As Star of Victoria, accompanied by Runic and its surly complement of reinforcements, ploughed on through the tropics, the first letters from Harold Brentnall, dental mechanic turned stretcher-bearer, were arriving at the humble family home in Nicholson Street, Brunswick. Like hundreds of others in the First AIF, he was struggling to describe the amazing sights they were seeing in the Land of the Pharaohs to those sitting around the kitchens of inner-suburban cottages and homesteads in the bush.
The first convoy had begun assembling in King George Sound off Albany in September 1914. Sailing was delayed for over a month before the ships set out on 1 November, with orders to sail via the Cape of Good Hope to Britain. But the course for this first fleet changed due to developments elsewhere, including the suppression of a small Dutch revolt in South Africa which might have involved the aid of Australian troops. Then, with the removal of the German raider Emden, the route was clear via Colombo and Aden and on to Europe through the Suez Canal. But Turkey had decided to side with Germany. Suddenly, the canal itself would be threatened. Charles Bean speculated: ‘News of war being declared by England and Russia on Turkey … shall we be stopped in Egypt?’
Bean’s surmise was right. The official reason for the diversion was because of the need for a new training ground for the Empire’s troops, as the Canadians struggled in the quagmire that was Salisbury Plain. Lord Kitchener, British Secretary of State for War, was still focused on the critical situation that existed in France. He wanted the new Anzac troops in Europe, but they could be held in Egypt.
Only a few days after the 31 October 1914 declaration against Turkey, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, had sent a naval force to bombard Turkish forts along the Dardanelles. This was regarded as a purely naval operation, a softening-up show of force before an even bigger naval exercise would occur in March. That, it was thought, should lead to the easy occupation of the Turkish capital, Constantinople.
It was, of course, to lead instead to the Allied armies launching an ill-planned and fatal invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula.
Much to their disappointment, the men of the first convoys from Australia found themselves not in the UK then, but camped in a square mile of desert, a 10-mile march out of Cairo in the shadow of the pyramids and close to a smelly piece of marshland. Here they were, far from Europe and green fields of glory. Instead there was sand and more sand, glare, dust, dirt, heat, disease, and a population who seemed bent on ripping them off.
The first troops set up camp here from 4 December and soon got down to business, according to Bean:
Almost from the morning of arrival, training was carried out for at least eight hours, and often more, every day but Sundays. The infantry marched out early in the morning, each battalion to whatever portion of the brigade area had been assigned to it. They then split into companies. All day long, in every valley of the Sahara for miles around the Pyramids, were groups or lines of men advancing, retiring, drilling, or squatted near their piled arms listening to their officer.
For many battalions there were several miles to be marched through soft sand each morning before the training area was reached, and to be marched back again each evening. At first, in order to harden the troops, they wore as a rule full kit with heavy packs. Their backs became drenched with perspiration, the bitter desert wind blew on them as they camped for their midday meal, and many deaths from pneumonia were attributed to this cause.
On board Star of Victoria, Dr Campbell was hard at it again as the ship steamed on the next leg of the voyage: eight days across the Indian Ocean from Colombo to Aden. Having begun inoculating all on board against smallpox shortly after leaving Ceylon, he now found that many of the men were sick, a side-effect of the vaccination: ‘Hospital very busy. Usually 12 to 15 in hospital … a cold with temperature for several days … bronchitis and possibly some pneumonia.’
Dave McGarvie experienced no immediate problems after he was inoculated – ‘had a talk with Private Kipping on Theosophy’, he wrote – but four days later: ‘Paraded sick. Got bandage on arm where it was vaccinated.’
Among the sick was Stan Mack. It was the first bout of an illness that was to dog him all the way to Gallipoli. He made no mention of it until later on, when he wrote a second letter to his mother, from a hospital in Egypt: ‘On thinking it over I may as well tell you I got yellow jaundice on board the boat. Someone who does not know what’s wrong with me may write I’ve got something worse, like pneumonia, but jaundice is what I got and I became the colour of a new Sovereign.’
For the rest of the troopers, the third leg of the voyage was almost a pleasure cruise. Major Arthur Deeble wrote of a ‘sentimental song’ competition, humorous recitations, and concerts with Scottish and Irish songs. Ernie Mack’s description confirms that end-of-day entertainment was still very much part of regular life on Star:
The bugles blow the Retire at nine o’clock and Lights Out at a quarter past when everybody is supposed to be in bed. Up on our little deck we generally sit and talk till about half past nine before we turn in …
We have tea at five and unlike our old camp we have meat for tea, in fact the meals supplied to us are very good except that the meat is generally on the tough side, except when made as a stew, but that is only to be expected as it comes straight up from the freezing chamber to the kitchen. Some of us have been greatly amused at times on the voyage, as we have seen the stewards plucking mountain duck for the officers’ mess.
Every evening for the last week or more there have been music and elocution contests but have been of a very third rate class as there does not seem to be a decent singer in the regiment. Our band is just the thing as every evening and afternoon it plays selections. The evening performance is always for the officers’ benefit, as they play on a horsebox outside the dining room. Perhaps the music helps them masticate the mountain duck.
Although the two transports were now sailing alongside passing warships, no more information was forthcoming. ‘Everyone is in total ignorance as to where our destination will be,’ the second of the Mack boys continued, ‘but it is pretty well certain we will land in Alexandria, but for how long remains to be seen, perhaps only to spell the horses.’
At around noon on 28 March, the ships reached the port of Aden, described by Ernie as ‘the most forsaken place on the globe & it makes one weary just to think of having to live there. Built on an island, the cliffs of which facing the ocean, rise to a height of about 300 ft and are very rugged.’ Shore leave was out of the question, the stopover here lasting only a matter of hours, a relief no doubt to this Berrybank man.
As at Colombo, the locals came out to greet the new arrivals, but instead of being on the receiving end of a hail of coal projectiles, ‘We were soon surrounded by natives in small boats selling tobacco, fruit, lollies, etc.,’ Aub Callow wrote. There were some bargains to be had here. Ernie Mack noted how, ‘Everything seemed to be cheap … Cigarettes that cost 15 shillings per 100 in Melbourne were bought for two shillings and sixpence’, as well as commenting on the Yemenese themselves: ‘Totally different from the coolies in Colombo, being bigger, and what we saw of them slightly more intelligent.’
It was a busy port, Aub continued: ‘Shipping moving in and out of harbour all the time … About 3 pm this afternoon an armed merchantman came into the harbour. We saluted her by every man standing at attention until she passed and the band played Rule Britannia.’
‘Did not land,’ Callow concluded, without a trace of disappointment, before adding the final instalment in the mutiny saga: ‘Ringleaders taken ashore from Runic’.
Star of Victoria sailed at 6.30 pm that day, on the last leg of the voyage to Cairo. Sid Campbell was concerned about the increasing sickness aboard and noted he was running out of drugs. To add to his troubles, a number of the men had bought oysters from the boatmen who had come alongside at Aden, and they were now suffering from what they called ‘toe jam poisoning’.
As they entered the Red Sea, the ships passed a number of desolate islands. ‘One poor beggar on one of those islands signalled us by Morse lamp to give us some war news as he had none for weeks so our signallers gave him the little we knew,’ Ernie Mack wrote. ‘We heard today that two English warships were sunk by mines in the Dardanelles & as the names were given I expect it is true.’
Then, suddenly, the war seemed to have found the light horse. ‘Unprecedented excitement today,’ Ernie reported on 31 March. ‘Ten o’clock this morning a wireless message informed us that the Turks had made another attack on the Canal yesterday; 3 killed 15 wounded British and between 150 and 200 killed and wounded Turks; also that we were to prepare our boat for an attack when going through the Canal; also that we might have to disembark to attack the enemy.’
Turkey had mounted an ill-fated expedition to attack Britain and the Suez Canal in Egypt in February 1915, believing that imperial rule there was weak and lines of communication stretched thin. The attack was repulsed, mainly by Indian troops, and although Australia and New Zealand forces garrisoned trenches afterwards, no Australian regiment was involved. The Turkish losses were regarded as those of a small ‘native war’ and, as Charles Bean observed: ‘There was a heavy fall in the current estimate of the fighting value of the Turkish Army. This was not without its influence on future events.’
This lowering of the Turks’ reputation translated into jubilation on board Ernie’s ship:
[Everybody] is going about as if they had won a 10 pound jackpot. By Jove won’t it be funny if we at once get into the firing line.
Troops of men are hard at work filling bags with coals & cinders & piling them along the starboard side of the ship so by the time we reach the Canal we ought to be a floating fort so it will be bad luck if we don’t have a shot & of course it would be bad luck if a bullet cut my promising career short especially after writing such a long letter so in case of accidents I’ll make arrangements to have it posted.
As the bags of ashes were piled high, a machine-gun position was erected above the horseboxes. Sid Campbell was told to prepare for possible casualties, although he thought there was ‘very little likelihood of an engagement’.
The next morning, at 4.30 am, the officers were roused from their bunks and told to assemble in the saloon, where they would be addressed by the commanding officer, Colonel White. The date was 1 April. ‘We all went like lambs, on arrival finding it was an April Fool’s Day joke,’ wrote Sid.
On Friday 2 April – Good Friday – both Star of Victoria and Runic anchored off Suez. At last the regiment had its orders: it would be disembarking here and heading west to Cairo by rail. Prudently, the transports would not be proceeding up the canal.
There was a general bustle to get ready. The men were paraded to see if any items of uniform were missing before they packed their kitbags.
Then two officers came aboard to see Sid Campbell and Colonel White on an urgent mission. Venereal disease was cutting a swathe through the ranks of the first contingent troops, they warned; the problem was Cairo itself, which the men would regularly visit from their camps near the pyramids. ‘By all accounts this city is very awful for vice of the worst sort,’ Colonel White reported afterwards. ‘What I have heard is unbelievable. It seems that Port Said and France are quite respectable now – every one has come on here.’
Bean would later elaborate on this ‘vice of the worst sort’, reporting that ‘proprietors of the lower cafes … pressed upon the newcomers drinks amounting to poison and natives along the roads sold them stuff of unheard-of vileness’ while ‘Touts led them to “amusements” descending to any degree of filth’.
Added to this local encouragement was the sheer number of men let loose at one time in the Egyptian capital. Early on, following the arrival of the first contingent, 20 per cent of the force was granted leave in Cairo. The result, as Age correspondent Phillip Schuler reported, was an often wild invasion of 10,000 troops from afternoon until 9.30 pm, when leave was supposed to end in the city. By April 1915, regulations had been tightened up considerably, with leave reduced to 10 per cent, and the visiting Australian High Commissioner to London had made an impassioned speech to the men, appealing to their better nature, their duty to King and Country, and urging them to ‘cast out the wrong uns from their midst’.
Still, on the very day that the 8th Light Horse anchored off Suez, the famous ‘Battle of the Wozzer’ took place in Cairo. Brothels were ransacked by Australian and New Zealand troops, who believed they’d been ripped off by pimps and madams, and were catching VD from the girls. Beds, mattresses and clothing were piled into a bonfire in the street, an Egyptian fire brigade was harassed, and order was only restored after British troops were mobilised with rifles and fixed bayonets.
The ships moved into harbour at Suez on Easter Saturday as night fell, and orders were given for the men and horses to be loaded on board three trains, which left at 2.30 am on Sunday. Jack Mack described the trip to Cairo:
[The] train stopped five or six times en route at villages where we all got out to stretch our legs and were instantly surrounded with swarms of men, women and children pushing, scrambling, knocking each other down regardless of size or sex, each with his hand outstretched to us, and everyone bawling ‘baksheesh, baksheesh!’ [a small sum of money given as alms].
Arriving at Cairo, we at once lined up, handed over our rifles and overcoats to the baggage wagons, and took a horse each and walked about a mile through a corner of the town to a walled in enclosure to water the horses. Then we walked out here another 8 miles, arriving about 4 pm and had nearly four hours hard going before we were dismissed for the night.
The 8th was the last regiment of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade to arrive, joining the rest of the brigade at Mena campsite, just outside Cairo. The 10th Regiment, from Western Australia, and the 9th, mainly from South Australia, had begun arriving in Egypt from early in March.
Back in Albany, the men from the 8th Regiment had been warned about Mena – and the New Zealanders at Albany hadn’t been exaggerating. The camp was condemned by all because of its bad water supply. George Rayment, one of the brigade staff clerks, outlined the problem:
The water ran into a storage reservoir above the camp and it was necessary to keep a squad of men on duty daily to skim off the green slime which accumulated every hour. Orders were issued that no water was to be used for drinking purposes unless previously boiled, but little regard was paid to this order when men came in from a long route march over the desert.
‘Most things are ready,’ Sid Campbell wrote, before turning a more critical eye on the regiment’s second-in-command, Major James O’Brien. The Boer War veteran, who had the led the first advance party from Melbourne, had ‘shown himself to be absolutely incompetent’, the medical officer confided. And there was that familiar scourge of the desert to contend with, much to Colonel White’s irritation: ‘Dust storms are the limit, sand everywhere, can’t keep it out. We all wear goggles.’
On the plus side, Ted Henty and the others in the second of the two advance parties were judged to have done well in having the horse lines established for the regiment’s arrival. The troopers also now had large wooden sheds for each squadron to have meals in, which Corporal Rayment thought ‘much better than squatting on the sand like at Broadmeadows’.
Two things soon became apparent to many of the Victorians in the 8th: how close they were to the action (the Dardanelles being just two days and nights away by ship), and how easy it was to renew friendships from their home state. Dr Campbell, for instance, had met up with five friends from university days, ‘all fit, well and eager for the front’; they left that afternoon, – ‘Everything indicates Dardanelles as destination’. Jack Mack was another:
This is an extraordinary place for meeting fellows; half my old school mates and most of the fellows under 40 years I ever knew in Australia seem to be here either in the artillery or one of the light horse regiments.
It was a grand sight to see the artillery moving out of the camp just after dark last night, direct for the front. Grand horses, grand looking men, and both men and horses drilled to a wonderful pitch of perfection.
We all wondered what all the wild cheering was for in their lines on Tuesday night, till we heard that the general had just addressed them, saying he wasn’t just speaking to try and frighten anyone but thought it only fair to let them know they were going as fast as possible to the Dardanelles, where they would land under fire and go into action at once to take on a severer task than any artillery had attempted this war; he had seen enough of them to know that they’d be successful but that at least 30 per cent of them would be dead within a month!
It seems to be a fairly sure thing that we will follow on as soon as they’ve cleared the way for us to land, so we hope to see a little bit of fighting before we return.
His brother, Stan, told their mother that none of the other light horse regiments had left yet. ‘They have been here since leaving Broadmeadows over four months ago and are longing to get over to the Dardanelles with the infantry,’ he wrote, before adding optimistically, ‘It will take us two months to finish off the Turks, you see.’
Among those who had moved on during the 8th’s first week at Mena was the 2nd Field Ambulance, with Sergeant Frank Carr and stretcher-bearers Harold Brentnall and George Fish. They had big lumbering horse-drawn wagons, which flew large flags with red crosses. They might just as well have been setting out for the Battle of Gettysburg instead of modern trench warfare in the gullies and ravines of Gallipoli. ‘Left Mena Camp at 5.30 pm for Cairo, arrived Cairo at 9 pm,’ wrote George Fish, who had just celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday; ‘entrained with wagons and left at midnight for Alexandria’. Horses, wagons and ambulancemen sailed for the Dardanelles on 10 April.
Jack Mack wrote to Nell, one of his sisters, describing how, one unit had left for the front the day before:
It was funny this morning at church … the whole brigade formed up in hollow square, an imposing enough sight and our parson, in dolorous tones asked us to join in saying ‘good bye’ to the men of the machine guns (Lt Charles Arblaster and 27 other ranks of the Brigade’s machine gun troop) who are leaving us for the front tonight – and we will never see them again etc. etc. (They were present, too!)
Immediately the sermon was over, Colonel Hughes addressed us and told us not to follow the padre’s advice and say good-bye, as he was confident we would be with them again within a fortnight, but [to] join with him in congratulating them on being the first men of the 3rd Brigade to have the honour of going into action, wish them luck and God speed – and now lads give them three cheers!!
The New Zealanders and First Brigade, Australian Light Horse got their orders to proceed to the front on foot, horses to follow as soon as they are secured. The first lot passed our camp at 7 pm last night and from then on at intervals through the night, regiment after regiment marched past to the railways station, cheering and singing, bands playing and all very happy to be getting away from Egypt to see a bit of action.
The men of the 3rd Brigade were now left to do their own intensive training. In another letter, this time to his mother, Jack set out a typical day for the light horsemen:
The discipline here is very different from Broadmeadows and as for work – well, in a month we ought to be fit enough to walk back home on our heads.
Get up at 6 am sharp, roll call at 10 mins past – and down you go if ten seconds late; then a third of each troop is told off to water horses, each man leading three horses to the trough a mile away through loose sand in which you sink to your boot tops; the rest of the men being told off into various parties to mix horse feed, dig drains etc.
Horses must be back groomed and fed by 7.30, when we are marched onto the parade ground where the day’s orders are read and we are dismissed for breakfast.
At 9 am we lead our horses out for exercise, walking six or seven miles through the sand and coming home by the watering trough, feeding the horses and being dismissed for lunch about 12.30.
At 2 pm we either lead the horses again or do foot slogging and rifle drill till 4 pm, when the horses are again led to water, then fed about a quarter to five when two thirds of each troop is dismissed for the night and the other third told off as sentries and guards.
Another regular occurrence, leave permitting, was a visit to the Shepheard’s Hotel in the city. The Mack brothers, Jack and Ernie – Stan having been hospitalised with jaundice – were now sharing a six-man tent, along with Tom Austin, twenty-year-old Trooper ‘Jacky’ Dale (a friend of Tom’s and another Melbourne Grammar old boy) and Lex Borthwick, one of the two farming brothers from Sale. Naturally, a night out in infamous Cairo was not long coming for Ernie and his elder brother:
[We] only get paid two shillings a day over here as our highly paid services was having a bad effect on the English regiments stationed in Cairo … we were not much impressed with the place. Plenty of smell I think is the chief characteristic but we were able to get a good cup of tea at Shepheard’s Hotel, which is the swell place of the town. The hotel was declared out of bounds for the soldiers as the officers wanted it for themselves but G.H. Reid [Australian High Commissioner to London, Sir George Reid] had the order cancelled … it was read out to us again on parade the other day but nobody takes any notice of it.
Colonel White was another to venture into the city, as he reported to Myrtle: ‘The annual fete was held at Shepheard’s Hotel last night, this is the swell hotel in Cairo. Well, we went in to have a look at it, hundreds of people throwing confetti over each other. Nearly all the ladies were French and they do enjoy this sort of thing.’ He went on quickly to say: ‘The Australian girl is the best in the world and can hold her own everywhere. Well, they had good string and brass bands, a huge garden with wonderful fireworks; hundreds of officers from everywhere, and inside the hotel dances were going. It was quite a swell affair …’ But, he added reassuringly, ‘needless to say we did not dance’.
It was such a strange new world for the boys from the bush, as this letter from Ernie to Mary shows:
Shepheard’s Hotel is THE hotel of Cairo and on Saturday night at 10 o’clock there is always a concert or dance. You ought to see the place, as it is wonderful and would spoil anyone who was in the habit of living in the best Melbourne pubs. The Ballroom is wonderful and has a beautiful floor of some kind of polished wood whilst all round the room there are curious Eastern divans or couches.
Yesterday afternoon we took a guide and went over Hassan’s Mosque and the Citadel. A person could stand under the dome which is 300 feet high and take hours looking at the sculptures and frescos all the way up the walls. What is most marvellous though is the acoustic properties of the big hall under the dome as a person talking in a natural tone at one end is easily heard at the other which is over 200 feet away. The Citadel is another wonderful place and from a certain parapet you can see all over Cairo and for miles all over the city. Cairo is a city of mosques and minarets, and what strikes you most are the flat roofs of the houses; a tremendous lot of the houses appear to be only half finished as they are without windows, or rather, the large openings are in the walls with no windows put in.
When coming back through the town we went through the native bazaars. These bazaars are in narrow streets and each street or section have their own peculiar wares, and each race of people have their own bazaars. The shops are only squares of about eight or ten feet in stone walls and all the goods are hung around the walls, on the floor and nearly always right out onto the street while the proprietor squats in the middle of the heap. The silver and copper smiths do all their work in the street and we watched them for some time putting fancy designs on the silver and copper walls. If only we had a camera and knew how to work it we could take most interesting photos, but it would cost a lot in buying films as there would be such a lot of things to snap …
Meanwhile, putting an end to any fun and games, would be Colonel Jack Antill, the Bullant, busy with his surprise drills again.
‘On Tuesday and Wednesday we were aroused out of our beds at 2 am and had to march out to the desert on foot, if you please,’ Ernie wrote to Mary. ‘We had practical instruction in field firing and bayonet charging.’
He continued, perhaps with some premonition of what was to come:
For the latter work one wants plenty of wind, which is an article we are sadly lacking, and I am of the opinion that if we were doing the real thing we were too much out of breath to do much damage by the time we reached the trenches.
It was most interesting though & I hope to be able to tell you one day what the real thing is like. You know, it must be great satisfaction to run a bayonet through the enemy.
One hopes that the last two sentences here were not too disturbing for Ernie’s youngest sister. Perhaps the Bull’s methods were starting to rub off on his men …
The surprise turnouts, with Brigadier Hughes and his brigade major, Antill, riding into the regiments’ lines, before dawn sometimes, and calling for an immediate muster of the troopers for inspection, were now developing into a continual annoyance for the three commanding officers. White, Miell and Brazier regarded the Bullant and Hughes as nuisances who were unnecessarily interfering with their authority and the smooth running of their regiments.
Colonel White was away from camp one day, attending a court of inquiry into the Runic mutiny, and was most displeased with what he discovered on his return:
My chaps very savage, they had been ordered out in marching order for a route march through the sand and had to double up a hill owing to being cussed by the Brigade. The leading regiment got up the hill slowly and once on top went off at a great pace, result 8th being behind, had to run up hill and deep sand. You can imagine how they felt. I was sorry I had not been in command, there would not have been any running. It’s rot.
But the good-natured White seems to have had no personal antagonism towards Antill. He later described how Antill once offered him a lift into Cairo and insisted that he join him for an afternoon tea party – ‘The Bullant is a good old bird and I like him a lot.’ As for Hughes, White thought ‘the old Brig’ very decent but ‘the old chap I think is ageing a lot’.
White also wrote to his wife about Hughes calling all of the brigade’s commanding officers to his tent one night: ‘The old man at the end of the table, me at the other, the rest all around. Everybody except myself got shut up, the Bullant snubbed and COs squashed. I said what I thought and got off scot free. Oh dear it is so funny at times.’
Noel Brazier’s relationship with Antill, however, already poisonous before the voyage on Mashobra out to Egypt, declined further – especially as Antill kept himself very close to Hughes. Brazier noted in his furious list of ‘Episodes’ at the back of his notebook that while he had been holding a discussion with the brigadier on one occasion, the Bullant had been making faces at him behind the CO’s back: ‘Lt Col Antill, with his eyes covered by the peak of his cap, contorted his mouth in all shapes.’
Things really blew up when the prickly Brazier was carpeted by Hughes for having his second-in-command, Major Alan Love, drill the 10th Light Horse instead of drilling it himself. According to Brazier he was ‘sent away like a whipped boy’. The matter worsened when Brazier asked to have the whole matter referred to Lieutenant General Sir John Maxwell, who commanded all the forces in Egypt.
Brazier now talked about his ‘other war’. The bad relationship all but consumed him and would be a major factor in what would befall the light horse on Gallipoli. Later, he would write in a red message book: ‘From the time the Brigade left Australia, Antill determined to get the Brigade for himself at all costs. I told Hughes that on Gallipoli.’
Unaware of the discord emerging at the top, the soldiers enjoyed the opportunities to go sightseeing. The Old Geelong Collegians of the 8th got together on horseback and had their photograph taken with the Sphinx in the background. Letters and photographs were now pouring back to Australia describing the wonders of Egypt. Sid Campbell and a party of 30 others from the 3rd Brigade spent a weekend at Luxor visiting the Tombs of the Kings.
Training, as always, came first – although it didn’t always go according to plan. There was a 10-mile route march by the whole brigade in full marching order. Colonel White described what happened:
A hot still day. The 8th to the right, then the 9th, then the 10th, then the signal troops, Brigade train and the L.H. Field Ambulance. A big show, the Brig complimented me on our turnout. Of course we had to wear everything, heavy tunics, sword, revolver, glasses, water bottle, haversack, whistle and field dressing, in fact we are just like a Xmas tree with all our stuff draped around us …
After being inspected we started out in column of sections; had only gone a few yards when we came on a donkey in the road. That blessed donkey held up the whole of the Third L.H. Brigade. Our horses are very afraid of camels and donkeys. I saw the funny side of it and laughed though my horse was trying to climb a tree. Well, we got past the donk, then came on a camel. More fireworks … staff cussing, we laughing and the rear swearing like fun at the delay.
After three weeks at Mena, with increasing sickness among the men from the green slimy water supply, the brigade now got word that it was to shift camp to the Heliopolis racecourse, a 13-mile ride away.
Jack Mack explained the new base to his sister Nell:
The town of Heliopolis was built at a cost of some millions by an American syndicate with the idea of out-rivalling Monte Carlo – only after it was built the local Government refused a gambling licence … so they got left. The smallest stable or hen roost is really gorgeous while the Sultan’s grandstand overlooking the course and now occupied by Brigadier Hughes and staff is like a picture from the ‘Arabian Nights’. The big base hospital with 3,000 beds is only five minutes walk from the entrance gate.
Next to the racecourse was a large Luna Park, much bigger than the one the 8th had left behind them in Melbourne at St Kilda. The men looked forward to the move at the end of the month. Horses and men were now very fit again and there were more diversions. Tom Austin had been in training for an unsuccessful heavyweight match against a man called Shouter, who had won an Australian championship and had a formidable reputation as a bruiser.
The Mack boys had organised a weekend expedition for a quail shoot as ‘the guides can promise 200 birds for four guns’. They went off shooting on the Saturday.
That day Colonel White wrote to Myrtle: ‘We are only 14 days from London. Don’t fancy we shall see anything of France or London this year; fancy Austria will be our job, but then no one knows yet. Perhaps it will all be over in a week.’
The next day was Sunday, 25 April 1915. ‘Terrible day. Hot and dusty,’ wrote Major Arthur Deeble in his diary.
Far away from the Sultan’s grandstand, on a remote peninsula that none of the light horse had ever heard of, Australians were going into action on Gallipoli.