We had a short stop and walk around Colombo and then at Suez. Four days later found us in an even stranger environment for Australians. We had landed at Cairo--the first Australian Expeditionary force, part of General Birdwood’s Division which besides our contingent, comprised the 29th English Division (regulars). The Zion Mule Corps, a detachment of French troops, four regiments of Ghurkas, several native Indian regiments and the Indian Supply and Transport corps. Although no efforts were made to put up barracks or permanent buildings, it was soon evident that we were to be kept in our Egyptian camp for some period of time. The magnitude of the commissary arrangements, the settlements of the regiments into a general plan of a large and permanent encampment, made this only too plain. We had all been hoping and cheering for our advent to France. At this time we were, as I believe, merely held by Lord Kitchener to further our training. For the conquest of Gallipoli--that red hell of disaster--was not in the books of our commanders. German propaganda of the foulest and most awful sort swiftly made its appearance at Cairo. German agents (medical men in this case) we were afterward to learn, had gone among the women of the port, and advised them for their own protection to submit to inoculations that would armor them against the advent of the great thousands of soldiers. They were told the Australians would of a certainty spread a strange and deadly plague. In reality these agents inoculated the women with the most awful disease, and in this way laid a plot of destruction against our forces, which I am sorry to say met with some degree of success before the discovery of the infernal plan.