THE SINAI DESERT--MAHAMDIYA, ROMANI, KATIA.
On the 10th of July, after handing over to the 5th Manchesters, the
Battalion entrained for Mahamdiya. The curse was pronounced against it,
"On thy flat feet shalt thou go--and dust shalt thou eat"; and it did
not entrain again until it left Ludd at the beginning of the journey to
France nearly two years later. The accumulation of stores resulting from
several months comparatively civilised life had to be sorted out, and
all but the barest necessities were left behind--a process which was
constantly being repeated as the advance through the desert continued,
the necessities becoming successively barer and barer. Two trains were
required for the Battalion and its possessions, one leaving at 7.17 a.m.
and the other at 4.15 p.m. They were composed of open trucks in which
the men were packed with little regard to comfort. It was not a
luxurious journey, but fortunately it was not a long one. After skirting
the inundations the line ran for some miles across almost flat desert,
and then entered a country of sand hills, writhing and twisting among
the tumbled ridges till it reached Romani. Here we passed on to a branch
line which took us north to the coast.
Our camp at Mahamdiya had been occupied by the Scottish Horse. It was
pitched on a slope of sand less than a mile from the railway, and half a
mile or so from the sea. The sea was the great feature of Mahamdiya. Its
deep blueness rested the eye, wearied by the perpetual glare of the
sand. The prevailing north wind blowing straight off it tempered the
heat--and most important of all, it gave us the opportunity of being
cool and clean for a delicious half-hour as often as we could spare the
time to get down to it. No parade, not even the infrequent "fall in for
pay," was so welcome as a bathing parade. Our supply of fresh water was
extremely limited, and as drinking comes with most of us before washing,
we should have been a dirty lot indeed without the sea. Even as it was,
salt water, like a famous soap, won't wash clothes, and our hosiery
suffered accordingly. Drinking water was issued at stated intervals, in
the presence of an officer--and that was another occasion on which there
were no absentees.
Some way east of the camp ran a line of barbed wire in a great sweep
from the sea to the south, finally turning west to protect the whole
locality. Behind it was a series of little posts occupied nightly by
half the Battalion, while the rest slept in camp. The most northerly
post was not a popular one. The roar of the surf forced the sentries to
rely entirely on their eyesight; while the alarming number of marauding
crabs, which manoeuvred over the area all night, gave one an uneasy
feeling which usually begot a nightmare.
In front of the outpost line lay a great expanse of dry salt-lake,
separated from the sea by a hundred yards or so of sand dune, and
stretching away as far as the eye could reach, a sheet of greyish white.
These dry lakes or marshes, Sabkhet, to give them their local name, are
a feature of northern Sinai. One very large one, at whose western
extremity we now were, runs most of the way across the top of the
Peninsula, and is believed to have been the famous Serbonian Bog of the
Classics. In places its surface gleams white with salt crystals,
covering a mass of hard irregular lumps said to be formed of gypsum,
which makes walking almost impossible. Further inland, smaller marshes
were often met with, and a hole dug in them soon filled with bitter
water, quite undrinkable, but valuable to wash away the sand. South of
the great Sabkhet, the everlasting sand ridges began again, spotted with
clumps and low bushes of scrub, and rising in the distance to pure
yellow hills entirely without vegetation.
A mile or so to the east of our outpost line, the permanent defences
were being constructed by the Egyptian Labour Corps, now recruited to do
the sand shovelling, which had fallen to our lot at Kantara. Every
morning bands of blue-clad gippies moved out from their lairs behind us,
in rough, very rough, military formation, singing their doubtless
primeval but rather idiotic chants, laughing, shouting, and generally
enjoying life in a way which we admired, but could not imitate. Arrived
at their redoubts they shovelled and sand-bagged away under the
direction of the versatile R.E., with a rest during the hottest part of
the day, until the evening saw their equally noisy and cheerful return
to camp. We were glad they enjoyed it, but felt no envious desire to
share their labours with them.
In spite of the breeze off the sea the weather remained extremely hot.
Heavy dews often fell at night, causing mist at dawn, which forced the
outpost companies to stand to arms for an extra hour or more; on July
13th we indignantly stood to from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. for this reason. When
the sun was well up, there came the most trying part of the day, while
the dew-laden atmosphere was drying. The temperature rose till the
thermometer inside the tents registered anything from 95° to 110°, but
the heat became less oppressive when the moisture had vanished from the
air. What training we did was reserved whenever possible for the
evening, and even so it was hard work. An entry in the War Diary reads,
"14/7/16. 1700 to 1930. Battalion Route March towards Romani over heavy
sand. Distance under four miles, but men much fatigued!" Four miles in
two and a half hours gives some idea of the nature of the going, and
there was no extra tot of water to be issued on return to camp.
We were now in an area in which even the optimistic Ordnance Survey (who
in the chatty little notes they append to their maps, characterised the
local water supply as "abundant though varying in quality") considered
wheeled transport as impracticable. In consequence our nodding
acquaintanceship with camels ripened quickly into an undesired
familiarity. There is a touch of oriental romance about the camel, as
the mile long convoys loom up through the night and pass in uncanny
silence, slow but untiring across the moonlit desert. It was romantic
even to see a string returning to camp, their day's work over, with the
camel escort swaying high in air, rope bridle in hand and rifle on hip,
as if they had been bred in Somaliland instead of Glasgow. But the
romance did not carry one very far. Orders from Headquarters soon put an
end to free rides even on unloaded camels. The eye might be charmed by
the stately motion of the creature but the nose was offended by its
exceedingly unpleasant smell. Camels are very delicate. They must not be
overloaded or overworked. Their saddles gall them with surprising ease
and rapidity, and are extremely difficult to pack. They have vile
tempers, and in late autumn become frankly impossible. The native word
"macnoon," by the way, in spite of its suggestion of respectable
Highland clans, was regarded as the only one adequate to describe a
camel at this time of year, and was therefore added to our vocabulary.
They are noisy, vicious, unaccommodating and aggravating to a degree. A
lance-corporal of the Battalion of great girth and tank-like prowess in
the football field was always ready to bear bitter testimony to their
man-eating proclivities, and no doubt still regards it as a distinct
intervention of Providence that he lost no more than the seat of his
shorts.
[Illustration: IN A REDOUBT, MAHAMDIYA.]
The peaceful life of our seaside resort was soon destroyed by rumours
that the Turks were moving. On the evening of July 19th, an aeroplane
reconnaissance discovered a considerable force of them at Bir el Abd,
some twenty-five miles to the east of us, and noticed smaller parties
much nearer. The Turkish feat of moving a force, then reckoned at from
8000 to 9000 men, fifty miles from El Arish without our being aware of
it, was a very fine one, and when it is remembered that they attacked us
at Romani, seventy-five miles from their base, with 18,000 men and
artillery up to 6 inch howitzers, everyone who has felt what the desert
is like in July will be full of admiration. Nor can one wonder at the
fact established by our all-wise Intelligence, that prisoners captured
had sore feet. The first ripples of the commotion produced by this
report reached us at 1 a.m. on the 20th, when the Adjutant was summoned
to Brigade Headquarters. At 2.45 a.m. half "C" Company moved out to take
over Redoubt No. 10, and later in the morning "B" Company garrisoned No.
8 and "D" Company No. 11, while the rest of "C" Company occupied 10A.
These redoubts, though habitable, were still unfinished. They were part
of the defences mentioned above as being in the hands of the Egyptian
Labour Corps, a chain of posts running south past Romani and then
turning west among the sand hills. The garrisons had at once to set to
and improve their position, strengthen their wire and finish off the
fire bays. At 10A a signal station had to be established in mid-desert
some hundreds of yards from the redoubt, owing to a temporary shortage
of signal wire. Signallers are naturally imperturbable, but the officer
in charge confessed to a thrill of horror when, having with some
difficulty made his way to his signal station at midnight and been
handed the receiver, even as he uttered the preliminary "Hullo," the
instrument suddenly sprang from his grasp and rushed off into the
darkness. Mastering an almost overpowering desire to run for the
redoubt, he assisted two signallers to investigate and discovered that
the wire had caught in the foot of a straying camel, which had proceeded
on its thoughtless way with the receiver attached.
But as is usual in desert warfare, time passed and nothing happened. "B"
Company were relieved in No. 8 by the 53rd Division and rejoined "A"
Company in camp. The other garrisons got into tents which they pitched
in the ground behind the redoubts, so that the majority of the men could
have shelter by day. At night the trenches were manned, and all was
ready for an attack at dawn. But with the exception of some
bomb-dropping raids by their planes, the enemy remained passive. The
Australian Light Horse reported that he was busy digging in on a line
through Oghratina, some miles east of Katia, and we began to think that
he intended to put the onus of attacking on to us. The fear, however,
was unfounded, he was only completing his preparations, and on the night
of August 3rd-4th he advanced and occupied Katia.
This movement was reported, and "A" and "B" Companies, who had by now
relieved "C" and "D" in the redoubts, were warned that the attack was
now almost certain. Before dawn on the 4th a bombardment began, but its
entire force fell a mile or two to the south of us upon the Romani
defences; the Turkish plan being to attack there and, if possible, to
turn our right flank. All the morning the artillery fire continued, our
reply being strengthened by the "crack of doom imitations" of a couple
of monitors out at sea to the north of No. 11. Little or no news
filtered through to us, and the redoubt companies spent a hot day in
their trenches, which were but ill suited for permanent occupation,
while the reduction in the water issue, made necessary by the fear of
future difficulties in refilling the storage tanks, started a thirst
which was not appeased for many days. During the night, however, we
heard enough to assure us that things were going well, and early on the
5th we received orders to leave the redoubts to a garrison of the unfit
and to rendezvous in the old camp, prepared for a "mobile."
About midday the Battalion moved off, "A" and "C" Companies having only
just arrived from the redoubts after a wakeful night and a heavy
morning's work, and already thirsty, though no more water could be
issued. A single water bottle, once filled, is but a poor supply for a
long day under the Egyptian sun. Marching over heavy sand in the hot
hours, even when the haversack has replaced the pack, soon produces an
unparalleled drought. Sweat runs into a man's eyes and drips from his
chin. It runs down his arms and trickles from his fingers. It drenches
his shirt and leaves great white streaks on his equipment. And while so
much is running out, the desire to put something in grows and grows. The
temptation to take a mouthful becomes well nigh irresistible, and once
the bottle of sun-heated chlorine-flavoured water is put to the lips, it
is almost impossible to put it down before its precious contents are
gone. Then a man becomes hopeless and there is danger of his falling
out. All honour to those, and they were many, who through age or
sickness, had greater difficulty in keeping up than the rest of us, but
who yet carried on indomitably to the end, or only gave in when they had
reached a stage of complete collapse. How often in such hours have we
felt that if only we could live where one may have an unlimited supply
of water just by turning on a tap, we should be content for ever. But
are we, my friends? I fear not.
One cannot help feeling that the comparison made with the performances
of regular battalions in the heat of India before the war, are unfair.
These were trained men, caught young and developed to a high standard of
physical fitness, marching along the excellent Indian roads, with a
certainty of a good water supply at their night's camping place, and
accompanied in many cases by travelling canteens and soda water
machines. In our ranks were to be found many men of middle age, unused
to active life, and many boys whose physique had not had time to respond
to military training. Some had but recently joined us and were not
acclimatised, others had not recovered their strength after the
dysentery of Gallipoli. Roads or canteens there were none. Of course
British troops have often found themselves in such conditions and worse
on active service. But it is interesting to find that that fine old
soldier R.S.M. Mathieson, always said that he personally never suffered
from thirst to anything like the same degree during the Egyptian
campaign of 1882.
We left the Battalion moving off S.E. from the camp for the Brigade
rendezvous. Here we received orders to attack a "hod" named Abu Hamrah,
which lay between us and Katia. The distance was not great, hardly six
miles as the crow flies, but we were not crows and had to adopt less
direct as well as more laborious methods. The Battalion was on the right
in support to the 7th H.L.I., and the march continued with but short
halts till 4 p.m., when we had a somewhat longer pause, and a chance to
reinforce our early breakfasts. Few men, however, can eat either bully
beef or biscuit when they are thirsty, and that was all we had. It
always seemed strange that we should not have made more use of food more
suitable to the climate. Later on dried figs and occasionally little
dried apricots were issued with the mobile ration. Doubtless these are
not very sustaining, but they are the fruit of the country, and it is
better to have a little you can eat than a full ration that you cannot,
whatever the decrease in caloric value may be.
There was neither sound nor sign of enemy opposition, and the advance
was resumed in artillery formation in an hour or so. Darkness began to
fall and great difficulty was experienced in keeping touch with the
battalion in front and even between the different companies, a
difficulty increased by the first line camels of the 7th, who were
perpetually, though inevitably, getting in our way. When daylight had
actually failed it must be admitted the Brigade had become somewhat
disintegrated. The Argylls did not regain touch till next morning. The
Battalion, minus "A" Company, who had been cut off by some camels and
thus entered Abu Hamrah on their own, got up on the right of the 7th,
where the errant company eventually discovered it.
Immediately strings of camels now appeared on all sides marching and
counter-marching across everybody's front, holding up exasperated and
desperate platoon commanders, who finally ruthlessly cut them in two and
forged ahead to a chorus of blasphemy from weary escorts and
lamentations from terrified native drivers. The peaceful hod had become
an inferno. No one knew anything except that there were no Turks. After
superhuman efforts on the part of various exalted personages, things
were straightened out, pickets detailed and posted, and the men, too
tired even to swear, dropped where they were, and rapidly cooled down in
the chilly dew. It was now nearly eleven o'clock, and a half bottle of
water was issued, enough merely to whet the consuming thirst which
gripped everybody. Tunics were disentangled from the damp congeries on
our backs and we had a few hours' precious sleep.
At 3 a.m. we stood to and began to dig ourselves in, in positions sited
with extreme difficulty, in unknown country, in the dark. Soon, however,
orders were received to prepare to move, and in spite of every effort,
not more than half the men had had their bottles filled before we had to
continue the advance. It was a very hot steamy morning, and the coolness
of dawn soon disappeared. The advance was slow, and we grew thirstier
and thirstier whether we moved or halted. On reaching a ridge
overlooking Rabah and Katia it was found that the leading battalions
were too far to the left. We and the Argylls were therefore ordered to
turn right-handed and occupy Katia. The dark line of palms appeared
very enticing, if very far away, and the Battalion struggled manfully
on, shedding the weaker brethren as it went and, very nearly "all out,"
reached its objective about 10 a.m.
Our troubles were now nearly over. There were no enemy, and the trees
gave us a grateful shade, which only "B" Company, pushed forward to hold
an outpost line on the far bridge, had to forgo. A fine stone well was
found in the oasis with a good supply of cool, though curious tasting
water, and canteens were soon being let down into it at the end of
puttees in a hopeless effort to cope with our thirst, after which the
bolder spirits went so far as to nibble a ration biscuit. But one cannot
help reflecting on what might have been the consequences for us if the
Turks had adopted the German policy of well-poisoning.
We afterwards heard that the Turks, evacuating Abu Hamrah on our
approach, had taken up a strong rear guard position at Katia, and had
beaten off the cavalry, who had retired behind us to water their horses
and get a much needed night's rest. The Turks had seized their
opportunity and slipped away during the night. As far as we were
concerned they were welcome to slip.
The story of the Battle of Romani can be read elsewhere. It was not an
infantry show--at any rate on our side--though elements of the 52nd
Division saw some fighting. No praise can be too high for the endurance
and fine fighting quality of our cavalry, both Anzac and English. And it
is reckoned that the Turks lost a good half of their force, either
killed or captured, before they outdistanced the mounted pursuit.
The Battalion remained at Katia until August 14th. The oasis consisted
of a broad crescent of palm trees running for two or three miles round a
sabkhet. Great clusters of dates hung from most of the trees--but they
were still unripe, not sour or bitter but very hard and with a curious
stringent taste. The Turks had plainly considered them a valuable
addition to their rations--for in every Turkish trench and sniper's hole
we found their stones and sticks; and while we were free of the
well-water we found that we could make them quite palatable by boiling
them in a canteen. In the middle of the circle of palms stood a little
mosque or Sheikh's tomb with a big dark tree, perhaps a tamarisk, beside
it, and bricks and other remains showed that there had at some time been
other modest dwelling-places in the neighbourhood.
At night we usually moved out to an outpost line in the sand ridges
beyond the oasis. The Turks dropped a few shells along these on the 6th,
but after that the fighting, still kept up by the cavalry, moved far out
of range to the east. By day the bulk of the force came down among the
trees, while the outpost companies were able to rig up some kind of
shelter from the sun with the blankets which camels had brought up by
the 9th, one to two men. Providence perpetrated a huge practical joke
when it designed the palm to be the only tree which will grow in the
desert. From a distance it looks well, but when the weary traveller
approaches and proposes to rest beneath its shade, he finds he has to
choose between the thin shadow of the trunk, not wide enough to shelter
him, and the little blob of shade given by the clump of leaves at the
top; this latter, coming from a point high above ground, moves round
with the sun so quickly that you are hardly settled in it before it has
glided away, and you must chase it round in a great unrestful circle.
However, whenever the trees are thick on the ground the difficulty is
not so great--our trouble came rather from other causes. The oasis was
full of men. Part of the 42nd had come up on our right, and Headquarters
and details of the Anzacs and Camel Corps were on our left. The area had
recently been occupied by the Turks who are not a clean race, and before
that, cavalry had used it for some months. Not far away lay the remains
of camels and horses slaughtered in the Turkish raid in April, while the
dead of the recent fighting lay unburied all round the neighbourhood.
The E.E.F. were experts in sanitation, but sanitary stores and
appliances had not yet reached us, and the ground beneath the trees was
frankly filthy. Flies of course abounded. We had little to do and less
to eat--bully and biscuits and none too much of it. The biscuit supply
had struck a bad patch and most of the tins were found to harbour
various forms of animal life--reputed to be weevils. They could be eaten
with impunity--we knew that by experience--but that did not make the
biscuits more appetising.
The Turkish planes bombed us daily but with little success. Their bombs
were of small size and the sand seemed somehow to smother them, so that
they were more noisy than dangerous. The men who had fallen out rejoined
us as best they could, the worst of them being removed to hospitals, and
by the 14th we were well rested and ready for "the road" again.
The preparations for departure began as usual with the laying out of
stores in camel loads. A camel's load has to be nicely calculated. He
must not carry more than a certain amount, about 350 lbs.--if he carries
less you can't get everything on--and the load must be evenly divided
between the two sides of his saddle. With water, carried in the tanks
holding about twelve gallons--called fantassies--and with S.A.A.
blankets, this is easy enough, but with tools and the miscellaneous
stores belonging to the scouts, Lewis gunners, cooks, doctor, sanitary
men, signallers and all kinds of specialists the problem is far more
complicated, and the loading officer has usually made a large number of
enemies before the day is over. Some seventy camels were attached to
each battalion, camping under their own headman somewhere near and
sending in daily parties to draw rations and water from the A.S.C. The
camels were under the orders of the Commanding Officer, and the
Quartermaster's department detailed the numbers required for each trip.
The difficulty came when some subordinate attempted to convey these
instructions to the drivers--for we had not yet acquired that
surprisingly extensive Arabic vocabulary of which we all boasted by the
end of the campaign. Nor had the drivers any knowledge of English.
[Illustration: WATER CAMELS, MAHAMDIYA.]
On this occasion the officer in command, having carefully laid out the
loads at the prescribed distance and interval and quarrelled with every
specialist in the Battalion, went down to the camel lines, and loudly
ejaculated the only Arabic word he knew--"Rice"--believed to mean
headman. (The spelling of Arabic throughout these chapters is entirely
phonetic.) A majestic figure in a blue dressing-gown rose and advanced
beaming. There was a pause. All the camels were required. "Alle Gamell,"
observed the officer hopefully. It is said that every Arabic word means
some form of camel and it seemed possible that Gamell was an Arabic
word. The difficulty lay rather in the "all"! Rice broke into a flood of
Arabic--but gave no orders. The officer repeated his phrase, trying the
conversational, wheedling, and minatory tones in turn--but it was
useless. He therefore held up eighteen fingers--not of course
simultaneously--eighteen being the number of camels required for one of
his precious lines of loads. This was more effective. Rice fell upon his
myrmidons, beat up a number of drivers, who beat up eighteen camels. The
loading party assisted to beat, and so amid threatening and slaughter
the first line was roughly filled, most of the camels lying down facing
the wrong way, which necessitated much abuse and whirling round of the
forefinger before they were shipshape. Rice, now satisfied that all was
well, was horrified to perceive nineteen more fingers displayed before
his nose, and the officer, seeing that time was getting short and the
present method would take an hour at least, directed his men to go
straight to the point, and to attack the camels themselves. There
resulted an appalling pandemonium, everyone beating everything and the
camels snarling like a pack of wolves; and at length the drivers, seeing
that the white men meant business, sadly abandoned their leisure
occupation of parasite hunting and rushed upon them. After receiving
some of the blows intended for their charges, they managed to get most
of the camels disentangled and the difficult business of loading began.
The officer, however, realised that the natives had no idea that we were
leaving Katia for good, and being a kind-hearted man, did not wish them
to lose their few belongings. He therefore summoned Rice again, and said
slowly, "Mahamdiya--Katia never no more"--accompanying the words with a
gesture of violent negation. Suddenly the awful truth broke on Rice, and
he set up a long and despairing howl, on which all the drivers left
their charges, ran screaming to their household goods and began hastily
to pack them into their bosoms. Immediately half the camels lurched to
their feet with horrid sounds, began to turn round like teetotums and
went a-visiting among their friends. The Mark VII. Camels, as if by
instinct, sought the Mark VI. (We should perhaps remark that this refers
not to a difference in the brand of camel, but to the fact that the
Battalion used Mark VI. ammunition for the long rifles, with which they
were still armed and Mark VII. for the Lewis guns and great care had
always to be exercised to keep the two separate.) The camel with the
bombs scraped off his load against the camel with the fuel. Order became
chaos. The exhausted but undaunted fatigue were about to dive into the
welter, when the officer observed the approach of the O.C. camel escort
with his men in all their war-paint, ready for the march. Silencing his
scruples he hastily called off his own party and, reporting to the
unsuspecting new comer that all was in order, he fled to the trees,
where they were just in time to throw on their equipment and get into
position before the column started. It need hardly be said that they
felt as if they had done a hard day's work, and were already the victims
of an excellent thirst before the march began.
The Battalion moved straight back to Mahamdiya, starting at 2 p.m. and
arriving at 7.15 p.m. The men were very tired, but only two fell out
during the march and the contrast with some other marches strengthened
our belief that, given a good meal before starting, proper halts every
hour, and above all, marching not in the breathless humid hours of the
morning but in the drier afternoon, after the breeze had sprung up, we
could cover considerable distances without loss.
We found our old camp standing, and the men gladly renewed acquaintance
with the few little comforts they had left behind in their packs, while
the officers revelled in regained valises and there was much very
necessary bathing. "C" Company went out to No. 11 Redoubt, far the best
of the line, as it was right on the sea and just in front of some old
ruins which yielded a number of interesting things in the way of coins,
lamps, pottery and the like. We never could find out who had lived
there, but there must have been a town of some importance to judge by
the size and solidity of some of the foundations. Probably it was a
Greek or Greco-Roman Colony. A week later the post was taken over by two
platoons of men who were unfit for heavy marching and who formed part of
a newly constituted Brigade Details Company, a formation which gave us a
chance of sparing many who were physically unable to stand the heavy
strain of infantry work in the desert.
We remained at Mahamdiya till August 26th, occupying the inner picket
line at night, and training by day. On that date the Brigade moved to er
Rabah, a large palm grove, a mile or so north of Katia, which it closely
resembled. After réveillé at 3.45 a.m., and breakfast at 4.30, the
Battalion moved off at six, reaching er Rabah at 11, but not being able
to move into its bivouac area till 1 p.m., after which camels had to be
unloaded, fires lit and dixies boiled before tea could be served to the
men. The march was extremely trying, the nights at this season being
very wet, and the hours before midday a torment of damp heat. Several
men collapsed as they marched, suffering from a kind of heat-stroke. It
was in this march that an unnamed hero "was three times sick in the
presence of the G.O.C."--an act of courage immortalised in a Brigade
order, of which the writer still possesses a treasured copy.
At Rabah we occupied an area some little way from the trees, but we came
out provided with one blanket per man and sticks with which we could rig
up bivouacs. Two poles were stuck up in the sand with a guy rope
attached to a peg to keep each in position. They stood a blanket length
apart and two blankets were tied to the top of them by their corners,
the other corners being pegged down to the ground, thus forming a
shelter open at each end, and capable of holding two or three men and
their not very numerous belongings. A little study enabled the
architects to combine the maximum of shade with the maximum of wind
ventilation. Save for a short period at Romani and then at el Arish,
when the tents were brought up, these makeshift shelters were our homes
until proper bivouac sheets and poles were issued in June 1917. They had
to come down every night when the blanket was required for covering, and
so we slept beneath the stars. This form of habitation led to a
tremendous demand for bits of string--especially for little bits which
attached the blankets to the poles or to the pegs. It was so easy, when
dismantling a bivouac at night, to lay a bit of string on the ground,
where it was swiftly and inevitably covered with sand and lost for ever.
In consequence the careless or stringless took to sticking the peg
through a hole in the blanket and then to making a hole to stick the peg
through and "this thing became a sin in Israel."
[Illustration: SHEIKH'S TOMB, KATIA.]
Some distance outside the camp we dug a series of little trenches for
pickets which were occupied at night by companies in rotation. Stand-to
for everyone was at 3.45 and was often prolonged by mist. But our only
enemies were usually ineffective bombing planes and exceedingly
effective swarms of flies and also little whirlwinds which rushed across
the camp amid howls of execration and collapsing bivouacs. There were
many chameleons about and they were in that state of disordered fancy
which is supposed to attack the young man in the spring. We would
capture them and, after emblazoning our names and numbers in indelible
pencil on their flanks, an indignity which completely ruined their
carefully worked out camouflage schemes, would set them to fight, which
they did with extreme ferocity and remarkably little effect, nature
having provided them with no weapon of offence whatever. The contest was
chiefly one of swelling up and making faces, and was extremely
exhilarating to the onlookers. Our only other diversion was the not
always popular one of battalion exercises in various stages of the
attack. Few attacks, alas, ever planned out exactly like that when there
was a real enemy, but the exercises kept us fit and thirsty.
Our stay at Rabah lasted until September 11th, when we marched due west
and took over a camp from the 4th R.S.F. north of Romani and close to
the great landmark Katib Gannit. This was a vast pile of sand, its top
240 feet above sea level and rising a good 150 feet at a wonderfully
steep angle from the minor sand dunes around it. It was visible for many
miles to eastward, and had been used as an observation post in August
and consequently heavily shelled. Our camp was in among the sand hills,
which are unrelieved by scrub and of an almost incredible yellowness.
"B" Company took over Redoubt No. 2, one of the chain with which we had
already become familiar at the northern extremity. The rest of the
Battalion were employed in training and route marching, while ranges
were established for rifle and Lewis guns. Parties of officers and men
were now allowed to go to Port Said for three days' leave, a privilege
of which we were glad to avail ourselves. Port Said has few attractions,
but hard roads and iced drinks are a great lure after months in the
desert. The journeys to and fro were naturally not devoid of incident.
The leave parties marched up to Mahamdiya in the early morning, over
some miles of bad going, and Headquarters are to be congratulated on the
fact that no party of ours at any rate ever left on an empty stomach. At
Mahamdiya they reported to the R.T.O., a versatile officer of the 5th,
whose administrative career was almost cut short by an untoward incident
about this time. A great one, owning a private trolley for railway
"scooting," 'phoned the R.T.O. office, Mahamdiya, to enquire whether the
line from that place to Romani was clear. He received an answer in the
affirmative and set off gaily. At about the same moment a large ration
train left Romani for Mahamdiya. They met about half-way, and the engine
driver, whose career had not taught him a proper reverence for red tabs,
blew his whistle and carried on. The superhuman agility of the trolley's
crew just succeeded in getting their vehicle off the line before the
train reached it, but the R.T.O.'s office at Mahamdiya stank in official
nostrils for many days.
The line to Port Said, however, was a metre gauge one, laid down on the
beach which runs as a narrow strip between the sea and the lagoons. The
aforesaid R.T.O., sitting equably among a cloud of flies, would inform
you on arrival (1) that the train which should have been the 8.30 from
Mahamdiya had only just left Port Said, and could not arrive here for
three hours, (2) that it had not run at all the day before, owing to
engine trouble, and (3) that the sea washed away parts of the line most
days. He would then propose a second breakfast. About 12 the train would
arrive and the party be packed like herrings in the narrow trucks. At
1.30 the one person who really ran the line--the engine driver--would
have finished his lunch, and would proceed to refresh his iron steed by
the simple expedient of pouring in water from a canvas bucket. Now comes
the great moment--will she start or won't she? There is a puffing, a
snorting, a few wild jerks, and then amid a tremendous scene of
enthusiasm the 8.30 moves slowly off.
"Six an hour from 'ome an' duty![1]
Keep it up till we arrive."
And we would go
"Bumping round the Bay of Tina
Cocked up on a truss of hay."
[Footnote 1: _Songs on Service._--Crawsley Williams.]
But the author of this poem was a gunner--the infantry did without the
hay. On the right lies the deep blue of the Mediterranean, its waves
often washing the track. On the left the light blue of the lakes
stretched away till it mingled with the blue of the sky, and no man
could say where water ended and sky began. Occasionally there would be
islets, dark blots apparently hanging in the air, or a flock of far-off
marsh birds, with legs amazingly lengthened and distorted by the mirage.
Port Said would be reached about 3.30--and then the Canal had to be
crossed. The return journey would probably be worse. One returning party
paraded in good time for the 5 a.m. at Port Said. They left at midday,
but on reaching the only siding on the line, about half-way to their
destination, they found the up-train stranded with the engine broken
down. Their engine therefore deserted them and hauled the derelict train
into Port Said where the drinks are. They themselves reached camp
between eight and nine at night. So the journey cut rather badly into
the three days' leave. Officers who were free to do so would return by
the Egyptian State Railway west of the Canal, as far as Kantara, and
then go up by the desert line to Romani, perched on a truck of tibbin--a
bumpy and smutty ride. It was no uncommon thing, especially at night,
for the trains to break in two, as the suddenly varying gradients among
the sand hills put a tremendous strain on the couplings, and one would
be left stranded in the desert until the forward half reached a station,
where some one might notice that it seemed unusually short. Those who
only knew the line when officers could sleep in a cushioned sleeping
car, and be whirled from the Gaza railhead at Deir el Belah to Kantara
in eight or ten hours, have no idea what the line was capable of in its
palmy days, when passenger traffic was not its forte--of the hopeless
efforts to find out where any train or any truck was going to, and when
it would go there; the long halts and sudden unheralded departures, at
the moment when the passengers had at last dared to get out to stretch
their legs; the rending struggles to board mountainous trucks piled high
with rations; the starving quest for biscuits in forgotten canteens at
stations where no one ever lived. Let us try and remember these things
when next we are abusing the obscurities of Bradshaw or find our train
five minutes late.
About this time our Brigade commander, Brigadier General Casson, who had
been with us since the early days in Gallipoli, left us, to our great
regret. He was succeeded by Brigadier General Hamilton Moore.
[Illustration: BIVOUACS, EL RABAH.]