CHAPTER VI1 THE TRAINING IN THE DESERT ON the night of December 3rd the 5th Battalion, after moving all day by train up the green Nile flats crowded with a popu- lation which might have stepped out of the Old Testament, steamed into the railway siding built especially for the Aus- tralasian troops in the heart of Cairo. It was night when the battalion arrived and marched down the wide European streets, strange as stage scenery, towards the Nile bridges. Near the first bridge it passed the great, dingy, yellow- plastered buildings of the Kasr el Nil Barracks. The sound of its band roused the Territorials who were quartered there. Figures came tumbling out of the barracks across the gravelled parade-ground. They were Lancashire Territorials of the 42nd Division, who had arrived in Egypt some weeks before to relieve British regulars needed at the front. When they found that the troops marching past them were Aus- tralians, they cheered, clinging to the railings and waving. The 5th wound over the wide river, under the trees of Gezireh, to the long avenue which runs on a causeway from Gizeh for five miles straight across the teeming flats of the Nile. Here the men first saw, far ahead, through the spaces between the dark trunks of the lebbakh trees, the pale moonlit shapes of the Pyramids rising from the high edge of the desert. The yearly Nile flood was just receding, and the far end of the flats was one big lake, lapping up against the Arab village which lies under the Pyramids. Behind rose the desert, straight from the fertile plain, a faint pink under the moon. Where the road ran off the flats on to the sand, the column turned to its right, down a newly-made ramp, through a plantation of Australian gum trees, past the buildings of Mena House Hotel, and round into the first valley of the desert. There, with the age-old Pyramids looking down upon them, on this stretch of sand unbroken by anything except the white ribbon of one newly-laid road and the scaffolding round two hastily-built reservoirs, the 5th Battalion rolled itself in its grey blankets under the moon and slept. 115 116 THE STORY OF ANZAC [Dec., I914 Until this time, although the men of the 1st Division had sailed tcgether in a great fleet for weeks, very few thought of it as a division. Troops had embarked in driblets, com- panies, battalions, brigades, from all corners of Australia. But they were no more a division than a set of wheels, pistons, nuts, cranks, and cylinders, stowed in a merchant-ship and labelled for overseas, would be a railway-engine. With the railway journey up the Nile flats, however, came a complete change. Day after day for nearly a fortnight the detachments from the various States left their ships at Alexandria and set off in different trains to special places. The 1st Light Horse Brigade, whose particles were scattered throughout the transports, gradually crystallised on the edge of the desert south of Cairo at Maadi Camp. The New Zea- land Infantry Brigade, with its attached ambulance and signallers and other troops, separated itself and settled at Zeitoun, on the northern outskirts of Cairo. The New Zea- land Mounted Rifles Brigade settled next to it. At the end of twelve days the 1st Australian Division, infantry, artillery, ambulances, transport, and divisional light horse, was camped by the Pyramids ten miles from the centre of the city. Mena Camp stretched for nearly a mile up the desert valley. The headquarters offices of the division were in the manager’s house behind the hotel; the hotel itself was taken over as an Australian hospital. The ramshackle grandstand of the old racecourse on the desert became the ordnance store. Close to it, at the end of the extended tramway, gradually rose stacks of fodder and supplies. In the tent-lines some of the troops had at first to dig themselves mia-mias or dugouts, which they covered with waterproof sheets. The officers’ messes were in great untidy Arab tents hired from contractors. The camp gradually became decorated with whitewashed stone edges to the roads or with neat borders of green oats sown round the tents As time went on, spacious mess-rooms were built for the men. Shops of all sorts crowded along certain roads where they were allowed-shops of tobacconists, hairdressers, dyers and cleaners, newsvendors, tailors, photographers, sellers of antiques. One day there would arrive a rickety donkey-lorry piled with tents, stove-pipe, tables, chairs, 4 0 h w z c I ._ I '+ , i -% Dec., 19141 TRAINING IN THE DESERT 117 crockery, cloths, and with three Arabs squatting among them. Next day there would have sprouted another “tea-room,” announcing that it offered “Australians System Afternoon Tea.” Before the winter was over, the valley in which the 5th Battalion had bivouacked on the night of December 3rd was filled with the hum, the bustle, the dust, smells, sounds, and lights of a busy city. Major-General W. R. Birdwood,’ under whom the Aus- tralian and New Zealand forces were to form an army corps, was an offcer singled out by Lord Kitchener. Kitchener had attached him to his staff in the South African War and in India, and he was in India when Kitchener appointed him to command the Australasian Army Corps. The corps staff-a considerable body, which grew much larger as the war continued and at one time included about 70 officers and no less than 550 men-was a British formation. Until nearly the end of the war, even when it was mainly composed of Australians and controlled purely Australian divisions, it remained part of the British and not of the Australian Army. The British Government, and not the Australian, had originally undertaken to provide it and keep it up. At the beginning General Birdwood obtained in India most of the oficers whom he required for the small staff of those days. He sailed with them from Bombay on December 12th. On his arrival in Cairo on December 21st his first duty was to orgnnise the disconnected units of the two forces into a single compact army corps. At that date an army corps consisted normally of two infantry divisions and certain “corps troops,” the latter being troops not belonging to either division, but attached to the corps and acting directly under the army corps com- mander. General Birdwood’s troops, however, consisted of one infantry division (the 1st Australian), together with one infantry brigade and two mounted brigades (the New Zealand Tnfantry Brigade, 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade and New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade). It was known that, in addition to these, there would shortly arrive in Egypt from Field-Marshal Lord Birdwood, G C B , G C S I. C C.M G , G C V 0.. C I E . D S @, q s. Commanded A. & N.Z Corps (later Aust Corps) igl4~18; Dardanelles Army tgrq/16 (3 months): 5th .Army .ig18/19. and G 0 C, A I F, lgi~lio Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Ind~a.rgag/3o; b Poona. India, I? Sept , 1865. XI 118 THE STORY OF ANZAC [I914-’5 Australia another infantry brigade (the qth), two light horse brigades, and a number of lines-of-communication troops for whom the British Government had specially asked, such as hospitals. The only troops among these who would go on to England were those of the motor transport. The others would remain in Egypt under the orders of General Bridges as commander of the A.1 F. General Birdwood therefore sent to him, on December qth, his proposals for the consti- tution of the army corps. It was to be called the “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.” The name first suggested was “Australasian Army Corps,” and that name actually appears, erased, in its first diary. But the wish of the commanders having been taken on the point, “Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’’ was the title preferred, especially by the New Zea- landers. ’The corps was to consist of two infantry divisions and a niounted division. The mounted division would be com- posed of the rst, and, and 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigades (of which the 3rd would not arrive until March), and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade. The infantry divisions were to be the 1st Australian Division and the “2nd” or New Zealand Division, which was to consist of the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade, and an additional infantry brigade if one could be obtained, General Bridges and Colonel White were anxious above all things to avoid long-drawn-out delays, and to let the force fling its weight into the war as soon as it was ready. Bridges agreed to the proposed arrangement, but urged that the divisions should not necessarily wait for completion before they took the field. Eventually the corps was organised in two divisions only, the second being formed from the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade, and two mounted brigades (1st A.L.H. and N.Z.M.R.). These four were placed under the orders of General Godley. commanding the New Zealand Expeditiouary Force. The new division was thus almost equally divided between New Zealand and Australian troops, except that New Zealand provided all its artillery. The title chosen for it was “New Zealand and Australian Division.” It was very short of artillery, the New Zealanders having but 1914-151 TRAINING IN THE DESERT 119 three 4-gun batteries of I8-pdrs.