ve the Regular garrisons of Alexandria and Cairo. The
Battalion passed on to Port Said. As we neared the harbour, our men
hailed watchers on the quay for the latest news. Antwerp was then at its
last gasp, and the _Aboukir_, _Hague_ and _Cressy_ had been torpedoed in
the North Sea. The first cry from the ship was "How is City getting
on?" League football was still the first interest of Young England in
the second month of the Great War.

We sailed down the Canal on a scorching Sunday morning to Suez and the
Red Sea. A few Indians guarded its banks. Onward through the misty heat,
under escort of a destroyer, with a wind blowing hot from Arabia, to
Port Sudan, where we put in at 11 A.M. on the 30th September. The
temperature was 105 deg. F. in the shade. Here half of C Company, under
Captain T.W. Savatard (afterwards killed on Gallipoli) were left to
garrison and construct defences for the place. Once a desolate coral
reef, it is now a great harbour with the promise of a greater future.
This first night of Africa we rowed happily across its starlit lagoon in
the full glamour of the East to enjoy British hospitality.

Next morning we started, with Major Boyle of the Egyptian Army Staff as
a "cicerone," on the long railway track from the sea to Atbara and
Khartum, past scattered villages peopled by staring Fuzzy Wuzzies with
erect and luxuriant black hair, and across hot stretches of desert and
rock. At a quarter past eleven on the morning of the 2nd October 1914 we
arrived at Khartum North, where we detrained and were met by the Sirdar,
General Sir Reginald Wingate, then Governor-General of the Sudan, and
his Staff. We marched over the Blue Nile Bridge to the spacious British
barracks, the only spot in the Sudan where the Union Jack flies
unaccompanied by the flag of Egypt, and relieved the Suffolk Regiment.
In the afternoon our band played them out of the cantonment, and we
cheered them on the first stage of their long journey to the
blood-stained battle-fields of Flanders.

[Illustration: ARRIVAL AT KHARTUM, 2nd OCTOBER 1914.]

CHAPTER II

THE SUDAN

The tasks allotted to the Battalion between October, 1914, and April,
1915, while garrisoning the Sudan were of great variety. With the
gunners at Khartum Fort, they constituted part of the British force then
in the country, of which Colonel Gresham was commander. The detachment
left at Port Sudan organised its defences, ran an armoured train, and
patrolled th