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Updated: May 17, 2025
On being informed he told us we were steering head-on for a minefield, and that if we wanted Mersa Matruh we must alter course a few points and we should be in before nightfall. Also, he added a few comments about our seamanship, but we were much too grateful to mind besides, they really applied to the Bulgarian skipper. It sounds rather like an anti-climax to say that we landed safely.
Yet right up to the end of 1917 they were a source of trouble, and in 1915 the situation became so serious that a strong punitive force had to be sent to Mersa Matruh, on the Western Frontier of Egypt, to cope with it.
If the old Missa had behaved badly in Gabbari docks, she was odious once we got out to sea. She did everything but stand on her head or capsize and did indeed nearly accomplish both these feats. Normally the journey from Alexandria to Mersa Matruh, whither we were bound, occupies about sixteen hours. On this occasion the Missa took five days!
Trouble began to threaten in November 1915, and the frontier post at Sollum was withdrawn to Mersa Matruh, the terminus of a railway line from Alexandria.
On or about this date, on the Sinai Peninsula, a British reconnoitering party routed a hostile band of Arabs near Matruh, losing 15 men killed and 15 wounded, 3 of whom were officers. The Arabs had 35 killed and 17 taken prisoners.
Then, too, we were almost our own A.S.C. In the first place stores had to be brought by boat from Alexandria to Mersa Matruh, and the harassed and long-suffering troops were told off as unloading parties. At rare intervals a consignment of canteen stores would arrive, on which occasions the unloading party would be at the beach bright and early; things get lost so easily.
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