Looking back after years of soldiering and disillusion, the first months of the War no doubt seem brighter than they really were. It is easy to forget the illnesses that sent the writer as an invalid to Luxor and Cairo, and finally to England; to ignore the heat and dust and isolation, the long glare of the African day. We think more readily of Gordon's rose-tree blooming in the Palace garden; of the long camel treks across the desert; of the wail of the yellow-ribboned Sudanese bagpipes; of our visit with Colonel Smyth, V.C., to the stony, sun-baked battle-field of Omdurman; of the lusty strains of _Tipperary_ in the cool barrack rooms. It is right that this should be so. The men to whom these memories would appeal were men who enjoyed life to the full. They played the first lacrosse ever seen in the Sudan, engaged in keen boxing competitions, rallied to football on the roughest of barrack squares, listened cheerfully to weekly concerts and the first of our long series of history and military lectures. They hunted for curios in the dusty alleys of Omdurman, enjoyed recreation in the library and billiard-room, and ran with great spirit the early numbers of the _Manchester Sentry_, first published of all active service periodicals. To this paper the Sirdar and Lady Wingate contributed welcome and inspiring letters, and the Battalion owed its motto: "We never sleep."
In April, 1915, the Battalion left the Sudan for Cairo, where it again came in contact with the other units of the East Lancashire Territorial Division, thenceforward called the 42nd Division On the 3rd May it embarked in company with another battalion of the Manchesters on the _Ionian_, and at seven in the evening, on the 7th May, it landed at "V" Beach, Cape Helles.
The 42nd Division was soon in the midst of hard fighting, stormy weather and much privation. Casualties began early, though the first Battalion exploit under fire was happily bloodless. On the 9th May, 80 men were told off to fill water-bottles and carry them under fire over half-a-mile of broken ground to an Australian unit. They tracked cleverly across the moor, and were met by an eager Australian with the question: "Have you brought the water, cobbers?" On the 11th, the Battalion had a long, weary march to the front line. The trenches were full of water, and the gullies became almost impassable. On the 28th, Lockwood, our musketry expert, was severely wounded in the chest.
