Branches Book

BRANCHES

horses bound for Alexandria. He spent the next fifty days at sea. Because Reggie was literate he was assigned to be a telegraph engineer. When he arrived in Alexandria, Egypt on 3 December, he wrote his first letter home. In this first letter he told his older brother (uncle) Will about his time at sea. This is what he wrote. “Just a few lines to let you know how things are with me in Egypt. Well I am getting used to the climate now and I am getting as fat as old Moat. My weight is 12 stone 8 lbs so that will give you an idea how I am living. Well Will I had a splendid voyage. The sea was as smooth as a mill pond. I was not sick at all but of course I had a fine job. I was telegraph engineer. I was receiving orders from the bridge and I had to tell the engineer what speed to go and I dined with the crew. Had the best of tucker and slept in a cabin so I had nothing to growl at. I ate like a whale on the briny – ha ha ha.” Reggie’s adventure had begun and he was happy to go forth unto this world. Although, at this point he was not a particularly good soldier. He was quick to break rank in order to socialize with the people he met on his company's travels. In his first letter home, he tells Will about his company’s brush with their colonel at Port Hobart in Australia. “The people of Hobart treated us well with apples, so well that we broke ranks and when we got to the boat the Colonel gave us a lecture on discipline and gave us all 1-week pack drill. He said he would show us we were soldiers, not rebels.” This lecture stuck with Reggie, as he would manifest his dislike of unruly soldiers later in the War. On his initial voyage, Reggie would come to face-to-face with something he had never seen before: colored people. Growing up in a tiny farming town populated completely by immigrants from the United Kingdom, Reggie had never experienced racial diversity. He was totally enamoured by Colombo, Ceylon, the refuelling island his boat stopped on, and how the it worked. He couldn’t wait to tell Will about his experience. “We called in at Colombo which is a comical little town, nearly all blacks. It is a town worth seeing and it would make you laugh to see how the natives work. They do a lot in a long time.” But, the natives weren’t the only thing Reggie was excited about. “Things are very cheap in Colombo – you can get a sack of bananas for two bob and cigarettes for almost nothing – 100 for 2 shillings. I had a good feed of bananas when I landed and I made the most of it. I took back to the boat 10 cigars they cost me 2 shillings so that is cheap enough.” This island trip was the end of Reggie’s easy adventure because soon after leaving Colombo, his transport ship had to take measures to prevent being bombed by the Turkish. He recounted seeing his transport bodyguard ship bombard and sink a Turkish vessel. “We were about two days sail off Colombo when our escort ‘The Sydney’ sunk the ‘The Garden.’ There was

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