The Great Martian War: The Gathering Storm - Snippet #4
Dec 9, 2019 12:25:15 GMT
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Post by scottwashburn on Dec 9, 2019 12:25:15 GMT
Chapter Two
June 1911, North of Devonport, Tasmania
The coast of Tasmania was just a dark streak fading on the southern horizon as Harry leaned against the rail of the SS Hartlepool. Burford Sampson was a few yards away staring in the same direction, a strange look on his face.
“Sorry we couldn’t stay longer, Burf,” he said. “A shame you couldn’t get to visit your home.”
Sampson shrugged and seemed to shake himself. “No matter. I hadn’t really thought of it as home for years. And now I doubt it would…” he trailed off.
Harry nodded. He’d never been to Tasmania before, but he could guess what Sampson meant. The island off the south coast of Australia was the closest substantial landmass and it had been the destination for a huge number of refugees. Devonport had been a town of fewer than ten thousand before the invasion. When they’d stopped there a few days ago, there were vast tent cities all around it which must have held a hundred thousand at least.
A hundred thousand with more coming every day. The task force carrying the troops had needed to thread its way through an armada of tramp steamers, ferries, sailboats, rowboats, and rafts bringing people to Tasmania. Vessels crammed to the rails with desperate people—or empty ones heading back for more across the hundred and forty mile wide Bass Straight which separated Tasmania from Australia proper.
Australia might be officially evacuated now, but no one could guess how many people were still there, trying to avoid the Martians, trying to get away. There weren’t actually that many Martians and there was so much land to hid in, Harry guessed that more people would be showing up here for years to come.
The flotilla of small vessels at Devonport had reminded him of the mob of boats which had taken them off the beach in Botany Bay. That had been one of the most harrowing moments of his life. Somehow, bobbing there, completely exposed had been more frightening than dodging tripods in the streets of Sydney. If a tripod had caught them like that there would have been nowhere to hide and as exhausted as he was, he would have gone straight to the bottom if he’d jumped into the water. Burn or drown? Which would be worse?
But he hadn’t had to do either. The navy’s guns had kept the Martians at bay and the boats had made it back to the ships and he’d managed to climb aboard. Someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders and handed him a mug of hot tea as the ships pulled away.
And now the ships were taking them… where?
They ought to be taking us back to Australia, dammit!
When they realized that the ships were taking them from Sydney to Tasmania rather than to New Zealand, there had been hope that it would be to a base which was preparing for a counter attack. A base to stage the liberation of their homes.
But they’d only stayed long enough to get food for the men and coal for the ships and to redistribute the troops. They’d gotten all mixed up during the mad scramble to get away, but now the companies and battalions were all back together again, and the 15th New Castle Battalion was aboard the Hartlepool.
No one, of course, had bothered to tell them where they were going.
Rumors were rife, but real information was scarce. They were heading west, so that indicated South Africa, India, or Egypt, but it could have been any of them, or somewhere else entirely. All they really knew was that it wasn’t home.
“Why the hell do we got to sail halfway round the bleedin’ world to fight Martians?” demanded one of the men when the company had assembled. “We’ve got Martians right here!” Several others had agreed and a sort of growl ran through the whole body of men.
“Because we can’t beat them here, you silly sod!” Burford Sampson had said, standing in front of them, fists planted on his hips. “We found that out at Perth and a dozen other places. So they are sending us someplace where we can beat the bastards. When we’ve done that there, we can come back here and finish the job!”
That seemed to satisfy most of the men, although there was still some grumbling. Captain Berwick had nodded gratefully at Sampson and then dismissed the company.
The ship wasn’t large and with the whole battalion and a few support units aboard it was badly overcrowded. Even the senior officers were jammed in two or three to a cabin. Junior officers, like Harry and Sampson were given quarters little better than the enlisted men, although they did have actual bunks rather than hammocks. And a porthole; the small round window was a godsend. Even though it was fall in this part of the world, the heat below decks was stifling. Harry pitied his troops who had no such luxury.
There really wasn’t room for everyone up on deck at once, and as soon as the coast had dropped out of sight, the colonel ordered a system to rotate the men up there two companies at a time. Officers, of course, could go up there whenever they wanted, and Harry took advantage of that.
There were five officers in C Company, Captain Berwick, Lieutenant MacDonald, Lieutenant Miller, Burford Sampson, and himself. They’d gotten to know each other very well during the long siege of Sydney and they tended to go around together. Proper British officers would each have their own batman or dog-robber, as they were sometimes called, but In C Company only the Captain had his own, and the lieutenants all shared one, splitting the costs. Their man was Lance Corporal Ralph Scoggins, a bandy-legged ape of a fellow, who claimed that he’d been a dockyard worker before the war. Harry suspected that his ‘work’ at the dockyards had not been of any strictly legal sort, but he was a good soldier and a great scrounger, and he was willing to forgive him his past sins.
So it seemed almost normal when Scoggins, bearing a tray with a tall pot and mugs, found the five of them slouching on the ship’s fo’c’sle watching the sun sliding down the sky in the west.
“No proper tea service to be found on this here ship, sirs,” he apologized.
“’Less you want me to borrow the captain’s, o’ course.”
They all chuckled and took a mug. “This will do fine, Ralph,” said Berwick. “Have you seen Cartwright about?” Cartwright was his own batman.
“I saw him tidying up your bunk a while ago, sir. Forlorn hope that is. Not proper a t’all.”
“We’ll make do,” said Sampson. “And what about you? Found a spot for yourself?”
“Oh, yes, sir. The main berthing areas were a tad crowded, an’ more than a tad smelly—honest to God I don’t think they’ve mucked the place out since before the evacuation began—so I looked around a bit. Knowin’ ships and knowin’ sailors as I do, I had a little chat with one o’ the stewards and worked out an arrangement. Got a fine little cubby just aft of the galley, sir.”
Harry snorted and wondered what, exactly Scoggins had traded to get his fine little cubby. And just how nice it really was. Wouldn’t surprise him if it was nicer than the place he and the other officers shared. The man had a talent for certain. He slurped his tea and winced. No sugar.
“And in your scouting, did you happen to see what sort of provisions they were able to bring aboard at Devonport?” asked MacDonald. “Can we expect eggs and bacon for breakfast, or just ship’s biscuits like before?”
Scoggins frowned. “Eggs might be a problem, sir. An’ it might be salt pork rather than bacon. Things were damn tight what with all those poor refugees to feed. But I’ll do me best.”
“We know you will,” said Sampson. “Well, carry on.”
“Right, sir.” The man moved away, stared at—sometimes glared at—by other officers whose men hadn’t even managed the tea for them.
They sat, looked forward, and watched the sun touch the ocean. The western sky was a fiery red. As the night quickly deepened around them, they drifted off to their bunks.
A week later, beyond the western edge of Australia, the ships turned northwest. That ruled out South Africa as a destination, but left India, Persia, or Egypt as a possibility. Sampson said they weren’t missing anything in South Africa.
Two more weeks and the amateur navigators aboard were sure it was Egypt. Or at the very least, the Suez Canal; who knew where they might be headed after that? “Can’t be Canada,” said some. “They would have sent us across the Pacific instead of the long way ‘round!” “Don’t be so sure!’ laughed others. “The navy may be giving us the scenic tour!”
But wherever they were headed, the men were becoming edgy to get there. The fresh meat and greens they’d gotten in Tasmania were all eaten up, leaving just the salt pork and biscuits, and the water was tasting mighty stale. The limited space aboard restricted the drill which could be done and Harry and the other officer wracked their brains to find things to keep the men busy. The Indian Ocean seemed empty of shipping and their convoy was all alone in the vast reaches.
But finally, in the fourth week, the cry of ‘land ho!’ came from the lookout and a hazy bump was seen on the horizon ahead. One of the ship’s crew told them it was Socotra Island at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden. It was a barren and desolate pile of rock, but there were a dozen ships at anchor, despite the lack of a good harbor. When the Martians had overrun the Arabian Peninsula, the British government in Aden had relocated here.
The convoy paused briefly to receive communications. Harry took the opportunity to mail several letters he’d written to his mother. He had no idea if the letters would ever reach them. There was probably a better chance that letters from his mother might eventually catch up with him, but that would only happen once he stayed in one spot long enough.
When the ships moved on again, orders appeared from General Legge, the commander of the entire force, to be ready for hostile action. The ships were indeed headed for the Suez Canal, and to reach it they had to pass through the narrow straight of Bab al-Mandab between Arabia and the African mainland. Martian war machines were often seen in the area on both shores and ships making the passage had to stay on the alert.
The men were pressed into service to strip the upper works of anything which might catch fire under a Martian heat ray. Flammable items which couldn’t be moved was protected with metal sheets or anything else they could find aboard which wouldn’t burn. The captain frowned at the mess they’d made of his ship.
As they neared the straight, they could hear intermittent gunfire rumbling across the waters. It wasn’t the steady roar like they’d heard during the attacks on Sydney, just a thud or a boom now and then, growing louder as they got closer.
The men were turned out in full kit and lined the barricaded rails, rifles ready. The battalion’s four Maxim machine guns were set up in positions with good fields of fire. Harry stood behind the men of his platoon and thought how ridiculously flimsy the barricades were. A heat ray at close range would burn through them in seconds.
When the straight became visible he, and everyone else breathed a sigh of relief. Bab al-Mandab might have been small for a sea passage, but it was still miles wide at its narrowest point.
A small island named Perim was close to the Arabian side of the straight, only a mile or so off shore and that was where the gunfire had been coming from. Several navy warships, including an old battleship, guarded the straights, but there appeared to be a garrison on the island with some heavy guns, too. These were slowly firing at something off to the east. Harry took out his field glasses and looking in that direction, but could not see anything except drifting clouds of smoke and dust.
“Must be what? Twelve miles from the African shore to that island?” said Sampson. “With their heat rays only dangerous to an exposed man for two miles or so, we should be fine if we stay in the middle.”
“That water on the left looks pretty shallow from the color of it,” said Harry. “I wonder how far out a tripod could walk? Close enough to take a shot at us?”
Sampson frowned and shook his head. “They’d have to walk four or five miles and they’d be sitting ducks for the navy guns the whole way. There don’t seem to be any of the blighters around today, anyhow.”
No, that was true; the African shore was deserted in both directions and for miles inland. Still, the convoy commander was taking no chances. The three columns of transports merged into a single long line to thread some imaginary needle in the center of the straight. An hour later they were in the Red Sea, which did not look particularly red to Harry.
They stood down and relaxed, but were told to leave their make-shift defenses in place. It was still another four days travel to reach the canal, and as the sea broadened out again beyond the straights, the shore on both sides was lost to sight and it was like being out on the open ocean again. Still, the prospect of reaching some destination brightened the spirits of the men. They were tired of the ship and the drab rations and wanted to get off and kill some Martians.
Before noon on the third day after the straights, they saw a line of fortifications on the western shore. They started at the water’s edge near the little port town of Qoseir and stretched out of sight into the desert. From what Harry had heard, they went all the way to the Nile and then took up again on the other side and went on to meet the Mediterranean a hundred miles further on. As they drew closer, they could see that they were far more massive than what they’d been able to build around Sydney. Thick, high walls of stone or concrete were studded with heavy guns. A deep moat had been dug in front of the walls. More guns were in emplacements behind the walls and there were vehicle parks filled with tanks and armored cars.
As impressive as it was, the Australians just shook their heads or cursed. If a fraction of this had been given to them, maybe they wouldn’t be refugees from their homes now! The Empire had so much strength; why couldn’t more of it been spared for Australia?
By the start of the fourth day, they had entered the much narrower Gulf of Suez and could see both shores again. There were more military camps but all on the western side. Harry turned away and went over to the other side of the ship. After a while he noticed that Burford Sampson had joined him.
“No defenses on the eastern side there,” he said pointing. “They’re all on the other side of Sinai. They have a line of forts running from Aqaba to Jerusalem and then on to the Med farther north.”
A few hours later they reached the canal, which was just a big ditch cut through the sands. Somehow, Harry was expecting something more, and he realized that greater effort had probably gone into the fortification line they’d seen earlier. They had to reduce speed to prevent the wakes of the ships from eroding the sides of the canal, so it was well after dark by the time they reached Port Said at the other end. The night was clear and the waters of the Mediterranean glittered in the moonlight. Sampson muttered something about ‘wine dark seas’.
Noon of the next day saw them in Alexandria. The legendary port was busy, although not as busy as modest Devonport had been. There were swarms of fishing boats, but they were just fishing, not carrying refugees. Still, Hartlepool had to wait until nearly nightfall before it got its turn at one of the piers.
The 15th New Castle Battalion marched stiffly down the gangways onto solid ground for the first time in over a month. There was an officer waiting to greet them.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to Egypt.”
June 1911, North of Devonport, Tasmania
The coast of Tasmania was just a dark streak fading on the southern horizon as Harry leaned against the rail of the SS Hartlepool. Burford Sampson was a few yards away staring in the same direction, a strange look on his face.
“Sorry we couldn’t stay longer, Burf,” he said. “A shame you couldn’t get to visit your home.”
Sampson shrugged and seemed to shake himself. “No matter. I hadn’t really thought of it as home for years. And now I doubt it would…” he trailed off.
Harry nodded. He’d never been to Tasmania before, but he could guess what Sampson meant. The island off the south coast of Australia was the closest substantial landmass and it had been the destination for a huge number of refugees. Devonport had been a town of fewer than ten thousand before the invasion. When they’d stopped there a few days ago, there were vast tent cities all around it which must have held a hundred thousand at least.
A hundred thousand with more coming every day. The task force carrying the troops had needed to thread its way through an armada of tramp steamers, ferries, sailboats, rowboats, and rafts bringing people to Tasmania. Vessels crammed to the rails with desperate people—or empty ones heading back for more across the hundred and forty mile wide Bass Straight which separated Tasmania from Australia proper.
Australia might be officially evacuated now, but no one could guess how many people were still there, trying to avoid the Martians, trying to get away. There weren’t actually that many Martians and there was so much land to hid in, Harry guessed that more people would be showing up here for years to come.
The flotilla of small vessels at Devonport had reminded him of the mob of boats which had taken them off the beach in Botany Bay. That had been one of the most harrowing moments of his life. Somehow, bobbing there, completely exposed had been more frightening than dodging tripods in the streets of Sydney. If a tripod had caught them like that there would have been nowhere to hide and as exhausted as he was, he would have gone straight to the bottom if he’d jumped into the water. Burn or drown? Which would be worse?
But he hadn’t had to do either. The navy’s guns had kept the Martians at bay and the boats had made it back to the ships and he’d managed to climb aboard. Someone had thrown a blanket over his shoulders and handed him a mug of hot tea as the ships pulled away.
And now the ships were taking them… where?
They ought to be taking us back to Australia, dammit!
When they realized that the ships were taking them from Sydney to Tasmania rather than to New Zealand, there had been hope that it would be to a base which was preparing for a counter attack. A base to stage the liberation of their homes.
But they’d only stayed long enough to get food for the men and coal for the ships and to redistribute the troops. They’d gotten all mixed up during the mad scramble to get away, but now the companies and battalions were all back together again, and the 15th New Castle Battalion was aboard the Hartlepool.
No one, of course, had bothered to tell them where they were going.
Rumors were rife, but real information was scarce. They were heading west, so that indicated South Africa, India, or Egypt, but it could have been any of them, or somewhere else entirely. All they really knew was that it wasn’t home.
“Why the hell do we got to sail halfway round the bleedin’ world to fight Martians?” demanded one of the men when the company had assembled. “We’ve got Martians right here!” Several others had agreed and a sort of growl ran through the whole body of men.
“Because we can’t beat them here, you silly sod!” Burford Sampson had said, standing in front of them, fists planted on his hips. “We found that out at Perth and a dozen other places. So they are sending us someplace where we can beat the bastards. When we’ve done that there, we can come back here and finish the job!”
That seemed to satisfy most of the men, although there was still some grumbling. Captain Berwick had nodded gratefully at Sampson and then dismissed the company.
The ship wasn’t large and with the whole battalion and a few support units aboard it was badly overcrowded. Even the senior officers were jammed in two or three to a cabin. Junior officers, like Harry and Sampson were given quarters little better than the enlisted men, although they did have actual bunks rather than hammocks. And a porthole; the small round window was a godsend. Even though it was fall in this part of the world, the heat below decks was stifling. Harry pitied his troops who had no such luxury.
There really wasn’t room for everyone up on deck at once, and as soon as the coast had dropped out of sight, the colonel ordered a system to rotate the men up there two companies at a time. Officers, of course, could go up there whenever they wanted, and Harry took advantage of that.
There were five officers in C Company, Captain Berwick, Lieutenant MacDonald, Lieutenant Miller, Burford Sampson, and himself. They’d gotten to know each other very well during the long siege of Sydney and they tended to go around together. Proper British officers would each have their own batman or dog-robber, as they were sometimes called, but In C Company only the Captain had his own, and the lieutenants all shared one, splitting the costs. Their man was Lance Corporal Ralph Scoggins, a bandy-legged ape of a fellow, who claimed that he’d been a dockyard worker before the war. Harry suspected that his ‘work’ at the dockyards had not been of any strictly legal sort, but he was a good soldier and a great scrounger, and he was willing to forgive him his past sins.
So it seemed almost normal when Scoggins, bearing a tray with a tall pot and mugs, found the five of them slouching on the ship’s fo’c’sle watching the sun sliding down the sky in the west.
“No proper tea service to be found on this here ship, sirs,” he apologized.
“’Less you want me to borrow the captain’s, o’ course.”
They all chuckled and took a mug. “This will do fine, Ralph,” said Berwick. “Have you seen Cartwright about?” Cartwright was his own batman.
“I saw him tidying up your bunk a while ago, sir. Forlorn hope that is. Not proper a t’all.”
“We’ll make do,” said Sampson. “And what about you? Found a spot for yourself?”
“Oh, yes, sir. The main berthing areas were a tad crowded, an’ more than a tad smelly—honest to God I don’t think they’ve mucked the place out since before the evacuation began—so I looked around a bit. Knowin’ ships and knowin’ sailors as I do, I had a little chat with one o’ the stewards and worked out an arrangement. Got a fine little cubby just aft of the galley, sir.”
Harry snorted and wondered what, exactly Scoggins had traded to get his fine little cubby. And just how nice it really was. Wouldn’t surprise him if it was nicer than the place he and the other officers shared. The man had a talent for certain. He slurped his tea and winced. No sugar.
“And in your scouting, did you happen to see what sort of provisions they were able to bring aboard at Devonport?” asked MacDonald. “Can we expect eggs and bacon for breakfast, or just ship’s biscuits like before?”
Scoggins frowned. “Eggs might be a problem, sir. An’ it might be salt pork rather than bacon. Things were damn tight what with all those poor refugees to feed. But I’ll do me best.”
“We know you will,” said Sampson. “Well, carry on.”
“Right, sir.” The man moved away, stared at—sometimes glared at—by other officers whose men hadn’t even managed the tea for them.
They sat, looked forward, and watched the sun touch the ocean. The western sky was a fiery red. As the night quickly deepened around them, they drifted off to their bunks.
A week later, beyond the western edge of Australia, the ships turned northwest. That ruled out South Africa as a destination, but left India, Persia, or Egypt as a possibility. Sampson said they weren’t missing anything in South Africa.
Two more weeks and the amateur navigators aboard were sure it was Egypt. Or at the very least, the Suez Canal; who knew where they might be headed after that? “Can’t be Canada,” said some. “They would have sent us across the Pacific instead of the long way ‘round!” “Don’t be so sure!’ laughed others. “The navy may be giving us the scenic tour!”
But wherever they were headed, the men were becoming edgy to get there. The fresh meat and greens they’d gotten in Tasmania were all eaten up, leaving just the salt pork and biscuits, and the water was tasting mighty stale. The limited space aboard restricted the drill which could be done and Harry and the other officer wracked their brains to find things to keep the men busy. The Indian Ocean seemed empty of shipping and their convoy was all alone in the vast reaches.
But finally, in the fourth week, the cry of ‘land ho!’ came from the lookout and a hazy bump was seen on the horizon ahead. One of the ship’s crew told them it was Socotra Island at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden. It was a barren and desolate pile of rock, but there were a dozen ships at anchor, despite the lack of a good harbor. When the Martians had overrun the Arabian Peninsula, the British government in Aden had relocated here.
The convoy paused briefly to receive communications. Harry took the opportunity to mail several letters he’d written to his mother. He had no idea if the letters would ever reach them. There was probably a better chance that letters from his mother might eventually catch up with him, but that would only happen once he stayed in one spot long enough.
When the ships moved on again, orders appeared from General Legge, the commander of the entire force, to be ready for hostile action. The ships were indeed headed for the Suez Canal, and to reach it they had to pass through the narrow straight of Bab al-Mandab between Arabia and the African mainland. Martian war machines were often seen in the area on both shores and ships making the passage had to stay on the alert.
The men were pressed into service to strip the upper works of anything which might catch fire under a Martian heat ray. Flammable items which couldn’t be moved was protected with metal sheets or anything else they could find aboard which wouldn’t burn. The captain frowned at the mess they’d made of his ship.
As they neared the straight, they could hear intermittent gunfire rumbling across the waters. It wasn’t the steady roar like they’d heard during the attacks on Sydney, just a thud or a boom now and then, growing louder as they got closer.
The men were turned out in full kit and lined the barricaded rails, rifles ready. The battalion’s four Maxim machine guns were set up in positions with good fields of fire. Harry stood behind the men of his platoon and thought how ridiculously flimsy the barricades were. A heat ray at close range would burn through them in seconds.
When the straight became visible he, and everyone else breathed a sigh of relief. Bab al-Mandab might have been small for a sea passage, but it was still miles wide at its narrowest point.
A small island named Perim was close to the Arabian side of the straight, only a mile or so off shore and that was where the gunfire had been coming from. Several navy warships, including an old battleship, guarded the straights, but there appeared to be a garrison on the island with some heavy guns, too. These were slowly firing at something off to the east. Harry took out his field glasses and looking in that direction, but could not see anything except drifting clouds of smoke and dust.
“Must be what? Twelve miles from the African shore to that island?” said Sampson. “With their heat rays only dangerous to an exposed man for two miles or so, we should be fine if we stay in the middle.”
“That water on the left looks pretty shallow from the color of it,” said Harry. “I wonder how far out a tripod could walk? Close enough to take a shot at us?”
Sampson frowned and shook his head. “They’d have to walk four or five miles and they’d be sitting ducks for the navy guns the whole way. There don’t seem to be any of the blighters around today, anyhow.”
No, that was true; the African shore was deserted in both directions and for miles inland. Still, the convoy commander was taking no chances. The three columns of transports merged into a single long line to thread some imaginary needle in the center of the straight. An hour later they were in the Red Sea, which did not look particularly red to Harry.
They stood down and relaxed, but were told to leave their make-shift defenses in place. It was still another four days travel to reach the canal, and as the sea broadened out again beyond the straights, the shore on both sides was lost to sight and it was like being out on the open ocean again. Still, the prospect of reaching some destination brightened the spirits of the men. They were tired of the ship and the drab rations and wanted to get off and kill some Martians.
Before noon on the third day after the straights, they saw a line of fortifications on the western shore. They started at the water’s edge near the little port town of Qoseir and stretched out of sight into the desert. From what Harry had heard, they went all the way to the Nile and then took up again on the other side and went on to meet the Mediterranean a hundred miles further on. As they drew closer, they could see that they were far more massive than what they’d been able to build around Sydney. Thick, high walls of stone or concrete were studded with heavy guns. A deep moat had been dug in front of the walls. More guns were in emplacements behind the walls and there were vehicle parks filled with tanks and armored cars.
As impressive as it was, the Australians just shook their heads or cursed. If a fraction of this had been given to them, maybe they wouldn’t be refugees from their homes now! The Empire had so much strength; why couldn’t more of it been spared for Australia?
By the start of the fourth day, they had entered the much narrower Gulf of Suez and could see both shores again. There were more military camps but all on the western side. Harry turned away and went over to the other side of the ship. After a while he noticed that Burford Sampson had joined him.
“No defenses on the eastern side there,” he said pointing. “They’re all on the other side of Sinai. They have a line of forts running from Aqaba to Jerusalem and then on to the Med farther north.”
A few hours later they reached the canal, which was just a big ditch cut through the sands. Somehow, Harry was expecting something more, and he realized that greater effort had probably gone into the fortification line they’d seen earlier. They had to reduce speed to prevent the wakes of the ships from eroding the sides of the canal, so it was well after dark by the time they reached Port Said at the other end. The night was clear and the waters of the Mediterranean glittered in the moonlight. Sampson muttered something about ‘wine dark seas’.
Noon of the next day saw them in Alexandria. The legendary port was busy, although not as busy as modest Devonport had been. There were swarms of fishing boats, but they were just fishing, not carrying refugees. Still, Hartlepool had to wait until nearly nightfall before it got its turn at one of the piers.
The 15th New Castle Battalion marched stiffly down the gangways onto solid ground for the first time in over a month. There was an officer waiting to greet them.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to Egypt.”