Chapter 89 – Jayjay

Details from The Australian Army Medical Corps in Egypt in 1914-15 , by James Barret and Persival Deane (1918):

p. 48 – Convalescent patients were moved  to convalescent hospitals at Helouan or Alexandria, and thence either invalided or discharged to duty.

P. 79-81 – Invalids to be sent home were transported by train from Cairo to Suez for loading onto ships, as the charges by the Suez Canal Company for loading patients onto ships at Alexandria or Port Said were too high. Trains were loaded at Helouan and Heliopolis. The train journey took five hours, and included the provision of a meal. A map of the train line is shown. At Suez, train stopped alongside ship, patients and kit moved on board, guard placed. Some men straggled into Suez. “The Australian is essentially a roamer.”

Details from Official History of the Australian Army Medical Services, 1914-1918, Volume 1, Part 1: The Gallipoli Campaign by Arthur Butler:

p. 408-10 – Patients deemed to be invalided for home, were not in immediate need of ministrations, and unlikely to be fit within three months. These patients were discharged from hospital as “Category C”. Patients who were fit to rejoin their fighting units were discharged as “Category A”, and patients discharged as convalescent and fit for service in lines of communication only were discharged as “Category B”.

Turkish Lieutenant Mehmet Fasih wrote in his diary on 17 November 1915, translated in Lone Pine (Bloody Ridge) Diary :

p. 95 – “I’m 21 years old. My hair and beard are already grey. My moustache is white. My face is wrinkled and my body is rotting.”