I spent several months at a forsaken spot called Serenli, 400 miles from the coast when you travelled on the river, and joined the expedition of Brigadier-General Hoskins when he went right on into the Marehan country to try and talk the natives there out of the necessity for a military expedition to make them behave. Whilst Hoskins did the talking, I was quietly surveying the routes for the future expedition if it were found unavoidable. Thus, the expedition could take place with the minimum camel-loss from Surra.
However, Hoskins made no great impression upon the Marehan, and the expedition was decided upon. I was sent right down to the coast where I had to arrange the landing on an open beach, at Kismayu, of 350 camels of an Indian Camel Corps which was to take part. The Commanding Officer, the Native Officers and many of the men in this Camel Corps had known me well in India and were astonished to see me coming up the side of the ship in Kismayu harbour. We had to sling the camels from the hold of the ship into flat-bottomed river steamers which, when full of animals, were taken inshore and then the camels were slung out of these into the sea and had to swim the last bit. Kismayu harbour, although almost on the equator, is entirely free of sharks owing to its very narrow entrance through a gap in the coral-reef which closes it; and it was quite good fun taking headers into the luke-warm sea from the decks of these boats to try and get a little respite from the intense heat. Once landed, the camels had to be acclimatised to the strange new grazing plants of the country, but only three weeks was available for this and when the expedition moved off up-country, some of the animals had only just recovered from diarrhoea and indigestion due to the change in their diet.
I had a row with the Government at this time, having received peremptory orders from my Chief to join the expedition as Veterinary Officer. My status being Civilian, with no provision for the possibility of my becoming a casualty, nor any definition of my rank in a Military Expedition, nor any certainty of my status as to discipline, I refused this order unless it was first agreed on all sides that I was a civilian and nothing but a civilian and would take no orders from anyone as to my work, but only as to my movements. There was a lot of bobbery about this, but I got my way; I was always anxious to accompany the expedition because of my friends from India taking part in it, but I had no intention of being ordered into duties which rightly belonged to the Army Veterinary Corps, and that without proper serious consultation. I took the long convoy through the tse-tse country, and all camps, marches and arrangements for watering the camels at places infested by fly were carried out according to my advice. On arrival at Serenli, I was thanked by the Officer Commanding for "playing the game", but I often wondered what other game he thought I might have played! Some weeks later I returned to the coast, half the journey being performed by river, in a native canoe; I was accompanied by a British Officer who had "gone funny in the head" and the long journey wasn't easy on that account. After a few days, I was returning with a big convoy of camels with supplies for the troops up-country. But the long marches had told upon me; I had had sciatica very badly from overmarching
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