We came through Suez and Port Said, and did not go off the boats till we got to Alexandria. We stayed a night at Ismailia, and there, as the beginning of our fighting with the Turks, we came under their fire, or rather, we heard it. This made us feel that we were getting into things, and we listened with immense interest to the boom of the guns. At the same time we piled up our ship with bales of hay, as a protection, and mounted machine-guns, and fervently hoped that the Turks would come on and give us a chance against them; but we were not molested. They did not interfere with us then, but we soon had plenty to do with them. It was March 31st when C Squadron disembarked at Alexandria and got into the train, with Major White in charge. We went to Cairo, and then unloaded our horses and took them, walking, to a place ten miles outside the city; and there, practically in the desert, we camped, and for three months we had steady mounted drill, which made us as fit as fiddles. We had real dry heat, and no rain, all the time; but this did not trouble us, being Australians, and used to droughts. But we were glad when, at the end of the three months, the order came for us to pack up our kits and leave for the Dardanelles. We had the infantry kit served out to us, and in the middle of May we were back in Cairo, where we saw a lot of our chaps who had come back wounded from the Dardanelles. We found ourselves once more at Alexandria; and then, in two days we were at the Dardanelles, of which we had heard and talked so much, and where we had been so eager to go. We had left Egypt on a peaceful Sunday afternoon; now we were in the very thick of a wonderful and exciting war, for we were being towed ashore in pinnaces, each holding about 250 men--half the regiment--and were under heavy fire. Gunboats were booming away, shells were bursting, and aeroplanes were sweeping about the sky. All these things gave us a good idea of what was going on. How did we take it, not being used to the business? Well, the chaps sat in the pinnaces and looked at one another, to see how they stood it. We were landing in broad daylight, the boats were packed, bullets were dropping all around us, sending nasty little spits of water up; and bullets from rifles and machine-guns were whizzing over our heads. I was watching the impression it was having on the others. Some of our chaps were wearing war medals, and I made up my mind to carry on as they were doing. If they took it all right, so would I. They _did_ take it all right. As the bullets dropped round us I heard such remarks as, “By Jove! If that hit a fellow it would hurt him!” Then men would laugh. Our colonel--I was sitting near him in the pinnace--looked stern and calm. He knew better than most of us what it meant.