After breakfast I took a stroll around deck and looked over our vessel. She was a four-decked, twin-funnelled steamship called the 'Indian Queen' that had been purchased by Her Majesty's Government from the Cunard Line and refurbished as a troop ship. She had previously worked as a merchant/passenger ship on the Orient route around the coast of Africa to India. Now she made the same journeys but with a very different class of goods and passenger.
Our directive was to be: first stop, Gibraltar, then on to Alexandria, and then through the recently opened Suez Canal and into the Arabian Gulf. Our final destination was to be Aden, where we would embark and carry on by road to a town called Yeshbum, about 5,ooo feet up on a plateau of the Arabian peninsula. Near this town was positioned Fort Yeshbum, the 7th Royal Camel Corp's main base and training facilities. And this is where I, and my regiment, will be learning the skills of camel, and balloon, reconnaissance.
Back in Blighty, I had been told stories of highly classified, but controversial, experiments with balloon observers being sent aloft with accompanying onboard camel transport included for long-range desert reconnaissance on landing. However, I had also had reports of several gruesome and gory balloon accidents, the details of which are not for the faint-hearted, so I will not dwell on them. Suffice it to say, there is known to be a number of unmarked desert graves in the mountains near the fort which contain the bodies of several enlisted men with unintentionally-conjoined camel parts, and vice-versa. Consequently, I am hoping that my regiment will escape the experimental side of our service duties whilst we are there. I must admit that, although I am looking forward to learning both forms of reconnaissance, I don't wish to end my days splattered across sand dunes, nor do I wish it upon my men.
