AUSTRALASIANS IN EGYPT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16348, 3 April 1915, Page 7

AUSTRALASIANS IN EGYPT.

STRUGGLE WITH THE DESERT. A FORCE TO BE PROUD OF. By Captain Bean, Official Commonwealth Correspondent. (Copyright—New Zealand Right securcd by tlio Otago Daily Times.)

Mena Camip, near Cairo, February 28. LooKiug bj-CK. now, it is hard lo revise tliao tlio .iiu»ualuui envision wus a aiv.sioii— Whe'U we diel not even really grasp what a division was. it is hard to &iy how long it took lor everyone to realise that the D .rst Australian Jj'.vwon was just one figntiij.g whole—the first Australia, over put into the field.

'1.110 first big ohamje was when the Australian Division knew it was a division. The second was the training of it to move and act. ¥ou have to knew exactly how last your brigades will march, and what lengtn of road each will occupy. This means that you have to be sure the men will march in step.

The Divisional Signal Company must have been' taught to know exactly where every brigade and its headquarters can be found at any time. The brigade signallers have to bo taught to carry the resulting orders from the brigade headquarters to any battalion. The battalion "signallers have to be able to find any particular company and deliver to it the order as translated by the colonel. The company commander lias to bo trained to km>w precisely what each order means when ho' gets it; and the company has to bo trained to carry it out.

THE TRAINING. That training has .been the work of the Australian troops in Kgypt. ' The company commanders took their men to the dosert, and day aitcr day for six weeks, Sundays alonq excepted, small bodies of men could be seen all over the desort. After Christmas work became harder, hours longer—a new system had to be learnt. Battalions, instead of being divided into eight companies of 100 men, were divided into four companies of 200 men, and each company into tour platoons of 50 men. When the battalion training started you began to notice on two or three mornings out of the seven the camp road occupied for half an hour at a time by one or other of the brigades march :ng out with its wagons, its water-carts, sometimes with the baggage, all loaded, and the great white. hoods and tlags of the field ambulance wagons bringing up the rear, exactly as if you had been ordered to move off to the front that verv day. J

By this time it was not so much the men who were being trained to move as the officers who were being trained to move them. The work often amounted to fighting small campaigns, and what particularly impressed one was the way in which all through, in spite of heat and dust and fatigue, just as heavy as that of many real campaigns, the men were playing the g-me.

_ A commission of French officers some time since watched the Third Brigade and others at work. One thing which particularly struck them, as they said afterwards, was the way in which the infantry kept up the game- They had no ammunition,'but when defending a position for an hour at a time their non-commissioned officers would keen on drecting their fire at different points in front, and. they would keen up the pretence of firing. Later onj .some of the units wero put to tests, as hard as those of warfare. .

The First Infantry Brigade on Wednesday morning marched to a point eight miles away, camped for lunch, posted outposts, attacked a position in the desert, and entreched itself all that night, and marched back tho next day. Tho brigado had the best part of a day's rest, and then on Friday marched.out again to the same point, and went through four days and nights of almost continuous fighting" and night attacks. The men were halted for a quarter of an hour's rest. Five minutes had no€ passed before tho majority of them were fast asleep. Some of them went to sleep the moment thev dropped to the ground to begin firing. The next line would find them there asleep when it came up, and would nudge them into, waking and send them on again. At one halt a staff officer, who was .with a company, heard a noise. " Stop that talking." he" said. But the man was not talking, he was snoring. A HUGE FIGHTING BODY. That was the .sort of turmoil into which for more than two months the first Australian Divison plunged. For two months it was immersed in the dust and the sweat of the desert,, slogging through that nightmare of sand day after day, until it was in danger of staleness, and at" last a regular breathing space was given it. But when at the end it began to emerge from that, desert and shake the dust from its clothcs, tho scattered units that had plunged in two months before came out a Huge, compact, organised, fighting body. llie 3rd Brigade is the Miners' Brigade— it contains the miners from West Australia. •Probably there is a sprinkling of. them amongst the Queensland men also. The Ist Brigado from jMcw South Wales is seasoned : probably it contains the largest proportion oL those who were born in the Old Country. Tho 2nd Brigade from Victoria contains the largest proportion of Australian infantry men, arid much the largest proportion of trainees. The light horse consists to a larger extent of old militiamen. Ihc training in the desert h<is had a remarkable effect on some of the -light horse regiments. A staff officer who had been watching them rush into action, dismount like a flash, and scuttle into a firing line, told me that he had never seen trained men do better.

It is hardly necessary to have the whole of the brigades out every day in order to practice work. The brigades are only pawns in the game, placed on various parallel roads and cross roads, as they might be on a chessboard, for the brain to move. It is very nearly as good if you have the headquarters staffs of your_ throe brigades and your artillery all out in their positions in the country, and the miniature staffs of tho battalions and batteries in theirs, and then send your communications backwards and forwards and crossways, and in every other way between them exactly as if you were fighting a battl.e of advancing or retreating through the country. If a brigade has to retire the staff of that brigade moves" back to a new positon, exactly as if the whole brigade were there, and the telephone or telegraph, or whatever means of communication tho signal company intends to establish between the headquarters of the division and the new headquarters of the brigade, had to- be got into working order as soon as is humanly possible, if not a trifle sooner. The whole signal company, of course, is out with its wagons, its wires, its telephones, and telegraph exchanges, settling down nowhere for an hour or two, now clearing for all it'is worth, disappearing in its own dust down the roads, in ordor to take up some lino farther back or farther forward. And all the while the general, sitting with a map before him, under a clump of trees or in a farmhouse, and his staff in little groups Tange, fights a modern battle. The training of its nerves, which tho Australian division has during the last week or more been carrying out, is nractically the last exercise that is necessary 'for a division. No doubt the division would be all the better for it if :t could exorcise its nerves every other day for a month or two. and its whole body on tho in between. SPLENDID DISCIPLINE.

Australia may be very proud of the First Australian Division. It Ins been through the fire of a very hard training, and it has come out excellently. You have onlv to go through tho camp of an evening, when the guard is being changed, and see two squadn or men, each under its non-commissioned officer, facing one another and going through tho ceremony as stead : ly as if tho Commander-in-Chief were watching them. It is one thing to watch trooys when they know that they are more or less undor inspection and quite another tiling to soo them when thev are by themselves, when, so far as they know, not an officer may be within s : ,ght. The First Australian Divis : on, camped today outside of Cairo, is a different force f>-om what it was at the beginning in Egypt. It is a made and manufactured force. Its men arc not only soldiers, but one's opinion is thc.t they arc particularly good soldiers. The division is not only fit to represent Australia, but one wou'd say that it is a better-disciplined, better-drilled, better-organised force than manv of the Australian critics believed possible. Of course, there is only one final'test by which it must in history bo judged, and wo have not come to that yet. The Australian Division was sent out with every pa.rt of its organisation provided—ite engineers, its ambulance, its ordnance departments, its field ambulances, its artillery, its supply column, its police, and tho light horse regiment for its special needs.

THE ARMY COUrS. But Australia aJso sent out several of their units, which did not form the complete parts of a division in themselves, but which have tsinue booh dropping into place in a second division, in wiiicn the units sent over by New Zealand have aido thoir place. lliat second division wu» nan organised with all its nerves and arteries specially provided before it sailed from Australia, and .New Zealand may roughly bo said to have bem pieced together out of tlio New Zealand contingent and the isecond contingent from Australia. Tivat description is not strictly accurate, but it is about us accurate as it is advisable to givo at this stage. Any way, but of those two oontingenls has been made a second division, which, although barely a month has eloipsed since our second contingent has arrived, has almidy readied an advanced stage of training, and lias been manoeuvring as a complete division on four or five dayj during tlu past two weeks. The result is a soeond division of magnificent material, which has been given the name of "tho New Zealand and Australian Division." To sum up, out of the sand and weariness of_ the Egyptian desert there has come a fa.ii'-sizcd Australian and New Zealand army, by far the largest and best-trained that- has ever left the South Pacific. It goes by the name of tho "Australian and New Zealand Army Corps," and is commanded by Lieu-tenant-general .Sir William Birdwood. It consists of two divisions—tho Australian Division. under Major-general Bridges, and the New Zealand and Australian Division, under Major-general Sir Alexander Godley. A few units took some part in tho fighting on the C-anal, the New Zealanders being under fire there; but it has done nothing as a corps. It cannot, however, bo long now before it is heard of. Australians will follow its progress with tho most intense interest. HOW IT GREW. Mena Camp, near Cairo, February 28.— "I hope they won't break up the div.," Slid tho Army MecLoal Corps corporal, removing his pipe for an instant, and speaiing back over his shoulder. "It would be a pity to break it up now." The A.M.C. corporal stuck his pipe in tho other corner of his mouth and turned back to look over the shoulders of n line of privates ;n khaki—the good old Australian peasoup khaki, which is as distinctive amongst tho brown khaJci of the New Zealanders and orange khaki drill of the British troops in ■kgypt, as if it were light blue or pink or daffodil yellow. Down the dusty road, botween tho crowded, cheering rows of'peasoup came a cheerful column of pea-soup. '.'They're in -luck to get sent off like this to the Canal," said the corporal again, "but I hopo they won't go. and keep them, there when wego. It would be a shame to split up the division "

Now, the A.M.C. man came from Queensland, and the man he was balking to came from Ballarat; I came from Sydney—tho men who were marching past us came from Melbourne, from B:ndigo, from Echuca, and otbei- corners of Victoria. Six months ago they had been nothing whatever to one another. And yet now the A.M.C. man was quite disturbed at their separation from him.

STARTED IN DRIBLETS. In October last they sailed in driblets from every quarter of Australia, and journeyed till they sped away in fast trains across a sunny green plain gridlroncd with niptl. It- was with that train journey that the first remarkable change came over the fore 2. Day after day the detachments from various States were sent off in different trains, winch went to different places. The different detachments had been disentangled into three separate camps, and in one of them the first, Australian division found n<-cif in existence. It found itself dumoed .on the yellow sand in a dusty vallev ~be-n-yith the pyramids. The other units" were scattered elsewhere. That six hours' train journey from Alexandria to Cairo shuffled tin force. From that day to this it had been three distinct units, and at the end of the shuffling for tho first time there stood on the eind flats below the Pyramids the First Division. It was the first Australian Division, that has ever existed. Looking back on that time when we sailed in driblets and fractions, in detachments of three and < four, in battalions and brigades, with occasional companies in between, from all corners of Australia, one sees clearly enough now that, although we spoke of the First Division sailing, I, for one, had no idea of what a division was. i

El-OW THEY LEARNT. , We had assembled the components parts of the division. But even then it was no more a clivi6.on than a wired china doll. A fortnight alter the New Zealand reinforcements had .arrived I asked one of them the way to' the tent of Colonel "X." commanding the brigade to which he himself belonged. tie was a smart-looking youngster, and ready to give the miormation he had, bun he said that he did not think there was a Colonel "X." belonging to their brigade at all. The only colonel he knew was tho colonel of his regiment; but if I inquired at a bunch of three or four tents, which he pointed out to me in the middle of the camp, and which went by the mysterious name of '•headquarters," they might know something there. It was the headquarters of his own brigade, and of Colonel '• X," its commander; That happened in tho New Zealand camp, 'but it might equally well h<vve been the Australian camp at Mens, or Maadi. When we came to Egypt there was a proportion of us—officers and men—that scarcely knew the organisation of their own brigade—much less that of the division to which it belonged. But Sapper Wayback has been learning— and so, to tell the truth, have Private Brown and Major - Smith and Colonel Robinson, learnt every day from lots of quite little things that the division was a little compact army, all hanging together like limbs of a u kt'dy- Through various incidents—even when tho incidents were accidents—Private Brown came to/realise that if the wagons of some company of tho Army Service Corps were not detailed to bring rations and fodder along to his part : cular unit on tha march, he would have no rations or fodder •at all.

Indeed, Sapper Wayback and PrivateBrown were learning from simpler occurrences even than those—from merely living in this big camp of their division, and getting to know their way about it and it? streets and roads, they came to know sonic* thing of the organisation of the division, and how it all hung together. If you were sent on a message to someone in the Third Infantry Battalion, you knew you would nnd them near the 'beginning of the main camp road, camped together with the First, bcoand, and Fourth Battalions, which made up the First Infantry Brigade. You knew that you would find the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Battalions camped all together a little further down the road, and making the second' infantry brigade. When: Sam Wayback hunted out a mate in the Queensland infantry, the ninth, he made quite a habit of tramping across at night to a third collection on the opposite side of the road—where the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Battalions were, the infantry from the four less populous States making up the Third Brigade. , There, in the middle of each brigade, or at some corner of it would always bo the little collection of five or six tents, inhere the commander of the brigade and h:'s little staff lived and messed and worked. A red pennant was always flying on a polo before that little headquarters all day—a single red light glowed in front of it all jiight. Tile nrst time Private Brown "was 6ent with a message to a place vaguely called divisional headquartershe brought it to one of these brigade headouarters—as a matter of fact he took it "to the first brigade headquarters, which.was in a stone ya-rd under a solitary gum tree on the sandy hillside, and which, being nearest to his own camp, was the headquarters that ho knew best. Ho poked his head inside the yard rattier nervously—because Private Brown was a modest man and unaccustomed to venturing into high places. Inside were a sentry and a s'gnaller, arid some tcnta and a stone building, with some steps and an open door at the top of them—and in the ' dark room behind it ho could dimly see an officer standing with papers in his hand, and hear the tap-tap of a typewriter. Ho -was preparing to break them when the sentry asked him his business. "You have come to the wrong shop," said the sentry when Brown told him. "We're only the first brigade—yoa want the divisional headquarters over the hill there."

The signalbr volunteered to show Brown because lie himself went between the two places with messages half a dozen tunes a day. So they trudged a hundred yard? through the heavy sandy slono to tho shoulder of tho hill, from which Brown could see. past tho groat stacks of fodder on the flat. .There tho Armv Service Corps was camped, a treble row o'f tents on the hillside. Those tents were whore the officers lived, explained the signaller, but they worked in those buildings. Private Brown went up the neatly-swept drive, bordered with white stones, and under the big porch of the house. Had a vision of an officer's messroom, an assorted crowd of hawkers waiting for licenses in a passage; half a dozen open doors with clerk and officers and tables and typewriters and sheafs of papers; signboards stuck out from tho doorways, cardbcard boxes, lids roughly tacked up : on one of them Private Brown seemed to have seen inscribed in green and red pencil " General Officer Commanding First Australian Division."

A COMPACT UNIT. Private Brown was not conscious that ho htbd done anything more titan deliver a message, and hw chief pre-ocoujiation at the time was a fear that lie had delivered it to the wrong person. But he had unconsciously brought back tlirce or lour ideas which never needed re-learning: each brigade has a headquarters, which acts as a .government over that brigade; over the hill is a divisional headquarteis, with many officers and clerks, which governs the three brigade headquarters and all tho other smaller headquarters as well which make up tho division; the way the big headquarters sends its orders and messages to the smaller headquarters—in fact, the way the whole division eeema to be joined together— 's by signallers.

And so, almost imperceptibly, the Australian division began to know that it was a division—that it was all one -body, and not merely a collection of detachments from different States and townships. It began to realise that it was a compact unit, which might at any t.imo be sent oil' anywhere. T.he signal company oame to look upon itself as the nerves of that body, which would have to carry, the message from the brain tothe limbs; the field companies came to consider themselves the fingers, •which would have to construct all the more intricate works that the body needed. The infantry brigade weijj the heavy fists and al ' n p s . which were to deliver the blows for which this body exists—and so on. It is difficult to describe it very clearly, but I am not speaking of any abstraction of my own_ mind. I am speaking of a perfcoty definite change, which has gradually taken place in the minds of tho units which the various parts of Australia have sent across the sea during the last five months. This mental change may seem vague, but its effects are quite concrete—cine sees them every day.