“Greatcoats and nothing else was the favourite kit with the men of my boat, who prided themselves on their dress and were anxious to save one good suit of khaki in which, they said, they would march into Khartoum. It was a handy costume when you stuck on a sandbank or struck upon a rock, as you could be overboard in a second to shove the boat off. Very often my men used to row in their ‘birth-day suits’! Just before we started up the Nile I had been transferred to a new company, and my skipper[259] left the detailing of the crews of the boats to the Colour-Sergeant, who took advantage of my youth and innocence (?) to put into my boat ten of the biggest blackguards in the company, and a really good corporal of the old stamp (Corporal George M‘Kee). Though I was new to the company, my future boat’s crew were well known to me by name and sight as being constant attenders at the Orderly Room, so I thought a ‘few kind words’ would do them no harm, and consequently informed them that I knew them well, but that we were going to have no d----d nonsense in my boat, or out of it they would go to sink or swim! A grin of amusement was all the answer I got to my short speech. “When we started off the Corporal and I were the only two men who had ever handled an oar in their lives. Luckily the Corporal was a good tough nut, and had been stroke in the regimental boat some years previously when we were in Malta. That first day’s row is still a nightmare to me. We left Sarras at 12 noon, the Corporal and I doing the rowing, while the remainder did their best to imitate us, but only succeeded for the most part in ‘catching crabs.’ The current for the Nile was slight--but except quite close in-shore it ran at about 3 miles an hour. Unfortunately our Cox, never having handled a tiller before, kept alternately running us out into the stream or into the banks. The distance from Sarras to Gemai was only 12 or 14 miles, but we did not get there till 8 P.M., and I thought we should never get there. I was more dead-beat than I have ever been before or since, and once I had thrown myself on to the sand when we eventually reached Gemai, I could not have gone another yard. However, youth and a sound sleep worked wonders, and next morning I was as fit as a fiddle, and started loading up the food stuff--a job requiring a lot of time and care, as each box had to be fitted into its place like blocks in a Chinese puzzle. With the stores, we also took in one or two Canadian _voyageurs_ per company. My company had two. Regiments who had preceded us had had a _voyageur_ for each boat, but a good many of them had become ‘fed up’ and had gone home or to Hospital, and by the time the Royal Irish went up the river, the supply only ran to about one or two for every 10 or 12 boats.