It is a source of pride to have known and lived with such men.
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 the blessings of British occupation.