The Story of Two Campaigns: Official War History of the Auckland Mounted Rifles Regiment, 1914-1919
Chapter XLII. Return Home
Chapter XLII. Return Home.
All eyes were towards home, however, and some of the long service men were able to get away. Arrangements for embarkation were made for about the middle of March, but another duty turned up to delay the home-coming. Nationalist rioting, presaging revolt, broke out in the Delta area of Egypt, and the New Zealanders and some of the Australian Light Horse were rushed to Kantara, hurriedly equipped, and despatched to the infected area, over which martial law was proclaimed. Columns patrolled the whole region, each being responsible for a section of it. In this manner the rising was nipped in the bud. Some amusing incidents occurred through the military administering the law. Through rapid promotion some senior officers were very young in years, and while they were quite competent to order corporal punishment—the most efficacious form of persuasion in the land—they were hardly qualified to decide some of the matters brought before them. For instance, one youthful major of the A.M.R. was applied to by a woman to grant a divorce. Under the circumstances, this matrimonial trouble had to wait until the return of civil law, but it now seems rather a pity that the granting of divorce cannot be included among the achievements of the A.M.R.
A joke popular at the time was to the effect that in the year 1925, the War Office suddenly scratched its head and exclaimed, "Great Scott! The New Zealand Mounted Rifles have been forgotten. They are still in Egypt." All things page 240come to an end, however, and at long last the brigade embarked on the Ulimaroa and Ellinga and sailed for home. The Ulimaroa, which had the A.M.R. on board, reached Auckland on August 8, 1919.
1. Splendid type of remount. 2. A Main Body veteran which went through the whole campaign, originally owned by the late Sergeant G. S. Bagnall.
In another column it was stated: "Those who were on board the Ulimaroa before she berthed, and saw the partings between the Auckland and southern men, distinguished a phase of comradeship not often observed among homecoming troops. Drafts of troops from England usually are composed of men drawn from many units, who may never have seen one another before, but yesterday's draft was composed of men whose friendships were cemented on Gallipoli or in Palestine. In these campaigns—the most arduous men ever undertook—men were entirely dependent upon one another. Although the differences in rank were honoured in the traditional way, the officers who survived and the men who remained were comrades in the truest sense. Officially they were distinct, but humanly they were friends who had shared their biscuit and 'bully' whose water-bottles were common property, who thought of each other not as major this or trooper that, but who, in fact, were partners in a dangerous enterprise, the result of which might be annihilation or victory. Yesterday it was a common thing to see colonels, and majors saying good-bye to 'Jim' and 'George' and 'Jack' and there was no restraint or hesitation."
So parted a gallant company of friends. They had done their duty, and had left a record of service which may stand as an example for generations yet unborn.