delight, that he could not point to a single man whose lack of previous service was detectable. ‘What’s the use of our compulsory training scheme?’ remarked the brigadier, amazed that after only a few weeks he could not distinguish between volunteers with little or no pre-war training and men who had been trained for years. Again Elliott had a different view. It was that very scheme, he replied, that had produced the trained officers and NCOs who turned the men of the 7th into potential soldiers so quickly.

Civilians flocked to Broadmeadows on the designated visitors’ days. During the first Sunday that the camp was opened to the public some 20,000 visitors made the journey from Melbourne; the two extra trains made available became eleven, but even they could not cope with the demand. A week later there were 34 special trains and, according to some estimates, no fewer than 60,000 visitors. Among them was Sergeant Kent Hughes’s mother:

we started for camp at 9.30 in a taxi and lunched with Col. Elliott … about 30 officers and 4 ladies, we had actually flowers on the table but the tablecloths looked khaki colour. I sat next the Col. and liked him very much. We all had Irish stew.

When Kate Elliott’s recently married cousin Ina Prictor accompanied her to Broadmeadows one Sunday with Violet and Neil, the colonel was, as usual, absorbed and uninhibited with his children. They playfully scattered grass in his hair; he placed Neil’s tiny feet inside his boots.

These weeks of pre-embarkation training were punctuated by numerous farewell functions. Every Melbourne suburb, each country district, and many diverse institutions wanted to honour their particular quota of AIF representatives. Footscray council gave their volunteers a special send-off, but it did not quite go according to plan. ‘The lads cheered and booed through the pompous speeches like kids at a Saturday matinee, and then fell upon the eats and liquor, swept aside plans for a concert, and proceeded to chat up the girls.’ Elliott was not at that function, but did attend a special dinner at Ormond College, where MacFarland and a senior resident student, Keith Doig, paid tributes to the AIF’s Ormond men; Elliott, on their behalf, spoke briefly in reply.

He was also present at a memorable function for the 160 men from Essendon and district soon to depart. Nearly all of them were in the 7th Battalion; many had also belonged to the Essendon Rifles before the war. The Essendon Town Hall supper room ‘was beautifully decorated with flags, bunting and other patriotic emblems, and the tables were nicely decked out with the most tempting of eatables’. Each soldier was given a scarf, handkerchief, and pipe and tobacco (or, if not a smoker, a pocket book). The festivities included a ‘patriotic concert’, and there were a ‘good many encores’ as the ‘immense audience’ expressed its appreciation. The mayor made a speech, referring to Colonel Elliott in glowing terms, and asked the pianist to play ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’. The audience joined in enthusiastically.

Moved by this stirring tribute, Elliott spoke feelingly in reply. He offered his sincere thanks on behalf of the men and himself for the ‘magnificent reception and hospitality’. To have been chosen as a battalion commander was a great honour, he emphasised, and he hoped he would prove worthy of it. Interrupted at this point by a burst of applause, he proceeded to mention that parents of some of the ‘1023 boys’ under his command had told him they were glad he was their commander; he hoped when they came back those parents would still think so. Having asked the mothers who had entrusted young sons to his care to remember him in their prayers while the AIF was away, he assured them he would do his best to be a father to those lads until they returned. Many parents who were terribly anxious about their departing sons derived some reassurance from his heartfelt remarks, which they often recalled during the worrying months ahead.

Victorian AIF formations marched through central Melbourne on 25 September. It was ‘the greatest parade that had ever been seen’ in the city, enthused the Argus. In marked contrast to the march to Broadmeadows five weeks earlier, the impressive cohesion and discipline of the AIF units confirmed their readiness to embark. However, departure was delayed owing to concern about marauding German warships. For yet another week repetitious training continued and rumours flourished. At last, on 16 October, official word came that the 7th would be embarking in two days’ time. Next morning, which was Caulfield Cup day, roll-call disclosed a number of absentees without leave. After their return they were ordered to parade before Colonel Elliott. What he said to them was to be remembered with much merriment:

Never before have I seen such an array of horse-lovers. My interest in the animal has always been limited to using it for carrying me over distances I would otherwise have to walk. I have never been attracted to horse races, and much less to the duties a stable entails. I am glad to have discovered your attachment at so opportune a time, as it solves any difficulty associated with the care of the horses we are taking over with us. You can all expect to be called upon to act as horse batmen for the duration of the voyage.

On 18 October, after reveille at 5.00am, the 7th Battalion marched to Broadmeadows station, travelled by train to Port Melbourne, and was aboard the troopship it was to share with the 6th Battalion, the Hororata, by midday. Information about troopship movements was carefully censored, but sufficient knowledge of the battalions’ departure had spread to attract a sizeable crowd to bid them farewell. As the Hororata slipped away from the wharf on that sunny afternoon, with bands playing and onlookers cheering, there were surging and conflicting emotions on board. After their monotonous training and the uncertainty and strain of their long-postponed departure, it was a relief to the men to be actually going. ‘One and all were heartily tired of Broadmeadows and the surrounding country’, wrote Kent Hughes, ‘since every hill for miles around had been attacked and defended’ repeatedly. Mixed with this sense of relief was a heightened awareness that they were leaving loved ones and familiar surroundings that they might never see again. A temporary halt at Williamstown enabled final messages to be sent ashore by boat. Elliott, busy with a multitude of tasks, scrawled a hurried parting note to Kate:

Goodbye now my darling. Give a big kiss to each of my darling bairns. Don’t forget to write often and often even when you don’t hear from me because I will be lonely for news of my loved ones.

A week later the Hororata reached the convoy rendezvous of King George Sound near Albany at the south-western corner of Australia. The voyage had been favoured by pleasant weather and generally smooth seas, but with two battalions on board conditions were decidedly cramped. Elliott pronounced himself satisfied with the top-deck cabin he was sharing with McNicoll, but McCrae described the accommodation allotted to other 7th officers as ‘veritable dog-boxes’; meanwhile, the rank and file slept in hammocks, and ‘resembled sardines in a tin’. Exercise was limited to half-hour bursts of physical drill, undertaken daily by each company in turn, and an occasional boxing or fencing contest. Seasickness and inoculations were grudgingly endured. Gambling was sufficiently rife for Elliott to take preventative action. A more acceptable feature of the voyage was music: the battalion bands played for two hours each day, and there were three pianos, an organ, and a number of gramophones which were frequently in use. At least congestion was eased somewhat at Albany, where Major-General W.T. Bridges, the AIF commander, inspected the Hororata; seeing for himself how crowded it was, he arranged for a 6th Battalion company to be transferred to another ship. When Elliott heard about a report sweeping Melbourne that the Hororata had been sunk with no survivors, he sent Kate a reassuring telegram: ‘All well don’t believe any rumours Elliott’.

‘Very fine sight’, Elliott noted in his diary when describing his first impressions of the assembled convoy. It certainly was. The Hororata, which left King George Sound on 1 November, was one of 28 troopships conveying the AIF in three parallel columns a mile apart, with half a mile separating each ship from the one behind it; the Hororata was the eighth ship in the starboard column. On its right flank was the Japanese cruiser Ibuki, one of four naval watchdogs protecting the convoy from German raiders. Also on guard duty were a British armoured cruiser and Australia’s own modern cruisers Melbourne and Sydney. Behind the AIF transports another ten troopships carried the New Zealand contingent. The whole convoy was over seven miles long. The splendid spectacle of these columns of ships, proceeding evenly across the vastness of the ocean in perfect formation, provided a continuous reminder for everyone involved that they were engaged in a momentous enterprise. As the AIF’s last glimpse of Australia, the Albany coastline, disappeared from view, sentimental reflections gathered momentum aboard the Hororata. Harold Elliott was not immune, as he told Kate:

The first day out of Albany I was very lonely for you and my dear bairns, so I got out your photo and fixed it in my cabin. It is a great comfort to me … Every day I think of you and of our dear little pets … If you should never see your old man any more dearie you will at least be able to remember this, that during all our wedded life your old man was happier and more content than ever before in his life and he never found a single fault in you nor regretted for a single atom of a minute that he loved you and wedded you.

On the morning of 9 November, as the convoy was passing the Cocos Islands, it became evident that a German naval presence had been detected. Most suspected — correctly — that it was the Emden, a cruiser renowned for audacious exploits in the Indian Ocean and the main threat to the convoy. The Sydney left its protective post guarding the troopships and steamed away out of sight, while the Ibuki dramatically powered forward to place itself between the convoy and the enemy cruiser. ‘[We] noticed the Jap boat on our right flank start off at tremendous speed with columns of black smoke just pouring from her four funnels’, observed Elliott. The usual drills and lectures continued on the troopships, but most of those involved were wondering what was taking place beyond the horizon. Shortly after eleven o’clock came a stirring message from the Sydney, ‘Emden beached and done for’, which was swiftly circulated among the transports. There was universal jubilation that this menacing threat had been removed, and immense satisfaction within the AIF that an Australian ship had been responsible for the demise of a notorious enemy raider.

Elliott was pleased with the way his officers were getting on together. They were, as Geoff McCrae observed, ‘a very busy and happy family’, who entertained themselves with diverting banter at meal-times and in numerous other ways when duties permitted. McCrae, for example, was passing on the rudiments of engineering to Lieutenant Tubb during spare moments, and learning chess from the capable second-in-command of the 6th Battalion, Elliott’s friend Major Bennett. The officers’ camaraderie was particularly evident during the various ceremonies commemorating the crossing of the equator.

On 17 November the Hororata left Colombo, which Elliott described as ‘very picturesque’, and reached Aden eight days later. With the weather now hot and sultry, ‘the chief occupation’, according to Kent Hughes, ‘seems to be to sit and perspire’. ‘I have never perspired so much in all my life’, wrote McCrae, ‘each morning when I awake the bed and pillow looks as if a bucket of water has been poured over it’. The quest for congenial diversions in these oppressive circumstances led to an approach to Colonel Elliott for a lecture to the men on his Boer War experiences. This address, delivered on 27 November as the convoy made its way along the Red Sea towards Suez, was characteristically forthright. Elliott’s scathing criticism of some British units he had encountered in South Africa — one particular regiment, he recalled, was known as ‘the Scarlet Runners’ — was distasteful to at least one English-born member of the 7th Battalion.

A significant decision affecting the AIF was announced the following day. It had been intended to transport the Australian and New Zealand forces to England, where they were to undergo further training before being sent to the Western Front, but these arrangements had been altered. Instead, the men learned, they would be disembarking in Egypt. As this decision was digested, its implications were discussed and analysed. Aboard the Hororata, Elliott told Kate, there were

all sorts of speculations as to what it meant. The general conclusion come to was that the weather would be too cold for our men in England just now and we were to put the finishing touches on our training in Egypt and we would be in a central position from which we could be employed anywhere. It will seem strange to be amongst scenes where Julius Caesar and Anthony and Cleopatra and Nelson and all the old people fought and died.

The consensus on board the Hororata had, in fact, assessed the situation correctly. A Canadian contingent, as eager as its Australasian equivalents to make a wholehearted contribution to the British cause, had been sadly disillusioned by its miserable experience of inclement weather and inadequate facilities at Salisbury Plain. Conditions became so appalling that its ‘training’ degenerated into a struggle to stay alive. It was obvious to Australian representatives in London that Salisbury Plain would be disastrous for the AIF coming straight from the tropics. They told British authorities that Egypt would be much more suitable, and their urgent representations were heeded. Furthermore, since the convoy’s departure from Australian waters Turkey had entered the war as an ally of Germany. With Egypt under British control although nominally Turkish territory, the likelihood that Turkey would challenge Britain’s presence in Egypt now a state of war existed between them made it prudent for British strategists to station the Australasian forces there.

During the voyage Elliott wrote to Kate regularly. At times he missed her terribly — ‘I was most awful lonely for my wee sweet wife on those days’ — and longed to take her in his arms again, gaze into her ‘dear bright eyes and sunshine face’ and kiss her ‘dear lips and cheek and chin’. At such moments he found it comforting to have a photo of her to look at; now and again he gave it a kiss. In his letters he interspersed matter-of-fact accounts of shipboard developments with outpourings of intense affection:

Now Kit old girlie that’s just about all the news so what about a bit of lovemaking. Dear old girl will you please cuddle up nice and close … with your dear old loving arms about me and tell me how much you love me — ’cause you do love me you know something scandalous. Your dear old sweet face is smiling down on me as I write and the wee sweet bairnies too. It will be just about Xmas or New Year when you get this and I do with all my heart wish you a very merry Xmas and a bright and happy New Year … God bless you for all your sweetness and love to me. All my association with you has helped me to be a better and truer man and I hope I shall deserve to have had you for a wife and to have had the happiness of being your husband. My little sweetheart, you are a wonderful little woman and you don’t know it the least little bit. There is no one that ever I met that has your sweet unselfishness and grace.

Colonel Elliott and his men had a memorable day when the Hororata passed through the famous Suez Canal. The canal itself was an impressive feat of construction, and the men were intrigued by the soldiers from different nations guarding it, by the varied vegetation beside it, and by the people from unfamiliar cultures toiling to make their living near it. On 6 December the 7th Battalion was transported by train from Alexandria, the port of disembarkation, to Cairo, and then by tram to within a mile of their destination, Mena camp. ‘Very interesting journey’, remarked Elliott, delighted when McCay ‘specially complimented’ him on the battalion’s discipline. ‘Everything points to a considerable stay here’, he concluded after arriving at Mena, situated about ten miles from Cairo near the famous pyramids and the Sphinx. His men spent their first night on the desert sand in awesome proximity to these extraordinary structures, so powerfully evocative of ancient civilisations and mysteries.

Elliott was eager to explore the AIF’s new surroundings. On the day after his arrival he walked to the pyramids and climbed the biggest. He also inspected the Sphinx, various temples, and the work of an archaeological team from Harvard University. The following day he accompanied Bert Layh to Cairo, ‘a wonderful city’; they saw ‘magnificent dress-stuffs and jewellery’, and palatial residences like ‘Toorak mansions’. On 11 December, when the 7th Battalion’s training recommenced in earnest with a short march into the desert, Elliott was fascinated when he came across rich limestone formations from an ancient sea bed.

But his appreciation of these discoveries was outweighed by his abhorrence of local characteristics and customs. He was appalled by the cavalier approach to personal hygiene displayed by the Egyptians he encountered. They were ‘filthy in the extreme’, they lived in ‘hovels’ with ‘donkeys and camels and fowls’, they had no qualms about urinating ‘up against the walls everywhere’, and you had to ‘hold your nose for the stench’. Even a special experience like inspecting the pyramids was ‘marred by the filthiness of the Arabs and the consequent stenches’. Elliott was also scathing about what he saw as the Egyptians’ dishonesty and rapacity. Tourists had been swindled in Cairo for decades, and from the time Australian soldiers arrived in Egypt they were persistently harassed by petty criminals and unscrupulous scoundrels. Egyptians in general quickly acquired a notorious reputation within the AIF for untrustworthiness. ‘Take them all in all they are about the biggest thieves and cheats unhung’, Elliott pronounced within a week of his arrival. Also, though no prude, he was disgusted by the brazenness of prostitution in Cairo. ‘People’s hair would stand on end in Melbourne’, he assured Kate:

Can you imagine women sunk so low as to allow dogs and it is said donkeys to connect with them for exhibition. Yet if you go in certain quarters of this city great bloated black hags run after you and ask you to see Donkey and girl etc and leer at you. Can you imagine the police of any civilised place permitting such things. A black fellow followed me half a mile the other night wanting to take me to women. I told him I had no use for them. Then he said you like to see small boy with de girl. I believe this is one of the common exhibitions at the better class places. I refused. He then became confidential. You not afraid Captain English soldier see you — I tek you nice quiet place — nobody see you — nice French girl. I had to wallop him with my stick to get rid of him.

Not all Egyptians were scoundrels and pesterers who flagrantly fleeced travellers, but Harold Elliott’s perceptions were typical of the AIF generally. The pre-war focus on racial difference in Australia — the widely accepted White Australia Policy had been extensively debated in parliament and enshrined in legislation — accentuated the tendency of Australians to regard other races as inferior. In view of their own cultural heritage and the conduct of the Egyptians they encountered, it was not surprising that Elliott and his men reacted as they did. A small proportion, however, found the fleshpots of Cairo enticing, especially with recreational alternatives initially minimal. It was weeks before the 7th Battalion boxing stadium was constructed and Mena had its own cinema theatres. The stadium was erected by a 7th corporal, a builder in civilian life, and managed with entrepreneurial flair by Lieutenant Wally Conder. Launched as a ‘Stupendous Scene of Stoush’ with the enterprising Conder as chief spruiker and referee, its regular bouts provided popular entertainment and welcome revenue for battalion funds.

Elliott became indignant when hovering Egyptians trying to sell fruit or other merchandise disrupted a parade or exercise. He told them to go away; they ignored him or pretended not to understand, so he resorted to more persuasive measures. On 18 December he took the battalion out on a long march. His men ploughed steadily through the sand for four gruelling miles, with a trail of vendors struggling along behind in the dust, huge baskets on their heads, wondering when the battalion would stop so they could at last transact some business. When Elliott did eventually call a halt he arranged for one of his men who could speak Arabic to let them know that if they were not out of sight in half an hour all their goods would be confiscated. They left reluctantly. On other occasions when coercion was required he would suddenly activate his big black horse and, standing in the stirrups, would theatrically draw his sword, roar at the hawkers and gallop towards them — a display of intimidation that scattered the disrupters and amused his men. Before long it was noticeable that vendors left Elliott and his battalion alone, though they kept pestering other units. This contrast did not escape McCay, who, while repeatedly complimenting the 7th’s discipline, reprimanded the 8th Battalion commander for allowing his men to buy fruit while the brigadier was addressing them.

McCay selected the 7th to represent the brigade at the ceremonial proclamation of Egypt as a British protectorate (a procedural measure to rectify Britain’s uncertain legal status in Egypt), which occurred in Cairo on 20 December. Elliott regarded this as pleasing recognition for his battalion. He told his men it was an honour, but left them in no doubt he would have preferred some real action. The 7th left Mena before sunrise, and set off for Cairo — covering half the distance ‘in pitch darkness’ — to take up its allotted position lining a street. It was, concluded the colonel, ‘a very creditable performance’.

Ten days later the 1st and 2nd Brigades assembled in a corner of Mena Camp within sight of the pyramids for a formal review by Australia’s High Commissioner in London, Sir George Reid. His stirring speech impressed Elliott and many others who heard it:

I have seen some fine things in my time from Australia, but you are the limit … The youngest of these august Pyramids was built 2,000 years before the birth of Christ. They have been the silent witnesses of many strange events. Can they ever have looked down upon a more unique spectacle than this splendid array of Australian soldiers massed in their defence?

The march past afterwards was ‘a grand sight’, according to Tubb, who felt the 7th, with Colonel Elliott at the forefront ‘looking splendid’, marched ‘the best of the whole crowd’.

These formal occasions injected some variety into the battalion’s gruelling training routine. At least after Broadmeadows they were more hardened to it, but ploughing through ankle-deep sand and a cloud of dust under a scorching sun for mile after mile encumbered by heavy equipment was tough toil. Sometimes they stayed out in the desert on overnight exercises when all they had to keep the bitter chill at bay was what they carried on their backs. ‘Training was hard’, recorded a 7th private:

We would leave early in the morning out all day chasing bayonets over the sand return almost to camp in the evening. But not quite. [We] would take up an outpost position, dig trenches, take turns at standing to all night and off again into the Desert next day for a hard day’s gruelling and finish up with a 400 or 500 yards charge yelling like Dervishes.

‘There is little or no news to tell you’, Elliott informed Kate, ‘we go out and dig trenches in the blessed old desert and walk around in it and come home and go out and do it some more next day’. He encouraged his soldiers to sing while marching. ‘What about that song “Marching, marching”?’ he would call, trying to enliven a flagging company, and tired men would wearily respond:

Marching, marching, marching,

Always bloody well marching,

When we’re dead and in our graves

We will bloody well march no more.

The close mates who were ‘the three musketeers’ from Essendon — Ken Walker, Teena Stones, and Bill Elliott — were doing it hard along with the rest of the 7th. Writing to Teena’s mother, Bill claimed no other battalion was being trained as strenuously as theirs: ‘Pompey has been working us like the very deuce every night and only giving us enough time for sleep of a day then out for more work’.

As that letter indicates, Colonel Elliott had acquired a nickname. During pre-war days in militia circles he had sometimes answered to ‘Bob’, but his new sobriquet, derived from the champion Carlton footballer Fred ‘Pompey’ Elliott, proved more enduring. He did not initially like it, especially when local newspaper-sellers were bribed to approach his tent early in the morning and chant ‘Egyptian Times, very good news — death of Pompey the bastard’. But he gradually grew accustomed to the nickname, well aware that once it had become common parlance within his battalion — let alone beyond it — he had no choice in the matter.

His reputation as a leader was growing. A 25-year-old labourer in the 7th eulogised him in a letter home:

My colonel is the whitest man I know. I would follow him anywhere even to certain death. He is my ideal soldier, the best loved man in the battalion. God bless him.

His men grumbled now and again about his rigorous methods, but it was obvious to them that his aim was to mould the 7th into a first-rate combat unit. He ‘may be hard’, wrote one, ‘but he knows how to make soldiers’. (In some AIF formations there was resistance to the notion that superiors had to be ritualistically saluted, but Elliott claimed this was not a problem in units commanded by him because his men understood that saluting was simply a means to an end: without the habit of instinctive obedience they could not expect to become part of an effective fighting force, which was precisely why they had volunteered in the first place.) From their viewpoint the fact that he had won the DCM as a corporal was important; it signified that he had not only experienced real combat, but had also distinguished himself in it with conspicuous bravery. He clearly knew his stuff, and treated his responsibilities with the utmost seriousness. Whether or not his soldiers survived would partly depend on their superiors’ capacity, and they were glad their colonel was someone they could trust to make competent decisions under pressure. Moreover, he was absolutely straight, and incapable of deviousness: you knew where you stood with Pompey. They also appreciated the way he took a personal interest in them as individuals, even though he had over a thousand men under his command. ‘One of my boys a very fine young fellow Pte Lubke died the other day … from pneumonia’, Elliott told Kate in a letter from Egypt, ‘he was such a good fellow and as strong as a giant’.

Also instrumental in Elliott’s growing reputation was his personality. Numerous commanders tried to be exacting disciplinarians during the Great War, and ended up being despised as callous, sadistic martinets. But there was nothing austere or aloof about Pompey. He was a larger-than-life character, full of exuberance and vitality, with idiosyncrasies that appealed to his men and boosted their anecdotal repertoire. In physique and demeanour he was the epitome of a fighting leader. His face often gave the impression that he was ready to wage war at a moment’s notice, and he had a notorious habit of roaring indiscriminately at privates or company commanders if he felt they were performing inadequately. To be the target of one of his withering tirades was an unpleasant ordeal for even the hardiest souls. ‘Some of the men appear to be terrified to death when they come before me’ for misconduct, he confided; occasionally he could see their ‘knees fairly knocking together with fright’.

If someone else was the victim, however, it could be amusing to be an onlooker. Shortly after the 7th Battalion’s arrival at Mena he took his men to the pyramids for a short walk and gave them an hour’s sightseeing. But when the time came to form up again there were two men from F Company missing (they were still exploring the inside of a pyramid). ‘Captain Weddell’, bellowed Elliott in front of the whole battalion, ‘is there no discipline in your company?’ On another occasion, when some 20 men from C Company absented themselves from parade to visit Cairo, the colonel was furious: ‘Captain McKenna’, he roared, ‘where the bloody hell are all your men?’ And signallers on battalion exercises in the desert came to dread their colonel’s stentorian call from afar to ‘get off that bloody line’.

Part of Pompey Elliott’s distinctiveness was the mystique he created around his big black charger, Darkie. During inspections Darkie consistently seemed to demonstrate an astounding ability to detect even infinitesimal irregularities. He would draw the colonel’s attention to unshavenness, unsteadiness or improper attire by stopping, throwing back his ears, and stretching out his neck. In fact it was Pompey, an accomplished horseman, who was directing his well-trained steed by subtly nudging Darkie’s neck. He would then pretend that Darkie had spotted the irregularity. Many 7th men became convinced that the horse had extraordinary powers.

The most famous Pompey anecdote, and one of the most celebrated AIF episodes of the entire war, was the ‘hat story’. Elliott’s nationalistic outlook shaped his preference for the felt hat rather than a cap or British-style pith-helmet, which were then in use partly because felt hats were in short supply. At battalion parade one Wednesday morning he noticed that a particular private was resplendent in a newly acquired helmet, and galloped across to him. ‘My God, you look like a field-marshal’, he bellowed. ‘Get rid of it’. He turned to survey the assembled companies, raised himself in the stirrups, and announced that he could see too many helmets; every man in the 7th, he ordered, had to be wearing a felt hat at parade the following morning. ‘I don’t care where you get them, but you must all have one’, he declared, adding that those without would find themselves cleaning sanitary pans.

There are multiple versions of what happened next. According to an authoritative account from an eye-witness, Colonel Elliott concluded the parade, rode to his tent, handed his horse to his groom, and strode to the adjacent marquee housing the officers’ mess to have lunch. At the end of the meal he put his right hand down under his chair to collect his hat.

We all became aware of some violent reaction in Pompey; his hand moved in a vacuum — the hat was not where he believed he had put it. Jumping to the conclusion that this may have some connection with his last words to the battalion, he thought that some member of the mess was playing a joke upon him. Promptly he darted his hand under Major McNicoll’s chair, but the [major] got there first, and, pulling his hat out, satisfied Pompey that that was not the hat he was looking for. Then Pompey thrust his hand under Padre Hearn’s chair, but with the same result.

He loudly summoned his batman, Tom Stafford, who was directed to search his tent for the missing hat. Stafford reappeared and informed him that it was definitely not in the tent.

Pompey’s habitually ruddy complexion turned now to a blazing red. All members of the mess were ordered to stand at their places, and, having thus immobilised them, Pompey went from chair to chair inspecting each hat in turn. But Pompey’s own hat was not among them. Pompey’s next move was to order the Adjutant to fall-in the entire battalion in tent groups, each group in front of its tent. Every tent was to be searched and every hat examined … Pompey directed the search himself, wearing a cap.

An occupant of the first tent to be searched could not resist such a tempting opportunity. ‘What is that 7th Battalion man doing on parade without a felt hat?’ he demanded, imitating a sergeant-major’s bark. Elliott wheeled around angrily. ‘Who said that, Mr Heighway?’ he snapped to the nearest officer. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I’ve no idea’, replied Heighway (who conceded afterwards he did indeed have a pretty good idea). ‘Unless you quickly find out and parade him’, retorted Pompey, ‘you can regard yourself as under open arrest’. Heighway was not too concerned. Placing his officers under arrest from time to time was just one of Pompey’s renowned idiosyncrasies; indeed it was an occupational hazard for any officer commanded by him.

Pompey whirled away furiously to resume his extensive search, but did not find the hat. Realising he would be breaching his own order if he failed to obtain a felt hat in time for parade next morning, he hurried into Cairo hoping to acquire one. To his relief he did manage to get hold of a possible replacement, although it was too small and the khaki dye applied to it reacted with sunlight to produce an odd pink hue. By obtaining it he felt he had foiled the hat-snatchers, but there was considerable suppressed mirth in the ranks when he appeared at parade wearing this peculiar ill-fitting substitute and struggled valiantly to retain his dignity.

What happened to the missing hat remains a mystery. Since the back of Pompey’s seat at mess was near the edge of the marquee, it was certainly possible for someone outside to filch the hat by reaching in underneath his seat. Various identities were suspected. A 7th man on guard nearby admitted years later that he knew who took it, but refused to name the perpetrator. Some speculation apparently implicated Major Blezard, who had already told Elliott his order was unreasonable because there were simply not enough felt hats available; Blezard, a kind-hearted, popular officer, sometimes intervened when he felt his colonel’s exuberance needed to be curbed. However, while amused by this episode, he repeatedly denied any personal involvement, and he was inside the marquee at the time anyway. The most likely culprit was Private Bill ‘Sandy’ Marshall.

Why did Pompey’s exhaustive search fail to locate it? Careful burial in the desert sand was one suggested explanation; others claimed that it was quickly passed on to someone in the 6th Battalion. About a month later Kate Elliott in Melbourne received a hat purporting to be the missing one through the post; once again various identities were suspected of involvement in this exploit without anything conclusive being established. Partly because of these uncertainties, the story of Pompey’s hat became embellished by rumour and hearsay. Numerous versions flourished. It became a famous piece of AIF folklore, a development not unrelated to the parallel emergence of Pompey as one of the most legendary characters in the whole force.

In due course Pompey came to appreciate the funny side of the hat story, but the incident that amused him most during the AIF’s period in Egypt occurred when the 7th was marching from Cairo to Mena. The battalion happened to pass a group of hawkers and their tethered donkeys just as one of those animals, a male, was showing conspicuous interest in a nearby female of the species. The passing soldiers reacted to this spectacle with ribald laughter, which annoyed the owner of the amorously inclined donkey. He darted over to it and gave one of its ears a savage twist, whereupon the donkey’s desire deflated quickly. Shortly afterwards the battalion’s leading company, headed by its captain marching along in fine style with the senior sergeant just behind him, encountered a horse-drawn carriage containing two attractive women. One of them bowed and smiled to the captain, who gave an enthusiastic salute in return. Instantly a voice from the ranks was heard: ‘Twist his ear, sergeant’. Pompey enjoyed telling that story for the rest of his life.

Lord Kitchener, Britain’s Secretary of State for War, decided to combine the AIF and the New Zealand soldiers based in Egypt into a corps, to be called the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). He appointed one of his personal favourites, General W.R. Birdwood, as its commander. Short, slight, and ambitious, Birdwood had acute limitations in tactics and organisation. He was more intent on mixing with men under his command, whether in or out of danger. This characteristic was to win him considerable popularity, even though his contrived affability was ridiculed as ‘Birdie’s bull’. Elliott’s first impression of him was favourable enough: the ‘little chap’ was ‘very pleasant spoken indeed, quite genial and nice in fact’, he noted.

But shortly afterwards an incident during a tactical exercise led to a tense exchange between them. The 7th Battalion was ordered to take a particular hill, a manoeuvre observed by Birdwood and his senior staff officers including Brigadiers-General H.B. Walker and R.A. Carruthers. Elliott issued his orders in writing to his company commanders, who were about to move off when Carruthers intervened, asserting that an alternative method should be adopted. After the exercise was completed as Carruthers had directed, Walker, unaware of his intervention, told Elliott that the operation had been conducted unsatisfactorily and explained how it should have been performed. Elliott, predictably annoyed, produced his original orders, which showed that he had wanted to do it exactly as Walker had just outlined. ‘I then turned to General Birdwood’, Elliott later recalled, ‘and said “Sir, how can I tell what to do if one of your staff takes my battalion out of my hands, makes mistakes with it and then leaves me to be blamed in consequence?”’ Birdwood hesitated, according to Elliott, before replying that Carruthers should not have taken over the battalion, but the best solution to a tactical problem was a matter of opinion and Carruthers had for years led one of the best battalions in India. At the time Elliott felt that Birdwood ‘didn’t seem annoyed’ by his forthright protest, but he later revised that assessment.

Early in February 1915 the Turks made their predicted attack against British forces guarding the Suez Canal. Elliott received an urgent summons late at night:

I was just in the middle of a sound sleep when I was called by the Adjutant to say that the Brigadier wanted me so I hustled off down with Major McNicoll in my pyjamas and an overcoat. We got there all right and were told we were to march at 10.30 a.m. tomorrow morning to Cairo and there entrain for Ismailia on the Suez Canal where we will arrive about 10 p.m. Nothing but fighting kit is to be taken and as we hear that the Turks are advancing on the Canal it may mean fighting.

Only two AIF battalions were being dispatched; to be chosen as one of them was another gratifying honour for the 7th and its commander. When Elliott and his men arrived at Ismailia, they were told that they ‘would be called into the firing line at daylight for sure as the Turks were coming on’. This promised to be the real thing at last.

Elliott ordered everyone to be ready for action at a moment’s notice. This meant going to sleep with all clothes on, even boots. Up early next morning, even more animated and purposeful than usual, Pompey first visited the latrines, which consisted of holes in the sand. Unaware of his presence, the drowsy man alongside kept missing the target. ‘Damn it, man’, objected the colonel, ‘what do you think these holes are for — to piss into or piss out of?’ Pompey then went looking for the designated duty officer, who that day was Denehy, and found him sound asleep. Having abruptly ended his slumbers with a characteristic roar, Elliott saw the embarrassed lieutenant struggle into the trousers he was supposed to have slept in. ‘By God Denehy’, boomed Pompey, ‘it’ll be back to Australia for you, and without your bloody pants too’. He then caught sight of someone else who had not fully complied with his overnight directive. This unfortunate sergeant never forgot what followed:

I got picked up for not having my boots on. Doubtless, the whole Battalion had theirs off too, but they were able to get them on while I held the undivided attention of the C.O. for a few minutes. You can understand what that meant. We all knew Pomp, and on that occasion his ‘bark’ was positively ferocious.

Having whipped himself and his men into a fever pitch of anticipation, Elliott was frustrated when it proved to be all in vain. On their first morning at Ismailia they received reports from British aircraft that the Turks in their vicinity had fallen back some ten miles. Skirmishes continued elsewhere along the canal, but the AIF battalions were not engaged. There were several false alarms for the 7th: at one stage half a company was set to occupy front-line trenches that the Turks were rumoured to be approaching, but then word came that the enemy was 30 miles away and retreating rapidly. Elliott’s men had eight days of suspense; the men heard guns firing and saw distant shellfire through telescopes, but they did not fire a single shot themselves, and the closest they came to the Turks was having to escort some prisoners. It was all a great anti-climax. With the enemy firmly repulsed from the canal by other soldiers, Elliott and his battalion returned to Mena on 12 February.

Later that month the AIF’s conduct in Egypt became a highly controversial issue when distorted versions of a dispatch sent to Australia by the official AIF correspondent, Charles Bean, began circulating within the force. Tall, wiry, and bespectacled, Bean was humble and humane, principled and nationalistic. A journalist from Sydney, he was unknown to Elliott and many others who formed an unfavourable initial impression of him as a result of this episode. The dispatch in question, written at the request of General Bridges, was designed to prepare Australians for the distasteful reality that a number of undesirables were being returned home because of their escapades in Cairo. Bean’s sober assessment repeatedly stressed that only a tiny proportion of the AIF was involved in this misbehaviour, but this crucial point was obscured in the edited extracts that were cynically sensationalised.

Any suggestion that the AIF was harming Australia’s reputation was repugnant to many of its members. Geoff McCrae was incensed: ‘I would like to get my hands on that reporter’ who has secured ‘for us the abuse rather than the gratitude of our country’, he fumed. Major John Gellibrand, a Tasmanian orchardist of considerable intelligence, insight, and humour who had been appointed to Bridges’s staff by virtue of his training and experience in the British army, observed that there was ‘no denying that we left Australia with a lot of men that were useless to God and man and that we are in the process of getting rid of them’. It was also true, Gellibrand felt, that the Australians were remarkably willing to risk venereal disease in Cairo: ‘they don’t care what it is as regards looks, colour, age, health, they are “afflamés pour les femmes” and in they go and later in to hospital’. However, he wished his friend Bean had not written the contentious article.

Elliott agreed. For some time his frustration with the misbehaviour of several 7ths had been eroding his pride in the battalion. ‘It is just scandalous’, he told Kate,

the way a few men are going on getting us a very bad name with everybody. They get on the drink and go with women and get disease and cheat the nigger cabdrivers … I am out of all patience with them. They go down to Cairo and stay there piggishly drunk for two or three days and we have to send men for them and they fight them and knock them about shamefully.

Accordingly, ‘I am sending back to Australia this week three or four wasters I am sick and tired of punishing and who are no manner of use to us at all’. Nevertheless, ‘with the exception of a few bad eggs’, he wrote, ‘the men have in the face of tremendous temptations placed before them behaved wonderfully well’.

It was only a very very few out of the total number who played up and by writing home as [Bean] did a great many people will believe everyone was playing up here … Some of the men were very angry and wanted to catch Mr Bean and tar and feather him. It was a great pity it was ever sent.

A particular grievance arising from Bean’s dispatch prompted Elliott to involve himself directly in the controversy. Bean’s article singled out men wearing the ribbon denoting service in South Africa as disproportionately prominent among AIF wrongdoers. Bitter protest meetings of aggrieved Boer War veterans ensued in Egypt and Melbourne. They had been ‘grossly libelled and were naturally very angry about it’, explained Elliott, who was prominent at the Mena gathering and an office-bearer in the South African Soldiers’ Association (Victoria). ‘I soothed them as best I could and told them I was taking steps to get redress’.

Elliott submitted an official request to McCay asking for a detailed statistical analysis to be made, in order to establish whether Bean’s ‘charges … against soldiers with South African service’ could be sustained. Referring this request to Bridges, McCay stated he could ‘see no objection … to exact data being obtained’, but Gellibrand, who had served in the Boer War himself (although in the British army), advised Bridges to reject it. Statistics could not be conclusive, Gellibrand contended, because some men wore the South African ribbon without entitlement; besides, to collect the data — presumably for publication — would not be conducive to proper discipline. In due course McCay received an official reply from Gellibrand that the question of defending the character of soldiers in the Australian division was a matter for Bridges alone, and the ‘suggestion that official steps should be taken to collect information for unofficial publication is not approved’. Bridges, having asked Bean to write the article in the first place, clearly wanted to nip the disaffection it had produced firmly in the bud. Former Boer War soldiers at Mena were organising a gathering which Bean had agreed to address, but it was cancelled after Bridges intervened. ‘The General’, Bean wrote, ‘was absolutely opposed to the meeting’. Another of the measures Bridges took was to rebuke Elliott for his involvement. According to Elliott,

I was summoned to attend before General Bridges with General McCay. The former soundly reprimanded me. I insisted, however, on standing my ground, and said that as we felt aggrieved we ought to have the matter investigated. In the end General Bridges came to see my point of view, and he promised to see if he could do what I asked. Nothing however so far as I ever heard was done for us.

Concerned his battalion’s image had been tarnished by the reaction to Bean’s dispatch, Elliott did what he could in private letters home to repair the damage. ‘Katie you have no idea of this city’, he emphasised, assuring her in three successive letters how proud he was of his soldiers.

The men I have under me are, taking them all round, the finest lot of fellows you could raise anywhere in the world. I work them very hard indeed. Marching and drilling or digging trenches in the heat and dust which rises round you like a choking fog. You must stand up for my boys Katie.

Elliott also wrote to J.F. Henderson, the former mayor of Essendon:

In point of fact, the behaviour of the Division here … was, in my opinion, exemplary. Capt. Bean stated the cases of misconduct were confined to about one or two per cent. Judging from my own Battalion … this is exaggerated, as I find, on working it out, that the percentage of cases of gross misconduct is under ½ per cent.

After outlining the extenuating circumstances in detail — ‘the vilest concoctions are sold to the troops as genuine liquor’ — and providing an account of the battalion’s trip to Ismailia, Elliott reaffirmed that the overall ‘behaviour of the men … has been exemplary and their work in the field has received the highest praise from the Brigadier’. He added some particular reassurance for Essendon people. Apart from a hospitalised corporal,

all the Essendon boys are in splendid health and with hardly an exception have gained weight, and their parents and friends would be delighted with their robust appearance.

This letter was published in the Essendon Gazette on 29 April. By then many Essendon lads were far from robust.

On the last day of February the men of the 3rd AIF Brigade left Mena for Alexandria, where they were to embark for a secret destination. Elliott was informed that his battalion and the rest of the 2nd Brigade would soon follow. As at Broadmeadows, however, they had to endure a frustrating delay. They had to be ready to depart at short notice and were keen to go, but had to put up with more of the training grind as the weather deteriorated. As well as more heat and more flies, the approach of summer brought fierce sandstorms, reducing visibility and morale while plastering everyone and everything with grimy grit. ‘To-day is as hot as Hell with a gale blowing in from the desert’, McCrae told his sister; ‘the air is as thick as peasoup with dust, everything is covered with it’. Within a fortnight he was finding the conditions even more trying:

The training this week has been most strenuous more so than at any other time and such weather to carry it out, heat and blinding sand storms. My eyes were all silted up and my mouth so parched that I often lost the power of speech. I had to suck pebbles to make my tongue pliable.

Like other AIF units toiling in the desert since December, the 7th Battalion became infected with discernible staleness. ‘We are all heartily sick of the sand and dust of this place’, wrote Elliott, ‘and the men are losing interest in their training’. Two days later they endured a dreadful sandstorm, their worst yet.

The remaining AIF units at Mena paraded on 29 March for an inspection by the newly appointed commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Sir Ian Hamilton. He singled out the 7th Battalion for special praise. ‘You have a very fine regiment’, he told Elliott. ‘I congratulate you’. For Elliott, who had not been feeling well, hearing his men complimented by a distinguished general for being ‘wonderfully steady’ was the best possible tonic: ‘The Colonel was tremendously pleased’, a 7th signaller noticed. Five days later, at last, came the order to move that Pompey and his men had been yearning to receive. They were delighted. ‘Well we are on our wanderings once more’, Elliott notified Kate. ‘We have seen the last of Mena Camp, thank heaven for that, and before dawn we will have seen the last of Cairo, and three times thank heaven for that’. They would hardly have felt so buoyant if they had known what destiny had in store for them.