July 1915Every bit of Egypt, from the vomit and crap in the ward to the bustling, slovenly, thieving damn streets, stank like damnation. Harry had hated it before they embarked for the peninsula and he hated it even more now. What he wouldn’t give for the clean sea breeze off Semaphore.
Parts of it were all right, he supposed. The Sphinx, the Valley of the Kings, that sort of thing. One of the officers kept going on about being in the steps of Alexander and Caesar. Imagine that, all those ancient armies marching through the same desert they had to march through now. It was the sort of thing he dreamed of, in those far-off times at Welsh & Dwyers. He had longed to see the pyramids, the Nile, the fascinating exotic desert. It had taken him days to realise his disappointment after they first
