, of which I have the honour to be Colonel, to have
behaved so gloriously in one of the hardest and most deadly campaigns in
which British troops have ever been engaged."

It is a source of pride to have known and lived with such men.

CHAPTER IX

REVIVAL IN EGYPT

A large proportion of the sick and wounded invalided from Gallipoli
became familiar with one or other of the Alexandria hospitals. I spent a
week at Victoria College, which had become No. 17 General Hospital, with
Sister Neville, whose devotion to duty the Battalion had learnt when at
Khartum, as Matron. Thence I went to No. 10 Convalescent Hospital at
Ibra-himieh, once the stately house of an interned German called
Lindemann but now converted into a comfortable home under the care of Mr
and Mrs Scott. British leniency still reserved its tempting orangery for
the use of local Huns. It is the English way.

When the evacuation of Gallipoli was contemplated, every hospital was
cleared as far as possible of inmates, and I was one of the many
officers who in early December were turned adrift either to the hotels
of Alexandria or the great waiting camps of Mustapha and Sidi Bish.

The mere narrative of a holiday period at Alexandria has no public
interest. We learnt to know Levantine and Egyptian mentality better than
ever. When at Khartum an Egyptian _dobey_ (washerman) had amused us by
soliciting Regimental custom in preference to his competitors, not on
the ground that he washed clothes better or charged less, but solely, he
said, because the other _dobeys_ were "terribly wicked men." So at
Alexandria, every pedlar was the one honest follower of his craft. Yet
its population is more European than Egyptian. The shops were full of
the picture post cards of Italy and France, and portraits of Venezelos
were to be seen everywhere, adorned with the pale blue and white
national colours of Greece. Probably Mr Lloyd George's fame enjoys even
wider bounds. I have seen his likeness enshrined in wattle huts at
Omdurman and Wadi Halfa.

I touched unfamiliar minor issues of the War on the two occasions when I
sat as a member of the military court, which sits for the purpose of
enforcing proclamations issued by the supreme British military authority
in Egypt, and thus tides over the time that has to pass before the
Capitulations are abolished and a regular system of uniform justice
established. A day thus spent at the Carracol Attarine gives a fine
insight into