The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I: Egypt, Gallipoli, Lemnos Island, Sinai PeninsulaCollett, Herbert Brayley
History
The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I: Egypt, Gallipoli, Lemnos Island, Sinai Peninsula
Collett, Herbert Brayley
Australia. Australian Army. Battalion, 28th; World War, 1914-1918 -- Regimental histories -- Australia
Some rioting had occurred a few months previously in Cairo, and overseas
soldiers were said to have been concerned in it. A further outbreak was
reported during the last week of July, followed on the next evening by a
disturbance in Heliopolis. Whatever were the causes of the first two
outbreaks, the third was directly traceable to the fact that Cairo was
suddenly placed out of bounds when leave men were waiting for trams at
the Heliopolis terminus with a view to securing passage to the city. The
military police, in attempting to deal with the situation, behaved
rather tactlessly, and incurred the resentment of the men, who indulged
in some stone-throwing and roughly handled a few individuals. Charges of
wholesale looting were laid against the troops, but a court of inquiry,
of which the commanding officer was a member, found on close
investigation that L50 would cover the whole of the damage done. The
claims submitted by the native shopkeepers totalled up to some L3,000.
During the early months of the A.I.F's. stay in Egypt, the Military
Police, a newly constituted force, incurred the dislike of the bulk of
the troops. This dislike engendered an antipathy which endured until the
end of the war. In the first instance there appears to have been some
reason for it. The police were not selected with sufficient care, and
included a number of men whose actions, to say the least, were shady. On
several occasions decent and well-behaved members of the Battalion were
received from the police cells, bereft of their money, much bruised and
battered, and accompanied by a charge sheet accusing them of crimes
which one moment's consideration would show they could not have
committed. Strong representations on these matters had no immediate
effect, but ultimately the Provost Corps was purged of the bad element
and became a body of experienced men of great value in the prevention or
detection of crime and the regulation of military traffic.
So far as could be learned, the men of the 28th had no part in either of
the disturbances. In fact, so uniformly high had been their standard of
behaviour that it had come under the notice of Sir John Maxwell, who
sent and asked the Battalion to supply picquets for duty in the
disturbed area. This action rather raised the resentment of some units
and created a certain amount of ill-feeling. So acute did this become
that on one occasion the Battalion of its own volition was on the point
of "standing to" with entrenching tool handles to repel a threatened
raid. However, common sense prevailed and good feeling with the men of
the Eastern States was soon re-established, but not before the title
"J----'s Own" had been conferred upon the Western Australians.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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