I strongly objected to these untrained men being sent to me under the circumstances in which I was placed, for it was impossible to give them any training owing to the excessive duties we were called upon to perform day and night. I knew that the result of putting raw recruits to fulfil duties which should have been carried out only by seasoned soldiers, must, before very long, end in disaster. I foresaw endless breaches of discipline, not because the men were evilly disposed, but because they were untrained and knew nothing of military discipline. I accordingly urged the Staff to remove all these recruits, of whom I had about 800, to a training centre, and repeatedly warned the authorities of what the result must be if this were not done, but not the slightest notice was taken of my appeal. It was a thousand pities that these enthusiastic American volunteers did not get a fair chance to show their mettle. I well remember how favourably I was impressed with their physique and general appearance when I inspected them on their arrival at Rafa. They were miles ahead, physically, of the men who joined the battalion in England--in fact I do not believe that there was a unit in the whole of the E.E.F. that held such a fine-looking body of men. Because they were untrained and had no idea of discipline, these hefty youths were constantly in trouble for committing breaches of military rules and regulations. They simply did not understand soldiering or what it meant. In this way I got to know the majority of them fairly well. We had many interesting meetings at "office hour." Of course, in dealing with these volunteers, I never forgot that the faults they were guilty of were, in great measure, due to lack of training, and I dealt with them accordingly. Their military offences were not grave, just the delinquencies that must be expected of recruits, because they are recruits. Nevertheless, it is always a danger to have a battalion, supposed to be at any moment ready to take the field, swamped with some 800 raw untrained men.