Chapter I: Front Matter

BY-WAYS ON SERVICE

BY-WAYS ON SERVICE

NOTES FROM
AN AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL

BY
HECTOR DINNING

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY, LTD.
1918

Printed in Great Britain

To

AUSTRALIA

NOTE BY THE AUTHOR

These sketches were not originally written for publication in the form of a book; and there has been little opportunity of revising them with that object. The idea of collection and publication came late, after they (most of them) had appeared in the daily press or in some other journal; and it came rather by suggestion from friends than on the writer's initiative.

The collection is rough and inconsecutive. It does not attempt to give a complete picture of what was to be seen by an Australian at any stage after embarkation from Australia. It is a series of impressions gained from an outlook necessarily limited. I wrote about the things that impressed me most, chiefly for the reason that they impressed me; there was also the motive of conveying to a small circle of friends some notion of what I saw.

In the light of the offensive fighting of 1917 in Western Europe, a great deal of this book will appear feeble, and even flippant. Descriptions of Egyptian cities and of the Canal-Zone will seem a kind of impertinence, in a book from the War-area, after tales of the fighting in Picardy. But they are published with the belief that after Peace has broken out some soldiers may find an interest in awakening the memory of their first-love in the world outside Australia. For most of them Egypt was that; and though in the desert they often declared themselves "fed-up" with Egypt, it was a transient and liverish judgment, and their relationship with this first-love was never stodgy. For the East of the sort they stumbled across in Cairo and on the Canal, Australians discovered in themselves a liveliness of interest that was almost an affinity.

But no apology for reminiscences of Anzac is called for, let the fighting at Pozieres be never so fierce. It is certain that Gallipoli is overshadowed by the fierce intensity and ceaselessness of the struggle in France. But it is only the intensity of the Turkish fighting that is overshadowed. No intensity of the struggle on the Somme will ever eclipse the intense pathos of that ill-starred adventure on the ridges of Anzac.

These sketches were written hurriedly and in the midst of a good deal of distraction. There has been no time to attend to considerations of style or arrangement of the matter within the limits of single articles. Often I was stuck for leisure, and sometimes for paper. Most of the Anzac sketches were written in the dug-out at nights in circumstances that would have contented transitorily the most Bohemian scribbler. Those from Egypt were mostly scrawled in a desert camp. In either case there was the Censor to reckon with. That is seized as another excuse for inconsecutiveness.

My acknowledgments are due to Messrs. Cassell and Company for their permission to include in this volume the sketch of Anzac which appeared in the _Anzac-Book_.

HECTOR DINNING.

Somme,
_December, 1917_.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.--WAITING

SECTION A.--ON THE WAY

CHAPTER PAGE

I. TRANSPORT 1

II. UP THE CANAL 13

III. ABBASSIEH 24

SECTION B.--CAIRO

I. ON LEAVE IN CAIRO 33

II. THE MOOSKI 42

BOOK II.--GALLIPOLI

I. THE JOURNEY 55

II. GLIMPSES OF ANZAC.--I. 67

III. GLIMPSES OF ANZAC.--II. 82

IV. SIGNALS 92

V. THE DESPATCH-RIDERS 96

VI. THE BLIZZARD 98

VII. EVACUATION 103

BOOK III.--BACK TO EGYPT

I. LEMNOS 111

II. MAHSAMAH 118

III. CANAL-ZONE 127

IV. ALEXANDRIA THE THIRD TIME 138

V. THE LAST OF EGYPT 152

BOOK IV.--FRANCE

SECTION A.--A BASE

CHAPTER PAGE

I. ENTRÉE 163

II. BILLETED 169

III. THE SEINE AT ROUEN 175

IV. ROUEN _REVUE_ 180

V. LA BOUILLE 184

SECTION B.--PICARDY AND THE SOMME

I. BEHIND THE LINES.--I. 188

II. BEHIND THE LINES.--II. 196

III. C.C.S. 200

IV. THE FOUGHTEN-FIELD 213

V. AN ADVANCED RAILHEAD 219

VI. ARRAS AFTER THE PUSH 232

SECTION C.--FRENCH PROVINCIAL LIFE

I. A MORNING IN PICARDY 242

II. THÉRÈSE 251

III. LEAVES FROM A VILLAGE DIARY 260

IV. THE CAFÉ DU PROGRÈS 270

V. L'HÔTEL DES BONS ENFANTS 275

VI. PROVINCIAL SHOPS 278