Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

George Washington Thomas Lambert letter, 7 August 1919
MLMSS 97/4/Item 2

[Transcriber’s note: The letter dated 7 August 1919 is written to his wife from Marseilles when George Lambert is on his way back to London from Egypt. The pages after the letter appear to be part of his diary written when he was at Moascar, Egypt towards the end of his time in that country.]

[Page 1]

Lambert Family Papers
George Washington Thomas Lambert

Papers re War Service, 1915-1919
Loose sheets from War Diary, 1919 (ML MSS.97/4 Item 1)

[Page 2]

Rest Camp
Marseilles
7/8/19

Dear Mick

After a very delightful & peaceful voyage across the Meditteranean the long & rugged arms of Marseilles Harbour enclose us safely; and with the French green trees & mild sunshine the blue water & cooling breezes one may perhaps for an hour forget. Forget now for an hour the awful country we have left, I trust for ever as far as I’m concerned. My health state is good and improving. This break is annoying but we may resume our journey tomorrow. I will let you know by wire my progress towards London. The worst is over & I feel I shall arrive in good trim possibly 4 to 5 days after you receive this.

Yours Ever
G.W. Lambert

[Page 3]

The mess room is demobilizing itself. Once a smart hut capable of dining about 30 officers in style. Brick walls, timber roof, Egyptian colours on the walls. Roof still there, walls demobilizing colours blending artistically having lost most of their suddeness on the Tussour shirts of the tired Heads. (Tired – exhausted – Heads – Staff Officers.) Thousands of flies, that like The the Intelligent.

Natives realize that the screens are faulty and hop in for “Their cut while the going is good" (Australian for “Seize your opportunity"). The comparison between parasites and intelligent Natives must not be laboured as this is even now a military letter and the Censor may even at this stage be on the spot, namely doing his duty under terrific odds.

Outside this bit of shade (111 Fahrenheit) there is a blaze of almost colourless light and it takes, even for an experienced savage like myself, a few seconds to locate the differences between sand, tents and sky.

In this blaze work still goes on, army work which is like every other kind of work, I meeself yesterday sat out in the blaze and did an accurate drawing of a cacolet (Cacolet two stretchers attached to camel for field ambulance work). [See image for drawing.] The work goes on but with that greatest of all physical efforts, the effort to do ones duty during the last hours of a long contract.

[Page 4]

There have been backslidings and senseless noise and a scrap here and there but I am dealing now with myself and the men who appeal to me. The others can be dealt with by the A.P.M. in and possibly by some damned journalist who sings the song of the Bolschevick. I am writing because I have no duties for two or three hours, merely finishing my diary, packing my stuff or rather assisting my offsider to do it. I shall finish I hope a sketch of Ismalia this evening. But to our muttons – Take my man. He is carefully rearranging & packing pictures, materials, clothes &c. renovating cases with nails he has to find – patiently, thoroughly. A group of men the last of the A.P.M’s outfit ride past in the same old Australian manner taking their horses down to water. Perhaps tomorrow their horses will be handed in but today they will be watered, fed, groomed, and told with the harsh voice which conceals emotion that they are Bastards.

Just alongside my hut Signals (Telegraph & Telephone Office) keeps up its monotonous Moascar, Moascar, Yes Sir or “Hello! How she go" as the case requires. Sometimes the call rings or burrs and the worn out operator fails to hear it at once, his offsider or the man who is about to relieve him wakes up and giving a rub to his face with a towel to remove get some of the sweat & sleepiness from his face

[Page 5]

walks over to the receiver & takes the call after which he curses his mate who wakes up & continues – “Moascar"! Some swell writer or some swollen writer used to say, The Time (or Times, the day, or the period) was big with portent. Anticipation of great things to come is of course the sheet anchor of the hopeful child and disappointed adult. We that is “Us" are in or near to the land where conception gained the word Divine after many million years of primitive literary effort, and the most of us are still willing to create & build in our work and all of us are capable of doing our humble part in the productive process of bringing more men & women into the world but to have to clean up, something my dear wife that you understand, is Hell and must be done; and I want to express not so much wonder at myself because I have many interests but at the “war" generally and to say finally that this day is big. Incident every minute. A sentry standing to attention, merely as a matter of habit. This page was interrupted by the sound of a horse grunting and a man cursing and I ran into the blaze to see what is possibly the last buck jumper trying to get his man off just as if the war was beginning.

For Finish Ref. Personal paragraph to Wife.

G.W.L.

[Transcriber's note:
Mediterranean – misspelt as Meditteranean – P. 2

[Transcribed by Judy Gimbert for the State Library of New South Wales]