The Other Anzacs (6 page)

In Suez, Alice had lamented the difficulty in finding books, noting that she was ‘missing my books more than anything’. But there was little time for reading. The nurses’ company was frequently sought by the AIF officers. While they were free of many of the moral constraints of home, the sisters still kept an eye on each other. Alice was rather flattered when a convalescing officer felt well enough to single her out for a chat. But the conversation of only a few minutes sparked ‘some scathing remark’ from another sister, stirring Alice’s wrath. ‘He seemed rather a nice boy and invited me over to the camp. I said I would go then wondered if I did right.’
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She thought he might have misunderstood her.

Alice found herself the focus of quite some attention from the officers. Among them was Lieutenant Frank Smith. ‘Saw F.S. this a.m. The Lieut. off the 2nd Contingent boats. Can’t quite make him out.’
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Frank sent flowers that looked ‘as though they might have been picked out too—not just ordered from the florist . . . I got them just as I was going on duty. It cheered me up. I’m beginning to think a good lot about that young man. Expect I shall wake up soon.’ But she enjoyed the attention.

The workload began to pick up during February, with actions that included an Allied attack on the forts at the entrance of the Dardanelles. The wounded were shipped to Cairo. The sisters had to consciously separate their private lives from their professional duties. When Frank sent her a telegram, ‘coolly expecting me to meet him in Cairo’, she wrote: ‘He takes things very much for granted.’
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She did not go. After meeting him again, she was disappointed and decided it was ‘just as well not to be falling in love’ with him. However, when a young South Australian Lighthorseman invited her out, she decided she ‘wanted one more nibble’ at Frank. They met at ‘a shabby little place’ for afternoon tea, the discreet venue chosen, Alice decided, because of ‘awkwardness and not meanness’.

One day she accepted an invitation from another officer before realising she had double-booked with Frank. She wrote to the officer, putting him off. ‘I’m sorry now because they may be going away to fight any day and goodness knows who will come back again. The nearer it comes the less I can bear to think of our boys being wounded. They are such dear things. Of course we see the best of them because they are always so pleased to see us. Already they are tired of the French Girls.’
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The ‘French Girls’ were prostitutes and bar girls in Cairo’s red-light district. Yet another officer wanted to see Alice before his regiment marched. They walked together in the hospital garden, but Alice believed that he was ‘weak’ and did not have ‘the back of a fish’. Frank Smith remained a focus of her attention, but still uncertainty plagued her. There was something about him that she wasn’t sure of.

Nonetheless, they spent an afternoon driving around Cairo, followed by dinner at Shepheard’s Hotel. ‘Got home in time for 10 minutes canoodle before I must come on duty.’
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Dinners and moonlight rides continued, but time was running out, for Frank was about to leave for the Dardanelles. Outings became more precious, and Alice began to like Frank more. ‘He is a dear thing really and so jolly—I’m going to miss him horribly when he goes.’
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Alice began to compare other men with Frank, among them Captain A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, a writer turned Army stable manager, who had just returned from Cyprus after buying mules for transport work. Alice found him ‘an interesting bombastic little chap’.
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In the three months since the nurses’ arrival, their introduction to war had encompassed both an active social life and the sight of awful suffering and death. Alice lamented the loss of a ‘fine lad of 24’ to pneumonia. ‘He told me in the morning that when he left Sydney he did not know that his people were coming over here—but that they came by a quick mail boat and were here to meet him when he arrived. He told me this so seriously and evidently believed himself that I did not realise until today that it must have been only delirium. He died very happy believing that his mother was beside him all the time.’
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Experiences such as this would soon become all too frequent.

4
THE PRELUDE

The Australian and New Zealand troops were restless and ready for action. But they had to wait, each in their own way anticipating what lay ahead. The nurses sensed their keenness to get on with it. In late February, when the AIF 3rd Brigade left Mena Camp, the nurses joined in the cheering and excitement. Elsie Cook, at church later with her husband Syd, noted ‘the khakied boys and their keen, splendid earnest faces there’. Sensing the inevitability of Syd’s departure, Elsie was determined to celebrate their ‘semi-anniversary’ on 19 March, donning her ‘travelling dress hat, shoes and even gloves that I had worn after my wedding’. They strolled about the gardens and had tea on an island as a band played. On return to Mena, Syd was required for night operations. ‘After dinner, I wrote letters home. So endeth the 19th. I wonder as I write where we shall be next 19th September, our real and first anniversary day? In Australia I hope.’
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The impatience of waiting was too much for other ‘khakied boys’ in Cairo. Not far from the terrace of Shepheard’s Hotel, with its wicker chairs and tables so favoured by the officers and the nurses they entertained, was Haret el Wasser Street, where Australian and New Zealand soldiers went for entertainment on their days off. ‘The Wazzir’, or ‘The Wozzer’, as it was known, was infamous for its gut-tearing alcohol. It was also Cairo’s red-light district. By the early months of 1915 the ranks of local and foreign prostitutes in the Egyptian capital had swelled to accommodate the leave-time needs of the Anzacs. Albert Facey, of the 11th Battalion, described the scene after his arrival in Cairo in February 1915, aged just twenty. While he did not find Cairo very interesting, ‘a lot of lads’ from his unit used to visit the city every chance they got. He had little doubt what was on their minds.

I was shy where women were concerned and we had been lectured several times about the bad women who had come to Cairo when it was known that the AIF was there. One lecturer told us that it was estimated that there were some thirty thousand women doing a roaring trade as prostitutes, and the authorities were trying to make them submit themselves for examination for venereal disease. Many soldiers had contracted this dreadful disease. The lecturers didn’t pull their punches when describing what could happen if you got a dose of venereal disease. So I completely refused to have anything to do with these women.
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Within a fortnight of their arrival ‘a startling outburst’ of venereal disease occurred among the troops. Over the next four months more than 2000 Australian soldiers were infected. One medical officer noted that No. 2 Australian Stationary Hospital, consisting of tents and marquees, soon had under treatment about 800 cases. Official medical historian Colonel A.G. Butler wrote that it was soon obvious that the problem required strong measures. ‘The moral and patriotic aspects were forcefully put before the troops in a manly and straightforward letter by the Corps Commander, and with his approval, incoming transports were met by the registrar of No. 1 General Hospital for personal instruction.’
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In a letter to General Sir William Bridges at the end of December 1914, General Sir William Birdwood focused on drunkenness and venereal disease among the troops. ‘I still hear of many cases of drunkenness, and this the men must stop, ’ he demanded. It would have been more in hope than expectation. ‘Cairo is full of temptations, and a few of the men seem to think they have come here for a huge picnic; they have money and wish to get rid of it. The worst of it is that Cairo is full of some, probably, of the most unscrupulous people in the world, who are only too anxious to do all they can to entice our boys into the worst of places, and possibly drug them there, only to turn them out again in a short time to bring disgrace on the rest of us.’
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Birdwood said there was little time left for the two AIF contingents to make themselves efficient. ‘But there is no possibility whatever of our doing ourselves full justice unless we are every one of us absolutely physically fit, and this no man can possibly be if he allows his body to become sodden with drink or rotten from women, and unless he is doing his best to keep himself efficient he is swindling the Government which has sent him to represent it and for it. From perhaps a selfish point of view, too, but in the interests of our children and children’s children, it is as necessary to keep a “clean Australia” as a “White Australia”.’ At the end of January 1915, pay was stopped to men with venereal disease while they were absent from duty.

The affected men were sent to the 500-bed Contagious Diseases Hospital at Abassia, near Cairo. When many of the patients escaped for a night on the town, a barbed-wire fence was erected around the hospital, and sentries were posted outside. Even this failed to keep all of the men in. Nursing the infected men was made more difficult because of the lack of beds and mattresses and, in some tents, no covering for the sandy floor. When the wind blew, dust got into wounds. With hospital accommodation in such short supply, it was decided to send some of the venereal patients back to Australia.

The Australians and New Zealanders quickly gained a reputation for poor discipline, womanising and excessive drinking, but the nurses understood the temptations they faced. ‘The Music halls are crowded and look most forbidding, poor boys, they have had some horrible experiences, but I should not like to put them on paper, ’ Elsie Eglinton observed discreetly.
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The situation did not change much over the next year, as Sister Evelyn ‘Tev’ Davies discovered in April 1916. She was a realist about their behaviour, commenting, ‘You can’t altogether blame the boys. I couldn’t give you any idea of the wickedness that is rife in the city.’
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Not all the nurses were as tolerant, however, as Alice Ross King found with Sister Hilda Samsing. Alice noted that a ‘nice clean boy’ was in a tent alongside another soldier who had caught venereal disease from the Wazzir. The ‘clean boy’ soon contracted a gonorrheal infection of his eyes, and it seemed certain he would lose his sight. ‘The sad part of it was that the nurse [Samsing] objected to nurse him for fear her own eyes became infected. I’m really longing to nurse that man and perhaps save his eyesight. This wretched woman made a fuss and would not go in the boy’s tent—I could slay her.’
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A few days later she noted that Major James Barrett had gone to ‘meet the 3rd Contingent at Suez and lecture them well on venereal diseases. I hope to goodness he does some good. The first Contingent fell in terribly.’
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And they continued to do so.

Emotions ran high, and the Wazzir became more unruly. On Good Friday 1915, as they awaited orders for Gallipoli, some 5000 Anzac troops were in the red-light district looking for a good time when a riot erupted. It ran for three days. There are various accounts of the cause, but it was commonly ascribed to grievances over the spread of venereal disease and higher charges by prostitutes due to increased demand as more soldiers arrived in Egypt. And the bad alcohol didn’t help. Daisy Richmond heard of the riot, and that Australian and New Zealand troops were heavily involved. ‘The real cause lay between a Maori and native woman so New Zealanders and our men joined in.’
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Looting broke out, British military police—the hated ‘Red Caps’—were called out, and more than fifty Australians and New Zealanders were arrested. News of the riot was quickly censored, but word soon spread among the sisters.

For Alice Ross King, Good Friday was not marked by hot cross buns ‘or anything like that . . . There are terrible doings in Cairo. 20, 000 troops are on leave—it being Easter. They have got into the lowest part of the town and are rioting.’
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The scene was chaotic, with fire carts and military police everywhere. Hilda Samsing and her friend Sister Alice Kitchen were taking tea at Shepheard’s when they heard shots fired. The next day, Easter Saturday, Olive Haynes reported that the sisters had been told it was not safe for them to go out alone or in uniform. Alice Ross King lamented that everyone was having a sad Easter. Rumours were rife.

It seems that some men who had contracted disease at one of these houses went back for revenge. About 150 others joined them. They threw all the furniture out of the windows into the streets and made big bonfires of it. They did not burn any houses in fact they put out the fire when it started in one house, but they wrecked several shops and gave the quarter a bad time. A company of Lancaster Rifles were called out and they fired on the mob. About 3 people were killed and a few dozen injured—the police were driven back, heavy missiles such as tables and big logs of wood thrown. One officer who went down to try to quell the disturbance got very badly injured.
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