MUDROS, CAIRO, SUEZ CANAL AND HILL 70 LINE.
In the early hours of the morning of 9th January the transports, which
contained the troops which had left in the first party from Gallipoli
the previous night, arrived at Mudros Bay. As explained in the last
chapter the Battalion was scattered throughout several ships and the
process of disembarkation was by no means easy. However, the Staff got
busy and lighters were soon arriving alongside the transports
disembarking the troops by divisions. The lighters then moved to
different parts of the shore where each division had a place of
rendezvous. The sorting out then commenced and with a certain amount of
confusion the battalions were ultimately assembled.
The 52nd Division was allotted a camping ground on the south side of the
bay, the camp being known as Sarpi camp. After the Battalion area had
been pointed out, canvas was issued and the camp pitched. The only
canvas available at the time consisted of a large number of hospital
marquee tents which were to accommodate the men and about a dozen bell
tents for the use of officers.
The baggage which had been sent off from Gallipoli a few days before the
evacuation was found on our arrival at our camp, or rather a proportion
of it. It was found that a considerable amount of it had been pilfered,
and we were informed that the rest of the baggage had been sent direct
to Alexandria.
Life at Mudros was a great change and a great relief after our months on
the Peninsula. We were able to live above ground and walk about freely
in the open without any fear of drawing the enemy's artillery fire. It
was difficult at first to realise that we were out of the fighting for
the time being, but it did not take long to accustom ourselves to this,
as after all it is the more natural life.
The weather on the whole was good, the days being bright and warm but
intensely cold at night, with a certain amount of frost. The opportunity
was taken to issue new clothing and in connection with this it may be
mentioned how the Army Ordnance Corps unconsciously gave us a little
amusement. Two of the battalions in the Brigade were kilted, and the
other battalions wore trews. The Ordnance people seemed to forget this
and issued to all four battalions the usual winter under-clothing which,
as far as the lower garments were concerned, was not exactly suited to a
kilted battalion.
While on Gallipoli the Commander of the 8th Corps, General Sir Francis
Davis, had organised a Football Tournament for teams representing all
units in the corps. The Battalion had been very successful in the
preliminary rounds and had reached the final by the time of the
evacuation. The team which they had to meet in the deciding round
represented the Anson Battalion of the Royal Naval Division, and it was
decided to play the tie while we were at Mudros. The day was an
unfortunate one as it was blowing hard, with the result that the
football was not of a very high order. The Battalion team did not
succeed in beating the Anson Battalion, but it was a hard game and there
is no doubt the better team won.
Those who played in the final match were, Pte. E. Hammil, "A" Company;
Pte. J.B. Smith, "B" Company; Pte. A. Jardine, "D" Company; Sergt. D.
Smith, "D" Company; Pte. J. M'Cann, "A" Company; Sergt. J. Logan "A"
Company; Pte. J. Laird, "C" Company; Pte. T. Knight, "D" Company; Sergt.
D. Calder, "C" Company; Corpl. E. Stevenson, "B" Company, and Sergt. A.
Bain, "A" Company.
In connection with this tournament an incident occurred on the 19th
December, during the Battalion's attack. Captain Campbell had charge of
the football arrangements. In the middle of the battle, while sitting
more or less triumphantly in a captured Turkish trench, he received by
special messenger word from the Division that the Battalion team must
play the 5th R.S.F. the following day or be struck out of the
tournament. A triumph of departmental work.
While living in camp at Mudros efforts were made to improve generally
the feeding of officers and men, and as there were more canteens on the
island with greater variety of goods for sale than we had been
accustomed to on Gallipoli, our efforts met with a certain amount of
success. One day while Major Neilson was scouring the countryside he
came across several turkeys in one of the Greek canteens. One of these
was immediately purchased and brought back to camp. The next problem was
to find some one sufficiently skilled to dress the bird and prepare it
for the pot. Lieut. Graham volunteered to carry out the work and really
made an excellent job of it. The cooking was done in the lid of a camp
kettle over an open fire and everyone who tasted the turkey that night
at dinner voted it a great success.
About a week after our arrival at Mudros, Major Findlay left in charge
of the Brigade advance party for Alexandria, and about a fortnight later
Captain Buchanan, Captain Campbell and Lieut. Barbé also went on in
advance. The day after Major Findlay left, orders were issued that the
Battalion was to embark the following day, but as was very often the
case under similar circumstances, when the camp was struck these orders
were cancelled and it was not until the last day of January that the
Battalion embarked on _H.M.T. Briton_, which also carried the 7/8th
Scottish Rifles and the 6th East Yorks with Colonel Morrison as O.C.
troops.
Three days later the transport arrived at Alexandria, but did not dock
until the following day late in the afternoon. About 8 o'clock that
night disembarkation was carried out and a few hours later the Battalion
had entrained and left Alexandria for Cairo.
The Brigade advance party had made all the arrangements for the camp at
Cairo, which was pitched on the ground near the Egyptian Army Barracks
at Abbassieh. Life there was very pleasant and the joys of a town were
very much appreciated by every one after our months of exile.
We were not left long however to enjoy ourselves, and after about a
fortnight at Cairo we again entrained for a station on the Suez Canal.
Little did we then think it was the first move in our long trek into
Palestine.
We arrived at Ballah West on the 17th February and got our first
impression of what our life in the desert was to be like. The weather
was very broken and not too warm, but moving about constantly in the
sand was very tiring and depressing. We had had the experience of sand
at Aboukir, but that was at the side of the sea where one is quite
prepared for it, but at Ballah it seemed to be different. There was
nothing but sand on every side except for the thin strip of water, the
Suez Canal running north and south.
After about a week in camp on the west side of the Canal we received
orders to move to the other bank and relieve the 31st Division, who at
that time were occupying the canal defences. After some confusion which
arose through the orders which had been given to us not having been
issued to the 31st Division, relief was carried out and we saw the
"Great Wall of China." This was a trench revetted by sand bags, running
some miles to the east of and running parallel to the Canal. Its
tactical uses we never could understand. Days were spent trying to
clean up Ballah East; had Hercules been with us he would have diverted
the Canal through the Augean camp.
On March 2nd the Battalion took over posts from Ballah to Kantara; the
work was not arduous, being mainly to see that no unauthorised persons
visited the Canal to put mines therein. Everyone bathed and one officer
caught a mullet on a white sea fly, but no more; he always felt sure if
he were to fish at the right time he would get a good basket, but his
dreams were never realised.
Several officers who had been wounded or sick now rejoined us, including
Captains Brand and Beckett and Lieut. MacLellan, also a draft of
officers from the 3rd and 4th H.L.I., consisting of Lieuts. Parr,
Strachan, T.B. Clark, Burleigh, Grey, Buchanan, A. Le G. Campbell.
On Sunday, March 12th, the Battalion was transferred in barges up the
Canal to El Kantara, where "A" Company was already on detachment.
Kantara was the starting-point for the advance across the Sinai desert
into Palestine, which was to occupy us for the next twelve months.
During this year we had no fighting to do, but it would be a mistake to
suppose that we had an easy or a pleasant life. Undoubtedly people at
home considered that we were much to be envied, and comparing our lot
with that of those fighting in France, we willingly agree. But it is a
mistake to suppose that we were simply having a good time. The Egyptian
Expeditionary Force was associated in the mind of the average citizen
with the idea of Pyramids and flesh pots. For the first, symbolic
pictures were largely to blame. There never was a design representing
"Britain's far flung battle line," which did not show a comfortable man
in a sun helmet with a Pyramid in the background. Pyramids are so easy
to draw. The artists were beaten by the flesh pot--because they had no
very clear conception of what a flesh pot looks like. But the old
Biblical phrase rose irresistibly to the mind mingled perhaps with
recollections of some globe-trotter's stories of the delights of
shepherds. Both ideas are quite false. Our flesh pot was the dixie--and
there was a great deal less to put into it than there was on other, more
canteen-blessed, fronts--while many a man who joined us early in 1916
left for France in 1918 without ever having set eyes on a Pyramid. Egypt
west of the Canal and Egypt east of it are two very different countries,
and when transports took to hooking up beside the Canal banks at
Kantara, and discharging their defrauded drafts there, it was only the
lucky ones, who got a week's leave or a cushy wound, who ever visited
the true land of the Pharaohs at all.
Until the evacuation the defence of the Canal and of the eastern
frontier of Egypt had depended almost entirely on the waterless nature
of the 130 miles of country which separated it from Palestine. There
were troops on the Canal, but their numbers and equipment forced them to
remain strictly on the defensive, and Kitchener's alleged question--"Are
you defending the Canal or is the Canal defending you?" was a truthful,
if rather an unfair, way of summing up the situation. There was no
mobile force, no supply of baggage camels, and the desert, as it faded
into the mirage to the east, was an unknown country in which Turkish
patrols moved unmolested. One of "A" Company's jobs as late as March
1916 was to accompany every evening along the Canal bank a camel
dragging a heavy baulk of wood in such a way as to sweep and flatten a
track in the sand, so broad that an agile Turk could not be expected to
jump over it. In the morning this track was carefully scrutinised, and
it was possible to see whether anybody besides the ants and beetles, who
had a right of way, had gone across it during the night, and if so steps
would be taken, as required.
But General Murray with troops at his disposal did not propose to allow
this state of affairs to continue. The routes by which a hostile force
could advance on Egypt from the east were limited, and the southern
ones, through very difficult mountainous country, were unlikely if not
impossible, especially when raiders or aeroplanes had destroyed the
stores of water in the rock cisterns. The northern route lay close along
the sea coast, through a desert of heavy sand, in which at many places
water, which most horses refused, but which seemed good enough for a
Turk, could be obtained by digging wells. This route bent south-westward
from Romani and reached the Canal at Kantara, and it was this route that
he determined to block by advancing eastward along it himself.
The Kantara of the spring of 1916 was very different to the great town
of camps and metalled roads, lines of sheds and pyramids of stores,
canteens, and Y.M.C.A.s, lorry parks and hospitals, real nurses and a
cinema, which became familiar to hundreds of thousands of troops on
their way up to Palestine in 1917-1918. Even the cemetery was only wired
off during our occupation, and one remembers being somewhat ribald at
the pessimism of the authorities who provided sufficient consecrated
ground to contain the bodies of all the troops then garrisoning the
place. As usual the authorities scored in the long run.
Its pre-war amenities were distinctly limited. On the west side of the
Canal ran the line from Ismalia to Port Said, with a station and some
square plastered houses occupied by native officials of the E.S.R. and
Canal services. The Sweet-Water Canal, an insignificant ditch full of
dirty water, divided the line from the big Canal, and the low trees,
which grew along its banks, gave the only pleasing view in a desolate
land. The euphemistically named "sweet water" contained a large number
of Bilharzia parasite, an interesting little creature, whose ancestors
have been found embedded in the Egyptian mummies. It begins its life in
a water snail, transfers itself through the mouth and skin to the body
of any human being it can, and there makes hay of his or her internal
arrangements in a peculiarly distressing manner. All Egyptians are
bilharziotic and seem to thrive on it; but we were strictly forbidden in
our own interests to give the little beast an entrée. Behind the line
were salt marshes and sand. East of the Canal were two or three palm
trees, a little mosque and a couple of Custom Houses--and that was all.
The beginning of the offensive defensive had built a road running
eastward for a mile or two with a light railway parallel to it, while a
little further to the north was the terminus of the broad gauge railway,
on which the whole scheme depended. On the plans of Kantara which were
issued on arrival this railway line was marked Kantara-Jerusalem
Railway, which caused many an amusing remark regarding the possibilities
of its ever reaching there. Little did we then think that many of us
would travel to and from Jerusalem and beyond on that very line.
[Illustration: SUEZ CANAL AT BALLAH.]
Our camp was a mile or so from the Canal, to the north of the
road--first the officers' lines, then a space for a parade ground, then
the men's lines. The sand was very heavy, but of a coarse kind which did
not blow about much. The tents were double and made a pleasant enough
home for a couple of officers with camp beds, but were less attractive
to from eight to a dozen men, lying in the sand with all their
possessions. To the eastward was the cemetery and then the ground rose
into one or two insignificant little bluffs, afterwards sinking to a
small flat area of harder ground, on which most of our parades were
held. Beyond this was the barbed wire and redoubt line of the Kantara
defences, of which more anon. To the north joining with the lakes and
marshes round Pelusium, lay patches of shallow salt water, inundated by
cuts from the Canal as part of the defensive scheme.
The strength of the Battalion on arrival was little over 300. "A"
Company remained on detachment till 23rd of March a couple of miles off
on the Canal bank, where they spent their nights in patrolling the
eastern bank and their days in watching the shipping pass, bathing and
attempting to catch fish from an ancient tub attached to the post. On
one occasion they had the mild excitement of stopping a suspected tug
which was reported from further south as steaming up at a time when it
had no business to be out and refusing to answer signals. Furious
commands to stop were disregarded, but a single rifle bullet across her
bows had an almost magical effect, and the "boarding party" gallantly
rowing out in the tub were harangued by a weeping Greek skipper in six
different languages without a pause until the arrival of an official of
the Water Transport Department, disguised as a very immaculate subaltern
of Yeomanry. No one ever quite discovered what it was all about; but the
skipper having at last become comparatively coherent in French, we put
on board a prize crew in the person of the Yeoman, and let her go.
For the rest of the Battalion there were no such thrills. Parades were
from 6.30 to 9.30 and for a couple of hours from 4.30 p.m. The companies
were not large enough to be subdivided into platoons, and the nature of
the country confined us chiefly to squad drill and musketry. The
intervening leisure was spent in conversation--mercifully we have all
got mouths and can continue to use them long after our stock of novel
ideas is exhausted. There were also frequent bathing parades. The Suez
Canal is not well adapted for bathing. It is extremely dirty, because
every ship that passes drains into it, and after a few feet of rather
muddy shallow, it drops suddenly out of a man's depth, so that the
non-swimmer finds his range limited. But with a hot climate and very
little washing water, one is not inclined to be exacting. Our drinking
water was the less attractive for being so strongly chlorinated. It was
supplied from the Sweet-Water Canal after a vigorous filtering, and we
continued to patronise the same source right through the desert, and
even when we were fighting in another continent in front of Gaza.
The authorities soon found us a job or two to occupy our leisure. The
Egyptian Labour Corps had not yet arrived on the scenes and the digging
of the Kantara defences consequently devolved upon the white troops.
This meant six hours' digging almost every day for almost every man,
divided into a morning and an afternoon shift. Now sand is admittedly
nice easy stuff to dig in, you do not need a pick, and can fill your
shovel without exertion. But no trench in sand is the faintest use
unless it is revetted. Our revetting material was matting on wooden
frames, and these had to be anchored back to stakes driven in deep down,
six feet clear of the parapet or parados, so that to produce a trench
you had to take out six feet of sand extra on either side, hammer in
your stakes and attach your anchoring wires to the matting and then fill
in the whole again. Traverses had to be dug right out and then filled in
again when the wall of matting was in position and secure. Progress was
therefore not rapid, and especially on windy days when most of the sand
was blown off your shovel before you had time to throw it and the wind
silted it up in your excavation rather quicker than you could take it
out. Still all this work, together with the wiring, was done thoroughly
if slowly, and it was depressing to see next year that now that the war
had been carried into the enemies' country, all our redoubts had been
carefully filled in.
Other diversions provided for us took the form of unloading barges or
loading trucks, and for some of these jobs it was necessary to cross to
the western side of the Canal. On the outward journey there was never
any difficulty about this, but on the homeward some such scene as the
following was almost certain to occur. As the fatigue party--thirty men
under an officer--reach the end of the pontoon bridge, after a hot
afternoon in the ordnance depot, a cloud of natives hurl themselves
upon it from either end and proceed to haul it in two halves under the
whip-cracking of their own headman and the fatherly advice of an R.E.
corporal. Looking up the Canal the fatigue party, already late for their
dinners, perceive a P. & O. liner about four miles away majestically
crawling south. Their only hope is now the horse-ferry, an aged
flat-bottomed contrivance wound across by a squad of natives and a
chain. With the assistance of a friendly military policeman, the headman
of this gang is discovered some hundred of yards away lying asleep with
his feet in the Sweet-Water Canal, Bilharziosis doubtless entering at
every pore. When aroused he breaks into a voluble flood of Arabic--the
M.P., an Argyle in disguise, addresses him in Scotch at a similar rate,
while the O.C. fatigue party speaks very slowly in English, French, and
what he believes to be modern Greek, successively. At this game the
gippy always wins, and it is only when, confessing their defeat, the
opposition resorts to personal violence that he goes off weeping to beat
up his team, having been fully aware from the first that that was what
was required. The officer in premature triumph embarks his party in the
ferry, into which enter also some horses, two camels and a motor bike.
The horses are naturally very frightened. The fatigue climbing to
precarious footholds on the rails at the side, leave them the bottom of
the boat to be frightened in. Then, screaming like a flock of sea gulls,
the children of Pharaoh arrive, and their chief, looking wisely across
the river, perceives a barge which he feels sure will be in our way. He
therefore shouts to it, the officer--adding the voice of authority,
shouts too--the men shout, the natives shout, everybody shouts. The
barge crew shout back, but are finally out-shouted and haul clear. The
foreman, seeing that he will now lose the game and have thus prematurely
to take the party over, suddenly perceives the advancing P. & O., now
not much more than a mile away. He draws the distracted officer's
attention to the phenomenon and leads him to understand that to start
now would lead to an inevitable collision and a watery grave. The
polyglot argument waxes furious, the men taking it up in their turn,
when their leader falls out exhausted, and the Arab is still keeping up
his end triumphantly when the great ship reaches us and slowly steams
by, while curious passengers eye us from her decks, their minds
doubtless running enviously on flesh pots. After this, resort is again
had to violence and the ill-assorted load slowly leaves the shore and
commences its perilous journey, the horses still in paroxysms of terror
and the camels supercilious and bored. Long before the other bank is
reached all concerned have handsomely apologised to the headman for
having doubted his statement that they could not have got across before
the liner arrived. But at last they reach ground and so to their
dinners, tired but cheerful still. The only time, by the way, that this
accomplished Egyptian condescended to speak English was when a party of
men returning at night from leave in Port Said, exasperated by his
delays, had taken the matter into their own hands, and were working the
ferry across themselves. He lifted up his voice and wept,--no one heeded
him. Then again and again he cried the mystic words, "he drink water--he
drink water." He was sternly adjured to be silent, until suddenly
another voice was heard--"the ---- thing's sinking." "Aiwa, aiwa," said
the disregarded prophet--"he drink water"--and all hands pulled madly to
get the boat back to the nearest side--of course the side from which it
had started. Those who have studied the diplomatic wiles of our hero,
are convinced that he had himself opened the sea-cocks--or taken what
other steps were necessary to scuttle his craft and save his honour.
Another fatigue, which was highly unpopular, took place in relays from 6
p.m. to 10, or from 10 to 2 a.m. The scene was the goods yard of the
railway where trucks had to be loaded with great bales of forage, sacks
of grain, or cases of bully and biscuit for the personnel at railhead.
Snatched from the tender care of their officers, the men were delivered
over to N.C.O.'s of an unknown breed, probably a cross between R.E. and
A.S.C. and Ordnance Corps, with a highly technical jargon picked up in
happier days in the goods yards of English railways. Great naphtha
flares cast a blinding light, dispelling the friendly gloom on which
every right-minded private relies, if unlucky enough to have to work at
night. The still air is solid with dust, increased every moment as G.S.
waggons, each drawn by a team of maddened mules, enter the yard at a
hand gallop, scattering all in their path. The atmosphere is one of
strenuous profanity, most uncongenial to the unhappy infantry. At last
the officer in charge--ironic phrase--determines that time is up and
raises a feeble outcry amid the din. Fortunately the sheep know their
shepherd, and will hear his voice. The men fall in and he listens to
complaints and soothes the indignant. One man laid his tunic down and a
mule ate a great bit out of it. Another cannot get his arm straight
"after lifting thae bales." A still, small voice asserts that a man has
as much chance of doing what the R.E. wants, as a gnat has of fighting
a ---- aeroplane. The sergeant numbers them off. There is of course one
missing; but the officer, being certain that he is either a mangled
corpse among the mules, or far more probably triumphantly asleep on a
stack of tibbin, declines to search for him, and the party steps out for
home, are challenged by a pessimistic sentry, dismissed, and, stumbling
over their recumbent comrades, find an unoccupied corner of their tents,
and sleep the sleep of the just till réveillé--and after, if possible.
Such was life, broken by an occasional Sunday's rest with the Divisional
Band, or at any rate two men with cornets to help with the singing at
Church Parade. Services were often held under difficulties, but one has
heard of no sadder case than that of the Padre who went off to hold a
parade for some transport men stationed near the railway line. He had no
hymn books but, being an optimist, chose well-known hymns and one of the
officers present sang them with him. During the second hymn a train load
of natives came up, and, the signal being against it, came to a halt in
close proximity. The Egyptian is a kindly soul, and judging that the
white men were making a very poor effort in their rejoicings, the whole
lot of them broke into one of their insane chants, stamping their feet
and clapping their hands in time to the music and smiling encouragement
on the indignant Padre the while. Hastily breaking off the hymn, the
latter commenced an eloquent address, but the engine driver, a godless
man, whose small mind was fixed on getting home to his tent, suddenly
opened out his whistle and kept it going as a hint to the forgetful
signal-man who was holding him up, and the sorely tried Padre, losing
his nerve at this final outrage, "washed out" the Parade, and retired
defeated.
Only too often Sunday was chosen for some form of frightfulness, which
could not logically be called a fatigue, but which was really far worse.
It was on a Sunday that the whole Battalion, bearing on their backs
every stitch of their kit, repaired to the E.S.R. station, and
surrendered their belongings to be placed in waggons and subjected to
superheated steam. Not only were successive volunteers almost boiled
alive in premature efforts to enter the waggons after the doors were
reopened; not only was everyone's kit mixed up with everyone else's and
the garments, when recovered, found to be creased and mangled in
incredible ways; not only was the whole Battalion left standing at ease,
dressed solely in boots and sun helmets, while the Port Said express
moved slowly past them; but, when all was over, it was found that our
little friends had considered the steriliser merely as a new form of
incubator to help their offspring to hatch out.
The weather on the whole was passable. In March there were days of
strong west wind which were really chilly. In April it began to warm up,
and the thermometer in the tents--and a tent with flaps gave us the best
shade temperature we could find--reached 100° before the end of the
month. The "khamseen," a south wind, hot as the blast of a furnace,
bringing with it clouds of dust and flying sand darkening the sun, and
making a fog in which we could not see half across the parade ground,
smote us at irregular intervals in April and May. No words are bad
enough for the "khamseen." People who live in Cairo in good stone houses
with blinds and lots of ice regard it with horror. In the desert it was
infinitely worse. One day early in May an officer's tent was at 118°,
while the crowded homes of the men must have been far hotter.
About this time H.R.H. The Prince of Wales paid a visit to the E.E.F.
and was present as a member of the Staff of General Murray when the
latter inspected the troops stationed at Kantara. Each battalion was
drawn up by half-battalions in close columns of platoons in front of the
camp, and although the inspection occupied a very short time, the delay
was almost sufficient to cause three senior officers, the first of the
battalion to be granted local leave, to miss the one o'clock luncheon
express to Cairo. They caught it with difficulty and great effort, and
it is reported that their lunch consisted largely of iced beer.
On April 23rd, Easter Sunday, the Turks raided the Katia oasis,
twenty-five miles to the east of us, and cut up the Yeomanry who held
it. Another body advanced to Dueidar, some ten miles nearer us, and were
gallantly held off by a company of R.S.F. That evening the Brigade was
moved out at short notice and marched to Hill 40 in the dark. Here we
bivouacked, and spent a chilly night, while Anzac cavalry passed through
us and moved on the threatened spot, which was far out of reach of
infantry. The next day the rumours that reached us left little doubt
that it was no more than a clever raid by the Turks, but we spent the
day, and a very hot one it was, without shelter in the sand, disturbed
firstly by the information that we should be fighting hard by dawn the
next day, and again by the message that the Turks were seen advancing in
large numbers. This proved to be the Egyptian Labour Corps in hasty
retreat from the neighbourhood of Katia. On the 25th we returned to our
camp, which we did not quit again until May 17th.
The post at Dueidar was an isolated detachment garrisoning an oasis in
which the Bedouin were in the habit of holding a weekly market. These
gentry were rounded up after the Easter day disaster, but the oasis
still needed a guard, because in the desert an area where drinkable
water can be found is more valuable than Alsace Lorraine and the Saar
Valley put together. The true infantry line of defence however was still
further back. About eight miles from the Canal a line of redoubts had
been built, spanning the gap between protective inundations and barring
the way to Kantara. Half a mile further out lay a marvellous trench, the
work of forgotten heroes, since transferred to France, a straight line
of carefully sand-bagged fire bays and traverses which it would have
taken a small army to hold, running as if laid down with a ruler across
the desert without either support line or communication trenches. The
redoubt system was far more economical in men and each separate redoubt
formed a strong point well supplied with ammunition and water, which
could give a very good account of itself.
To this line the Battalion moved on May 17th, taking over at dawn next
morning from the K.O.S.B. The two main redoubts were at Hill 70 itself,
where Battalion Headquarters lived with "A" Company and half of "C," and
at Turk Top garrisoned by "B" Company. Three smaller redoubts were held
by "D" and the other half of "C," and there were intermediate posts
occupied by small detachments only at night. Life was more pleasant out
here. We still had tents outside the wire in which we lived by day,
manning the trenches at night. There was a good deal of work to be done
on the redoubts, but it was work with an obvious purpose, and we were
glad to be on our own and free from the clutches of those obscure
magnates who detail divisional fatigues. Our digging we got through
between stand down and breakfasts in the cool of the morning, or else in
the late afternoon. At night we posted sentries and went on long
adventurous patrols from post to post. There was no enemy; but the
desert itself still had a certain amount of mystery and romance about
it. It was less flat than round Kantara and dotted here and there with
coarse, green scrub, while a mile to the south of Hill 70 stood a little
group of seven palms. Away to the east rose great hills of golden sand,
very beautiful when the rays of the setting sun struck upon them. To
show our unsophisticated attitude at this time, it may be admitted that
when a credulous machine gunner informed us--doubtless on Australian
authority--that the trails of two "Arabian" lions had been found not a
mile away, we more than half believed him.
The flies were bad, but we were getting used to the heat--the tent
temperature was usually between 100° and 110° during the hotter
hours,--and a northerly wind helped to keep us going. On the 20th a pair
of 18 pounders were put into Hill 70 and another pair into the Turk Top
Redoubt, and their gunners, of the 2nd Lowland Brigade R.F.A., came to
live with us. The guns were well dug in, but there was a general feeling
that if they fired, most of the trenches, which were only a few feet
away, would inevitably collapse. At Hill 70 Captain Wightman and Captain
Moir joined the Battalion, with very little to say in favour of the
Egyptian climate and obviously feeling the extreme heat.
Early in June astonishing rumours began to reach us about a "change of
air" camp at Alexandria, and soon it came to be known that the whole
Brigade were for a week's holiday there. The cynics scoffed, and the few
who were anxious to display the fruits of a classical education could
quote a line about "fearing the Greeks even when they bear gifts in
their hands," the Greeks to us being that inveterate foe of every
right-minded infantry man, until he gets a chance of putting up red tabs
himself,--the Staff. But for once the cynics were wrong, and on June
13th the 11th Manchesters arrived to relieve us, and we marched gaily
back to Kantara--at any rate if not gaily--it was getting on for 130° in
the sun quite early in the day--still with a good heart. We were even
complaisant when we found ourselves crowded into one camp area with the
7th, and with most of the tents to put up. As the afternoon wore on--(we
had been up since 3 a.m. and were still hard at it in different
fatigues)--a tendency to disparage holidays was noticed in some
quarters, and when the next day we found ourselves in for a resumption
of training pending further orders, the cynics had their innings. It
lasted a fortnight--of crowded tents and extreme heat--the thermometer
failing to fall much below 90° all night. Réveillé was at 4 a.m. and
after three hours training, we came in for an eight o'clock breakfast,
drenched in sweat, and regarding salt bacon with loathing. To add to the
trials of the climate the entire Battalion was roused one night about
midnight with orders to make all tents as secure as possible, hammer in
tent pegs, etc., as the following message had just been received,
"Typhoon proceeding north passed Suez 9 p.m." Few if any of us had ever
experienced a typhoon and with thoughts of very shortly being blown here
and there like the sand we set to work with a will, but unnecessarily.
The great wind never came, and we learnt in the morning that the
"Typhoon" that passed Suez was a tramp steamer homeward bound. But the
optimists were not to be disappointed. On the 26th an advance party left
us, and on the evening of the 28th the whole Battalion, with the
exception of some few of the later drafts, entrained and reached Sidi
Bishr next morning, smutty but hopeful.
Sidi Bishr rest camp was unlike anything that the oldest soldier can
remember. It was run with the sole desire of making everybody happy. The
tents were in the desert east of the town, half a mile from the sea. The
men had no duties of any kind. No parades were allowed and there were
special cooks and orderly men attached to each camp. On arrival the camp
staff took the men over from their officers, who were told that they had
no further responsibilities and could go off and enjoy themselves for a
week. Every man was then given a pass into Alexandria, good up to 11
p.m. every night of the week, while for those whose finances could not
stand this strain there were free concerts and cinemas in the camp
itself, and a whole village of enticing restaurants and shops where
fruit, drinks and souvenirs could be obtained. One need hardly say that
the Battalion, keenly appreciating the kindness shown and the confidence
reposed in them, repaid it by exemplary behaviour. There was hardly a
case of drunkenness throughout our stay--no bad record for men who had
been teetotal, through necessity and not through choice, for months--and
were now exposed to the dangers of the vile though seductive liquor sold
in the native bars.
Our holiday came to an end all too soon and we returned to Kantara in
excellent form for whatever might be demanded of us. A draft joined us a
few days after our return with Lieut. Girvan and our Quartermaster,
Lieut. Clark. Plainly the days of sitting on the banks of the Canal and
waiting till Turkey chose to attack us were gone for ever. The whole
force was pushing slowly but surely to the east, and it was high time
for us to help them push.