ON 'UNTIN'--AND SOME OTHER MATTERS
Having got us to El Kubri and told us to wait for a train, the authorities
apparently washed their hands of the whole affair and forgot all about us.
For six weeks we waited at a siding which seemed to be ashamed to look a
train in the face. Certainly we never saw one approach it, and we kept a
careful look-out for fear we should miss one.
On our arrival we did not, of course, make a camp, believing that we should
entrain in a day or two at most. But as day followed day and no train
appeared we began to think that this was a joke in deplorable taste. Why,
after working for six months like niggers are supposed to work making a
comfortable camp, should we be taken therefrom, dumped down on an
inhospitable siding and forgotten? It was not playing the game; and a
sinister rumour spread that we were not going north after all but were to
be sent down the Red Sea to the assistance of the Cherif of Mecca, who was
having a little war on his own account.
We knew what that meant. The assisting force would be sent to some
evil-smelling native town with an unpronounceable name, miles from
anywhere, left there to garrison the place and impress the inhabitants with
the might of British arms, while the Cherif and his wild horsemen charged
about the desert firing rifles in the air and emitting extraordinary yells
to frighten away the few stray, half-starved Turks in the vicinity. And the
prospect of travelling in a horse-boat down the Red Sea, even in November,
did not appeal to us in the least. However, tired of sleeping in culverts
and disused drains we pitched our camp on the top of a plateau overlooking
the Canal and prepared to await developments.
It was not unpleasant waiting, for there was the daily bathe in the Canal,
and the big ships and liners passing up and down seemed to bring us once
more in touch with civilisation. It used to be the kindly practice of the
passengers to throw tins of cigarettes and tobacco overboard whenever the
boat passed one of the numerous outposts guarding the Canal. It was quite
an ordinary occurrence for a man to dive in with all his clothes on and
swim after the coveted tins. Tobacco was so scarce that a mere wetting was
nothing; besides, our clothes were dry in an hour.
Also, we hunted the fox--or rather, jackal.
Now the Egyptian native undoubtedly looks on the British soldier as
"magnoon," afflicted of Allah, to be treated kindly, but to be relieved of
as much of his hard-earned pay as possible. And further, if the Faithful
are able to obtain something for nothing from these amiable madmen, it is
to be done. So we made ourselves popular with the fellaheen by hunting
jackals, which had the same predilection for other people's chickens as has
brother fox in England.
We had no hounds, except a fox-terrier who was too fat to run; only our
horses and our prodigious enthusiasm. The method of procedure was to
assemble the hunt near a likely place and send forward a fatigue-party to
dig out the jackal. When he appeared--and he usually did appear in a
hurry--we gave him a couple of minutes' start and then tally-ho! and away
after him over the plain. We had, of course, no fences to leap, but there
were deep nullahs and irrigation dykes wide enough to give one something to
think about. Moreover, the jackals were astonishingly speedy; they would
twist and turn and double on their tracks for half an hour at a stretch,
and they were game to the end.
Christmas came and was made endurable and even enjoyable by the kindness of
the Y.M.C.A., who lent us tables, yea and cloths, in addition to other
things.
But the outstanding event of this period of waiting was the visit of one of
Miss Lena Ashwell's concert parties to El Kubri. It will ever remain a
fragrant memory, for it was the first time we had seen English ladies for
nearly a year and it brought home very near to hear them sing.
They gave their concert in a specially constructed "hall" in the desert.
Sandbags were the mainstay of the platform and a large tarpaulin, G.S.,
formed the drop-scene. The walls were of rough canvas, upon which it was
inadvisable to lean, lest the whole structure collapsed. Primitive, no
doubt, but it suited the environment; and I have never seen in the most
elaborate West-end theatre anything like the enthusiasm here.
You called for a popular song or recitation and you got it, and as many
more as you liked to ask for. One of these talented ladies used to give a
recitation which became a permanent feature of her programme in Egypt. She
would come to the front of the stage and say confidentially to the
audience, "Do you know Lizzie 'Arris?" And back would come a mighty bellow,
"Aiwa!" This rite was always insisted upon before the artiste could
proceed, though she obviously enjoyed it almost as much as we did. She
might probably be amused to know that--such is fame!--amongst the thousands
of troops who heard her recite she was always known as "Lizzie 'Arris."
Early in the New Year the Mecca myth was finally dissipated, for we
moved--no, the train never arrived--to the big concentration camp at Suez,
and there started preparations in real earnest. It was strange to be
amongst people again after so many months of comparative solitude, and
stranger still to see houses and streets and civilians. Not that we had
much time to look around, for with the coming of the cool weather the hours
of work became appreciably longer.
Every day long columns of infantry went forth to get themselves into hard
condition by strenuous route marches. Dotted about the camp were little
groups of specialists and others practising their several trades. Here was
a bombing-school urgently killing imaginary Turks; there a squad of
bayonet-fighters engaged in the same pleasurable pursuit; while farther
away an eager band of signallers with their handy little cable-waggons laid
a wire at incredible speed.
Away out on the plain a string of harassed recruits trotted round a rough
manege lustily encouraged to a rigid observance of the good old maxim,
"'eels an' 'ands low; 'eads an' 'earts 'igh," by the astonishing profanity
of their riding-master; and beyond them their more proficient comrades
charged with wild yells upon a long line of stuffed sacks representing a
terror-stricken foe waiting patiently to be spitted.
Hard by these perspiring cavalrymen a battery of horse-artillery struggled
to master the intricacies of driving with fourteen-horse teams. These were
arranged in three rows of four abreast with one pair in lead, while of the
drivers three rode the near-horses and three the off-horses, with one
driver riding the near-horse of the leading-pair; a complicated business
requiring much skill and nicety of judgment in order to get the best out of
the horses.
Occasionally an apparently wild chaos of guns and limbers and horses
proclaimed that the battery had been successfully brought into action;
usually, however, the work was confined to getting the vehicles along under
these novel conditions. Alongside our own, French artillery with their
natty little "75's" daily strove to put the finishing touches to their
preparation.
It was to the confines of the camp that one went for the final signs that a
"show" was surely preparing, for here were all the dumps of material which
was to minister to the needs of an army in the field.
Sacks of grain and bales of tibbin stood in huge pyramidal mounds;
multitudinous rows of boxes containing bully-beef, condensed milk, dried
fruit, biscuits, cocoa, and tea, seemed to stretch for miles. One walked
down streets of bully-beef, as it were; loitered in squares bounded by
biscuit-tins; dodged up alleys flanked by tea-chests and cases of "Ideal"
milk. Through the streets and squares came an endless procession of lorries
and G.S. waggons, passing on their lawful occasions.
After all, the final word rests with the A.S.C. All your preparation, all
your study of new methods, all your concentrations of guns and men and
horses are futile--and how futile!--if the Army Service Corps says:
"Sorry, gentlemen, but we can't feed you; and if we could, there's nothing
to carry the food in." In the beginning this was especially true of Egypt;
for there was a lamentable shortage of nearly everything that goes to the
successful waging of war. It took nearly two years of patient endeavour
before an advance could really be considered, and by far the greater part
of that time was devoted to amassing supplies and organising means of
transport. It was a colossal task, the magnitude of which was never even
imagined by the people at home.
There was practically nothing in the country. We wanted sleepers, rails,
and locomotives for the railway; pipes, pumps, and other materials for the
water-supply; waggons, motor-lorries and light-cars for transport purposes;
sand-carts, cacolets, and ambulances for the R.A.M.C.; and, with the
exception of most kinds of vegetables, food.
All this had to be brought overseas.
There may not at first sight seem to be any striking connection between an
enemy submarine and the date of an offensive. When, however, that submarine
torpedoes and sinks a vessel containing two million pounds' worth of
absolutely essential material, such as locomotives or motor-lorries, the
connection becomes less, as the date of an offensive becomes more, remote.
In fact, as neither a locomotive nor a motor-lorry, nor a boat wherein to
carry them can be built in five minutes, the offensive temporarily recedes
from view, until the next boatload of material is safely landed.
Add to this the facts that a hundred and fifty miles of desert had to be
cleared of an enemy who fought with the most bitter determination all the
way, that a railway had to be constructed, and an adequate water-supply had
to be maintained over the same desert, before an offensive on a large scale
could even be dreamt about, and the connection mentioned above becomes
strikingly obvious.
Those people at home who, from time to time, asked querulously, "What are
we doing in Egypt?" should have seen Kantara in 1915, and then again
towards the end of 1916. Failing that I would ask them, and also those
kindly but myopic souls who said: "What a picnic you are having in Egypt!"
to journey awhile with us through Kantara and across the desert of Northern
Sinai. For the former there will be a convincing answer to their query; the
latter will have an opportunity of revising their notions as to what really
constitutes a picnic.
And we will start now, while the scent is hot, for already the infantry
have begun their march and guns and waggons are rumbling along the roads
from Suez to Kantara, the gate of the desert.