THE battalion was now camped near to the banks of the Suez Canal, and the men spent much of their time swimming in its waters. Swimming parades were frequent and training began for aquatic sports to be held later on. This, combined with the daily routine of military work, soon turned these men into a battalion of healthy, vigorous athletes. Moreover they were happy in mind, for expectation ran high of going to France at an early date. All were very tired of Egypt and looked to France as a happy release. Nevertheless it was not to France but some five miles further into the desert that they went on April 9. There they settled down to vigorous training, rifle exercises, infantry attack in artillery formation, and outpost duty. Every day the monotonous routine of training went on, and every day Egypt's sun grew hotter. Whatever could be done to lessen the discomfort of that awful heat was done. Mess-sheds were erected to which the men could escape from the muggy, overpowering atmosphere of the bell-tents. Several times the business of training was combined with pleasure, a route march being arranged to the banks of the canal. Those occasions were enjoyed as the happiest of holidays, officers and men immediately stripping for a swim, and afterwards going to their midday meal which on such days would be cooked at the canal and eaten in picnic fashion on the sands.
It was during one of these trips to the canal that some band instruments arrived at Serapeum, consigned to the battalion. They consisted of a bass-drum, a kettle-drum and some fifes, and it was immediately resolved that the battalion should be played back to camp by its regimental band. Company commanders called for any musicians that might be in their different companies. Volunteers for the big-drum were plentiful as also for the kettle-drum. Performers on the fife seemed to be fewer or more diffident, but eventually some were found and, to give the band a fuller appearance, a few others were impressed into the service. These latter were very reluctant and made remarks strongly reflecting on the family respectability of those comrades who had proclaimed them as promising musicians, remarks which seemed only to intensify the unselfish happiness of the aforesaid comrades at the recognition being given their friends' musical talent. Eventually the battalion fell in to return to camp, and the fife-and-drum band proceeded to the head of the column and played its first march with very little fife and a great deal of drum.
On the banks of the Suez the battalion celebrated its first Anzac Day on April 25, when swimming sports were held. The Anzacs of the unit wore some red ribbons for the day to mark them out as veterans from their new comrades-in-war, who were so unfortunate or so fortunate as not to have participated in that adventure. There were a good many of those Anzacs present, men who little knew what great adventures the war still had in store for them.
On May 5 the battalion marched from the rail-head, where they were then encamped, to Habieta. The Turks were expected to attempt another attack on the Suez Canal, and a line of outposts strongly wired had already been constructed, stretching north and south far along the desert. Habieta was some 12 miles from the canal on its eastern side, and here the battalion took up its position in the trenches.
Whatever the higher military authorities may have known, and let us concede to them a mysterious prescience, the amateur mind looking back upon that system of defences is puzzled to explain its utility. The passage of an army across that harsh desert from the direction feared, and the conservation by it of a striking-force capable of overcoming the weakest defence, looked like an attempt of the impossible. Yet it was on the presumption of such an impossibility that this particular line of defence seemed based.
Measures had to be taken, however, even to guard against the impossible, and it was not a weak defence that awaited the anticipated attack. There was plenty of hard work, for in the constantly shifting sand the trenches had to be revetted with sandbags. Every sandstorm that blew across the desert, filled up the trenches again until one could scarcely trace the outline of them in its shining surface; and then the monotonous work of clearing them recommenced. Old wire entanglements long constructed had been covered and recovered and rendered useless for their purpose by the surging sand. These had to be made formidable once more and further reinforced.
But whatever its utility for its immediate purpose, the period in the trenches at Habieta was good training for the days of more serious war that lay ahead. All anticipated an attack, indeed longed for an attack. There was therefore brought to the different duties a keenness of spirit that cannot be attained in the routine of camp training. Approaching an outpost in the darkness one heard the business-like snap of the lock of a rifle and the barked out challenge showed the sentries' tense alertness. "Stand to arms" for an hour before dawn in that country where dawn came so early, involved a rigid inclusion of all ranks, even of those who had no arms to "stand to" as the colonel readily informed the medical officer and the chaplain.
On the whole the days were enjoyed by everybody. The men had hard work but advantage was taken of the cooler conditions in the early morning and in the evening, and during the intense heat of the day they rested. Besides daily life now began to hold something more like the "real thing" than the training of the camp with its incessant drill, its manoeuvres and sham attacks. The Australian soldier is always more satisfied to use his spade in the trenches whether they be of sand or of mud. He is more satisfied to crawl over the parapet before dawn and sit throughout the long, lonely day in a sniper's post, relying for his security on the bunch of grass that camouflages his helmet. He will proclaim in expressive language that he vastly prefers these things to "sloping arms and forming fours like a blanky automaton."
The Turk was awaited in vain, however, and as his coming became more and more improbable there were no regrets when the battalion moved back to camp at the rail-head, which it did on May 19.
Here preparations for France began in real earnest. The battalion was now considerably over strength, and arrangements were immediately made to send the surplus men to the training camp at Tel-el-Kebir. Quite a large number left the unit in this manner and were inconsolable at their fate. But they soon afterwards rejoined in France, where the battalion's first engagement was to leave many vacant places. All articles of equipment short of establishment were supplied, and the sun-helmets and light, khaki tunics laid aside for Australian hats and service dress that should be necessary in the cooler climate to which they were now going.
At this time the generality of the 48th men, whilst regarding their battalion as a constituent unit of the 12th Brigade, would only in a hazy manner recognise it as a part of the 4th Division. Afterwards they developed a very definite recognition of the fact, and learned to discuss with stimulated eloquence the rights and wrongs of the 4th Division in many an estaminet throughout northern France. It is interesting to note that during those days of final preparation for embarkation it acted for the first time as a complete division, practising a night operation in which the 48th Battalion took part. It was a bit of mimic warfare, the precursor of many operations in real warfare which the division was afterwards to perform.
It was a battalion complete in every detail and over 1,000 in strength that marched from the rail-head on May 27 to await entraining at Serapeum. On the night of June 1 it entrained, and arrived at Alexandria next morning, where it immediately embarked for France. The conveying troopship was the Caledonia, with Captain Black as skipper, and she sailed two days later. Both ship and master later on earned some notability - the ship when she was torpedoed and sunk during a subsequent voyage on the same seas; and to a greater degree Captain Black when he was captured and taken on board a German submarine under circumstances that cost Captain Fryatt his life. Only England's threat of the sternest reprisals prevented the same fate being meted out to Black
Life on board was the ordinary routine of troopship life, its most pleasant feature being its brief duration. The submarine guard told the usual lies as to the number of submarines they had seen. The usual board was appointed to examine the complaints concerning the men's food and compel the chief steward to supply more meat and fewer rotten potatoes.
A startling break in the monotony was caused by the receipt of a wireless to the effect that Lord Kitchener had been lost in the Hampshire. Australians had seen very little of Kitchener, but they had heard much of his stern ways and of his uncompromising manner of dealing with that class of officer who can so order his life as to see very little soldiering, and who is loved not by the men of the rank and file. And there were old soldiers of the South African campaign among them, who told tales of surprise visits by Kitchener to various bases, when he is alleged to have empressed the crisp alternative "to the front by the first train or to England by the first boat." Perhaps Kitchener had shared those preconceptions of the Australian soldier, so monotonously entertained by many English military men. It is idle to speculate now, yet one is inclined to think that the Australian soldier would have liked Kitchener, and that Kitchener might have got to like the Australian soldier. Anyhow among those men on the Caledonia there was much honest regret for his untimely fate.
At last the ship pulled into Marseilles, and the battalion disembarking on June 9 entrained immediately for the north of France. The train journey lasted from 5 o'clock on Friday evening till Monday morning. The men travelled in cattle trucks. Thirty men were assigned to each truck, and every man had with him his bulky pack and equipment. But the travellers forgot their discomforts as they drank in the beauties of the scenery. Lovely France! Yes, thrice lovely after the verdureless glare of the Egyptian desert. A passing troop-train never fails to attract people out-of-doors, the women from their housework, the men from the stables and the cowsheds, and in those days the Australian's slouch hat was a less common thing in France than at a later period. So as the train slowly meandered through the villages, old men - for there seemed to be no young men in the country - and women hurried out to greet the passing Australians. Children burst riotously from their homes to run along the train and cry shrilly for souvenirs.
They were such scenes as made pathetic appeal to those soldiers. Here were not the coloured people of crafty, complex Egypt, but men and women who recalled the people of their own distant homeland. They would have made friends of the little children of Egypt also, for the children of all lands are above the distinctions of race or even of colour. But the children of the East, with their fly-worried eyes and lips, required a woman's care before they could gain a man's affection. It was different with these clean-limbed, healthy tomboys who ran by the train crying for souvenirs, and to whom the soldiers threw their few remaining Egyptian coins, the badges of their hats, the buttons of their tunics and their army biscuits.
The train arrived in the north of France on the morning of the 12th and the battalion detrained at Bailleul. The weather had now become raw and cold, and heavy rain was falling as the unit marched to Merris, a village some few miles distant.