TROOPS IN EGYPT

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2370, 28 January 1915, Page 6

TROOPS IN EGYPT

A LEAVEN OP "WASTERS" WEEDING ODT UNDESIRABLES A -CANDID , STATEMENT ((From C. E. W. Bean, Official Reporter with the First Australian Expedi--1 tionary Fore© in Egypt.) Mena Camp, December 29. It would be a deceit upon the people bf Australia if it were reported to them fliat Christmas and tjie approaching ~ew Tear have found the Australian Imperial Force without a cloud in tho ■sky.' The weather was perfect—Christ■mas morning itself broke as clear and crisp as a mid-winter day on tho wrong side of the Darling River, and one canaiot imagine any better praise th&n that. All the camp looked ideal, with lines as straight as an architect's drawing, and streets and kitchens, which the medical, officers, by dint of a good deal of insistence, have managed to maintain as clean as a model dairy. The big new white wooden mess huts, which are now ' ready for most of the corps, and-which are being provided for all, were decorated with palm and eucalvDtns; and some of the men who take a pride in their regiments had marked the mesa : tents of the regimental boundary with . designs in white and coloured stones and pebbles as neat as 1 a Roman mosaic. A Christmas dinner has been provided in many cases by funds subscribed by the officers, and in many - others by the. men themselves—often plum puddings with other extra 'courses, and sometimes extra beer. ' The columns that-swung dowi the hills from their various church parades, with their big shoulders and long Australian limbs all swinging together, look half as powerful again as ordinary regiments. General Birdwood'watched'them all , till the last man was digging his'heels into the sand »t tho rear of the last oompanv, and one could not .help wondering what he , thought of them". He'has seen many sorts of soldiers'under many different conditions during his, short and brilliant career, but one could not help wondering whether he. has ever' commanded a, more magnificent force than , this. He may turn . them into that perhaps, but, although to the casual observer everything was right with the 'Force, the last week has been one of some anxiety to those who have the - good 'name of Australia at heart. Regrettable Scenes. Cairo is one of the great pleasure re- • Sorts of the world, and a place where the soldiers in any-neighbouring camp can always have a reasonably • enjoyable tune during their hours' of leave, provided they exorcise the same amount of restraint as the ordinary tourist, but certain.'scenes , have occurred, and have . become more common during the past few days, which go a" good way beyond that, and which are already affecting the reputation of Australia in the outside world.' Jt is idle to contend •i that the Australian is at present making quite the _ impression which Australians hope it will make either on civilians or upon the great soldiers under, whose eyes they come., I was ppeakihg the other day to one of the jnost distinguished men in the British Army. "They are as fine a body of men physically as I have ever seen," he said, "but do all Australians '"drink .60 much?" The truth is: thai. thei'o ' are a certain number of men in those who were accepted for service abroad who are not fit to be sent abroad to represent Australia. They may, some of them, have been men who had seen service in South Africa or the regular 'Army, or they may have appeared hard bitten,- and used to hardship, but in recruiting an army, just as in picking &• cricket or a • football to represent' Australia, the' inclusion of a man who has not got the, necessary moral qualities, however splendid his physical qualifications may be, is apt to do more harm than good. There is only a small percentage —possibly 1 or 2 per cent.—in the force, which is reaDy responsible for the occurrences ahout Which Cairo is beginning to talk; the ■peat majority of the men are keen, intelligent, -well restrained young Australians, who you will meet enjoying their hours of leave in front of the ; cafes, or in tie museum, or the zoological gardens, or the postcard shops, dressed as neatly; as any of the other ioldiers in the town, and - behaving themselves in the way in which any rational Australian on a holiday would behave. They have, the material in them not merely for as .good a force as the New Zealanders, or the Territorials, but to one's own thinking, of a better force, because the Australians here, besides having the best physique, are, man 'for man, more highly strung, and if : anything quicker witted. But there is in'the Australian ranks a proportion; of men who are uncontrolled, slovenly, and in some cases, what few Australians can ■be-accused of being—dirty. In a certain ■ number of cases it is noticeable that these men are wearing the South African ribbon. Possibly they are the men - Who since returning from that war have inever had any settled occupation, and ■who were therefore the first to enlist ; when recruiting for the present force •Was begun, or it may be that the discipline in the South African campaign j-was very much slacker than that required of troops before they will be permitted to go to tho front in the present class of warfare, Or it may he merely that a certain class of old soldier is given to the very childish habit of showing off before the young soldier, and giving him examples of the 6ort of , fthing that ho thinks may with immunity be done by any one that knows . +he ropes. Whatever the reason, it has ' 'been noticed by too many people to : ' ..admit'of doubt, that whilst many of most capable and splendid members ; T)f the force are men with South African ; there is a class of old soldier i >vho, so far from being tho most suit--1 fdblo member of the force, is the least imitahle of any. Many young soldiers take : these men at their true worth. '• ( , losing Cood Name. "It's the likes- of them that are going , /to spoil the-game for the rest of us, i Wd lose us our leave," I heard one | vpjingster say a few days since. "The are getting a bit fed up with ; down amongst our lot." But they , 'are really doing a . very much more | 'serious thing than losing other soldiers ! their leave. They are losing Australia : (her good name in the outside world, and those Australians _ivho happen to be • living in Cairo, or are in touch with the : -world outside the camps, have the mor- ) Jtificatio'n of looking-on whilst day by ; fday the reputation of Australia slowly 'Vanishes before the actions of a hand- ! ffnl of rowdies, who do not really represent the country. Tbe Territorials have 1 '/not our physique, and some of the Lan- ; cashire regiments seem to be composed < largely of mero children, but by dint of 'hard Work they have become thoroughly smart soldiers, and, although both , omongst them, and the New Zealanders there has been a certain amount of the hard Irving, which will always bo found where great numbers of men are : collected, none who is not deaf can hide i from himself the fact' that the talk at present current in Cairo attaches to the Australian forco rather than to the : Territorials, or, as far as I can judge, to the New Zealanders.

One does not wist to give tho impression that things have reached the stage of a scandal or anything approaching it. Stops will doubtless be taken to correct it, as thoy have been iaken .before, and the Australian_ force ivill bo doing itself credit- before it has

"finished its training, and will be worthy of the majority of the men comprised in it. Tie New- Zealanders have just taken steps to get rid of a certain number of men who were doing little good in tlieir force, and the same, or some similar step, will no doubt be_ taken with the Australians. But it is just as well that the Anstralian public • should be aware of the reason for the rot-urn of the majority of the men who are returning or have returned since the expedition sailed. It is easy for a man to retain to his native village and reap a certain amount of hero-worship on the grouad that he was invalided, or to pitch a story before ail admiring crowd at the local hotel of how he showed thcin that he was not going to stand any nonsense and finally pitched in his-re-signation. The facts are that a certain number of men have been invalided through serious sickness or accident, j-eitlier of which were their own fault. A certain number also were sent hack some time ago from Albany and Colombo because some of them, no doubt, on conscientious grounds, and others for reasons best known to themselves, refused to be vaccinated. A few others have been and will he sent back because they have contracted certain diseases by which 'after all the trouble of months of' training and of the sea voyage they have unfitted themselves to do the work for which they enlisted. And a perceptage will probably find their -way back from here, the reason for whose return has been that they have damaged their country's reputation, and a few of them have been got rid of as the best means of preserving it. Trouble in Infantry. Although the_ Australian Light- Horse camp at Maadi is nearer to the city than Mena camp, and infinitely easier to leave without permission, there seems to be little trouble from rowdy spirits amongst the Light Horse, or, for that matter, in the Artillery, part of which is at Maadi. This may he partly due to the fact that a certain class of waster, some of whom managed to get into the infantry, never gained entrance to these corps, but, I think, that to some extent it is due to the fact that whilst Mena is away out at the Pyramids, with only' an 'Arab Tillage in the neighbourhood, the' Light Horse camp is next door, to the new garden, suburb of Maadi, where mahy of the. English inhabitants live; and those inhabitants have .gone out of their way to provide attractions in the camp, of which I have, heard both men and officers speak most warmly. At the entrance of the-camp, for example; they have set up,out of funds raised m the suburb a nuge, handsome, open Arab tent for the men, fitted with tables and chairs for reading and writing accommodation for a hundred and fifty men. Near it is a smaller tent, supplied with oil the English newspapers for the officers. - Next door to this is a stall, with a stock of tobacco, post-cards, writingpaper (with the camp address printed in the corner), which is run by the Maadi people themselves, one of their own number acting as salesman. The camp is not in every way ideally situated.' It is on dusty ground, for one thing, rather than upon desert sand, as the Pyramids camp is. The horses trample this into a fine powder, and oil windy days, or even still days, when the horses are being led to water or exercised, the clouds of dust raised as they come into and out of the lines are apt to cover everything in camp; bnt Maadi' has made the best of it. The lines are, if anything, even more neatly picked out with borders of whitewashed stone and devices in front of the tents than they, are at Mena. They have - even planted a few palm plants in improvised garden plots in front of some of the more important quarters of the camp, and I saw a map of Australia sown in barley, dropped from a fodder-bag already springing into existence. They are still somewhat short for tents in some of the light horse troops at Maadi, but 1 have not heard a single complaint. The inhabitants have given them concerts in the camp, and have even arranged for the officers and some of the men to get an occasional warm bath in their private houses. The Y.M.C.A.. representatives are undertaking the provision of somewhat similar comforts at the Pyramids camp, and the importance of it at a big permanent- camp cannot be over-rated. As one passed the tent at Maadi on the afternoon of Boxing Day half-full of Light Horsemen writing letters to Australia, one could not help wondering how many families will receive news weekly from their sons or brothers in Cairo that would never have heard if it had not been for the -public spirit of the peoplo of Maadi in setting up that tent. Letters and Telegrams. That reminds one of another matter. Enormous numbers of letters have been written by the Australian force abroad —over 300,000 were estimated to have passed through the Army post office before we reached Egypt. Of late the New Zealanders and Australians have been sending cable messages to an extent which has never been approached in. Cairo. The normal number of cable messages from Cairo to Australia before the war was from' two to five per day. Since the troops have arrived it has risen, to 40 or 50, but in the five days- preceding Christmas it rose from 42 on December 20 to 123, 196. 312, and 466 on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Dayf 'itself 155, were sent, Tho number received from Australia had averaged about 30) but during Christmas week it rose to 80. On Christmas Day 319 were received, and a message came through the day before from Adelaide to say that a thousand message* were waiting there to be sent through to us.

It is probable that the mails from Australia will have been proportionately quite as heavy. One thing which people at Hom<J can do for the men of this force is to write to them. The anxiety with which the men look forward to letters from homo cannot bo exaggerated. Every day men come up to me under the impression that 1 know more than they do about tho mails, and ask me if I have had any news of their letters, and when they are likely to receive them. Part of a mail arrived from England on Christmas Day. It was tho latest we have received, and it left Australia just after wo did. Several mails must have passed through tho Canal since we have landed hero, and gone oh to England. Perhaps it was inevitable,'but if they were in special bags, as they surely should have been, it .is liard to see why they could not have been landed. The men are remarkably patient in this matter —they take it as one of tho unavoidable incidents of war. Considering what help a letter can bo to a man under circumstances like these, one wonders if this particular incident was unavoidable.