ACROSS THE SINAI DESERT TO EL ARISH.
Who can the desert's strength subdue?
Pipe, Rail and Road.
Pipe to carry your drink to you;
Rail to speed your rations through;
Road to march on firm and true
Past bir and hod.
So our gunner-poet--and in the main he speaks truth. But the "Road firm
and true!" at any rate lived only in his imagination. One does not think
that any infantryman would have written that line. Such as ride upon
horses can afford imagination. If you walk you come down to facts.
The second stage of our Crusade began on October 12th, when the
Battalion marched away from Katib Gannit, this time carrying packs.
Officers were allowed 30 lb. valises. And in general our possessions
were boiled down and the necessities of life became barer than ever. The
first march, an easy one, was to Rabah, and was over by midday--the
Battalion furnishing pickets for that night. At 6.30 the next morning we
moved off again, reaching Atchan at 11, where a halt was made and tea
issued. Off again at 1.15, we reached Abu Afein in a couple of hours,
having covered twelve miles of heavy going with the "loss" of eighteen
men, of whom ten had heat exhaustion and three colic. On the 14th we
reached Bir el Abd.
We have inserted a large number of place names in this narrative, not
because the names are famous or to be found in any but a very large
scale map, nor because there was even anything at these places to
justify their having names at all, but because each little group of
cacophonous Arabic words will call up to those who were with us memories
and mental pictures of incidents and scenes, otherwise forgotten. Beduin
place names too have a charm of their own. Hod um Ugba for
instance--officially translated as "the depression in the sand full of
palm trees of Mother Ugba." When we visited it, it was almost equally
full of dead horses. It was pathetic to think of old Mother Ugba
squatting in a concentration camp on the Canal and dreaming of the
obscure charms of her beloved hod! One hopes she is back in it by now
with Fathers Hamra and Jeheira and the rest, and we at any rate will
never disturb them more. Or was Mother Ugba some mythical heroine of
those great days when the armies of Egypt and of Asia moved through the
desert to fight and plunder--and the Beduin hung on their flanks and cut
up the wounded on either side indiscriminately, just as they do now. Or
did she lead her tribe in the host of Saladin against the Crusaders and
let the Saracens down as treacherously as she ambushed the Christians.
Old de Joinville in his thirteenth century _Chronicle of the Crusades_
has much to say of the Beduin. "Their belief is," he tells us, "that no
man can die save on the day appointed and for this reason they will not
wear armour." Recalling Palestine in the summer one can think of other
very good reasons for not wearing armour! Their place names do not seem
to have had much attraction for the Crusading chronicler, but perhaps he
felt rather doubtful of the spelling and he had no ordnance survey map
to guide him.
Bir el Abd was much the same as any other bit of desert, save that the
higher sand hills were lacking, the country consisting of rolling slopes
of no great elevation well spotted with scrub. It boasted a fine breed
of chameleon, and we also found a number of little tortoises, which were
pressed into the service to give a bit of sport! Tortoise racing was a
slow business, but eminently sporting, because the tortoise is so
splendidly unreliable. On one occasion one of the competitors in a big
sweepstake was discovered to consist of a shell only--the tortoise who
had once dwelt therein having died and turned to dust. In consideration
of this it was given a start of six inches, but long odds were offered
against it. However, at the end of the time limit--eight minutes--no
competitor had moved at all, so that the tortoiseless one was adjudged
the winner amid great applause.
Soon after our arrival we took over from the 7th S.R. as a reserve
battalion and on the 23rd we took over a section of the outpost line
itself. Bir el Abd was now the most forward infantry post. It was
half-way between Kantara and el Arish--so that the "spear head" of the
offensive defensive was making good progress. It was defended by a great
ring of outpost positions, each held by a platoon or so, usually with
another platoon in support. Night after night we slept in clothes and
boots, with our equipment on us, and woke at intervals to peer into the
dark for an hour, or see that others peered--then two more hours' sleep
and another turn of duty--and so on till we were called for
stand-to--variously at three, four, five or six a.m., as the season
changed. Then we all stood ready, rifles loaded and bayonets fixed,
denied cigarettes or conversation, lest our positions be given away to
an approaching enemy, who would not naturally be familiar with them as
he would in trench warfare, while the horizon in front of us grew
lighter, till at last the desolate world revealed itself, empty as ever
and, to the jaundiced eye of a fasting man, utterly abominable. And all
the time the nearest Turk would be a camel outpost twenty miles away. Of
course they might have come. When utterly fed up we would remind
ourselves of the R.S.F. and the Turks who appeared before their pickets
in a misty dawn in April. But to us they never did come. And the effort
to be always ready, with so little hope of ever having any reward, was a
real test of discipline--continuing as it did month after month in a
country where unrelieved monotony tempted us all to the slackness of
utter boredom.
The men were extremely badly off for washing water, and dirty bodies and
dirty clothes were neither pleasant nor healthy. But there was no help
for it. Sometimes a prowling officer would discover a little used well
in some hod within marching distance, where the well-guard--for in Sinai
you do not leave wells unguarded for any chance comer to draw a bucket
of precious water--was amenable to tactful suggestion, or to which the
Brigade could give us the entrée by some mystic chit. Then we would go
forth with our kits and letting down biscuit tins would draw up a supply
of the brackish fluid, which we would pour into little holes dug in the
sand and covered with a waterproof sheet. Then a leisurely undressing
and a hopeless effort to soap oneself--soap will not lather in brackish
water--and a delicious coolness as a comrade poured a tinful down one's
back. Under garments would be rinsed and beaten out, and the party would
hasten back to the bivouac, and let someone else have a go. But there
were long periods when a man could do no more than save a canteen lid
full from his water bottle to get a shave, and there is no doubt that
the lack of washing water aggravated the septic sores which afflicted
the great majority. Wherever the skin was exposed on face, hands, arms
and knees, any little cut or abrasion would fester till a big and
painful sore had risen from the tiniest scratch. And with many men,
however carefully they were dressed and bandaged to exclude the flies,
they would not heal--or if they did another crop sprang up to take their
places. It was a real hardship to have to dig with hands thus marked,
but one that the men put up with with surprising cheerfulness. In fact,
however septic, dirty, dull, hot or tired they might be, they never
failed to find something to laugh at, something to argue over, and
something to hope for.
On the 27th of October the Brigade moved forward again to Salmana, just
south of the great flat expanse of the dried up Lake Bardawil. Four
hours' heavy marching brought each company to its position in a new
outpost line, and we proceeded to dig positions with such effect that by
nightfall 500 yards of trench were ready for occupation. Barbed wire and
extra tools were brought up from Bardawil station by tired camels, and
tired camels are if possible more exasperating than fresh camels,
especially to tired men. On the 29th the Commander-in-Chief rode round
our new line, which was by this time in good order, and the spear-head
had again been pushed a mile or two nearer the Promised Land. It was at
Salmana we received instructions issued by G.H.Q. and carefully passed
on to battalions by the intermediate staffs to report immediately all
submarines observed, stating time and direction proceeding. This put us
on our mettle and the desert was carefully watched without success on
our part, but a neighbouring unit was able to report a submarine moving
north across Sabkhet Bardawil. The information was acknowledged with
thanks and it was then stated we could relax our vigilance as the
message was only for troops on the sea-coast.
On the 3rd of November the first heavy storm descended on us, sheets of
rain with thunder and lightning. The only protection against this new,
but henceforward all too common form of Sinaitic frightfulness, was the
blanket bivouac, and a blanket thoroughly soaked by the deluge was a
poor covering for the now chilly nights. Fortunately the storms were
usually succeeded by sunshine, and if they came in the earlier part of
the day there was a chance of things being dried again before dusk. If
they came at night you could always look forward to the day.
The Battalion remained in the Salmana area, with several changes of
camp, until November 21st, when it returned to el Abd with the 7th
H.L.I, to take over the defences of that place, by now a railway depot
of some importance. Local defences of all important points along the
railway had always to be carefully maintained. There would be plenty of
warning of a strong attack from the east as there had been in August.
But a raid by men mounted on camels might have come unheralded from the
south, and had such a raid succeeded in cutting the line, burning the
stores, and wasting the water, say at el Abd, the British advance would
have been greatly retarded. We therefore continued our nocturnal vigils
on the ridges which encircled the station. The nights were now extremely
chilly, but the flies had not yet succumbed. They swarmed everywhere,
and the discovery of a dead camel an inch or two under the sand in "A"
Company's bivouac area rejoiced their pestilential hearts. It is the
immemorial custom of the desert not to bury dead camels or horses but to
let them lie. Then you know where you are and the sun soon cooks the
carcases till they become inoffensive. This is, however, repugnant to
the tidy minds of European sanitary experts, who give orders for the
burial of the deceased. The wiser Egyptian is overruled and has to do
the burying. Now it takes a simply monstrous hole to hold a camel, and
the result of the clash of English and Egyptian ideas is a very
imperfectly buried carcase, just covered from the beneficent influence
of the sun, but filling the surrounding air with its disgusting aroma.
It was during this second stay at Bir el Abd that the Bint joined
us--rescued for fifty piastres from the unworthy hands of a Port Said
native by Lieut. Agnew. It was always a matter of surprise to the
present writer that so many failed to pierce the bizarre exterior of
this amiable ape and to reach to the warm heart and sweet temper within.
Perhaps a certain savagery of attack and brutality in the use of the
teeth misled them. But what affectionate solicitude would she display
as she minutely examined every inch of a human friend in an effort to
exterminate those little typhoid carriers. What courage when she entered
the tent of a General at el Arish and helped herself to a drink from the
great one's basin. With what élan did she consequently rout a
scandalised A.D.C. and with what skill, giving ground before
reinforcements from the staff, did she fly up the biggest palm tree in
the sacred enclosure. With what fortitude did she share our hard times
when water was scarce or rations late. How sweetly, in a French billet,
did she accept the offerings of the children--and how natural her
ferocious attack on these same children after she had been extremely
sick as a result of a mixed diet of chocolate and cherries to which they
had tempted her. And did she not suffer indignities enough to sour the
sweetest disposition. Think of being tied to the saddle of a huge and
smelly camel, whose gait made her sea-sick, for a long day's marching.
No wonder her piteous screams rent the air. And then when someone had
loosed her from this uncomfortable eminence--think how cruel it must
have seemed to her that friend after friend, sweating along in the sand,
should repulse with evil words her amiable desire to add herself to the
weight of pack and equipment for a ride on his shoulder, till she was
forced to give in and hop along "on her own steam" in the hot dust. She
did not always remain a front line monkey, but with the transport she
went through all the fighting in Palestine and then accompanied the
Battalion to France. At last, bereft successively by the chances of war
of all her best friends, she somehow drifted to Glasgow and is now
believed to be living in a travelling menagerie. We can only hope that
she wears the war medal she has earned and is treated with proper
respect, and we are confident that she still lives up to her great
motto--_Nemo me impune lacessit_.
All this time there was no drain of casualties, and remarkably little
sickness. Inoculations were frequent and to judge by results very
successful. Cholera inoculation was the mildest, typhoid or paratyphoid
sometimes gave sore arms and headaches, tetanus only the wounded
received and it was far the worst of the lot, but any one who has seen a
man die of tetanus is not likely to complain. On an inoculation day the
doctor had his chance, and we tried to establish cordial relations with
the medical department as soon as orders for the débacle appeared. The
ceremony was always the same. The men were paraded by companies with
their pay books, and shepherded into alphabetical order. Officers went
first, in order, as they thought, to set the men a good example, and as
the men thought, not to have to stand waiting in the sun. At the tent
door--for a tent was usually borrowed from somewhere to give decency and
privacy to the rites--an acolyte dabbed a large yellow patch of iodine
on the victim's arm. Moving into the superheated shrine, he assisted
Sergt. Lyon to tick off his name on the nominal roll, and then
approached the M.O. Some doctors were bland and cheerful, others
humorous, others strictly businesslike, but they all knew that this was
their chance to pay off old scores. By using the sharp needle or the
blunt one, and varying the angle of the stick in, they could adapt their
onslaught to their personal opinion of the victim, and as a final insult
in very bad cases, could observe as they pushed it home, "What a thick
skin you have got."
Constant small drafts had increased our strength and the Battalion
numbered about 30 officers and 800 other ranks when it was relieved by
part of the 54th Division and started on a further advance to the east.
These perpetual moves were far more complicated than the ordinary shifts
from reserve to trenches in France, where convenient dumps and exchanges
of tools and ammunition with the relieved troops, greatly decreased the
labour, while wheeled transport and motor lorries enabled one to retain
many of the appliances of civilised life. The soldier on service, even
in a desert, has a wonderful way of acquiring possessions, and every
time we moved we were faced with the total loss of our dearest
treasures. A heavy parcel mail usually arrived the day before, and we
had to overeat ourselves or dump. Each company mess cherished a few bits
of straw matting and some poles, found or stolen, with which they rigged
up a precarious shelter wherein to eat their meals, sitting in state on
sand-bag seats at a table of sand covered with a waterproof sheet. Must
these be abandoned and the bereaved officers feed in the open? A
thousand times no. But there were no extra camels--the company camel
would already be over-weighted by the mess box and X.'s valise--with its
extra blanket and extravagant under-clothing. Great would be the
searchings of heart. Still everything always came right in the end--the
Brigade sent us some "buckshee" camels at the eleventh hour, or at worst
we got permission to send some stuff by train, when it could be
delivered in due course somewhere within reach. Something always did
have to go by train anyway, for we had now a second blanket per man, and
there were not enough camels to carry these, so that round about a move
the men had a succession of cold nights, after the second blanket had
gone on, before it could be brought up to the new area.
[Illustration: CAMEL LINES, EL ARISH.]
Long before dawn on a "mobile" day we would rise in the chilly dark--it
was still worse if we were on outpost to boot--and raucous voices would
be heard bidding "No. 3 Platoon, hurry up with those blankets," or "No.
12, fall in for water issue." The blankets carried by camels had to be
rolled lengthways in bundles of ten, and the rolls were then tied on to
the camel saddle, where the outer ones brushed the flanks of that smelly
and freely perspiring creature. Breakfast would be issued--a half
canteen of tea and a bit of ham, taken delicately from the fingers of
the orderly man, as he fished it out from the dixie lid--a small enough
bit it was, too, most mornings. One orderly officer still remembers the
impassioned complaint of a hungry soldier who "wouldn't insult his
youngest child by offering it a meal of that size." And how these
wonderful people, the orderly men, ever managed to divide up their
meagre supply to a ravening company before daylight, when half the men
were engaged on various fatigues--no one but themselves can tell. Then a
hasty loading of camels, and putting on of equipment, and we would fall
in as the day began to break. Company parade and a wait, a move to
battalion parade and a wait, then to Brigade rendezvous if the whole
Brigade were on the move, and another wait, till the pack seemed
dragging at the shoulders like a living thing before the regularly
divided hours of march and halt began. The sun came up and it grew hot,
and at a convenient halt the men would remove the cardigan they had put
on in the shivery hours of darkness. Hotter and hotter but not so
thirsty these days, for we were more acclimatised and this was winter.
At last a call for company commanders and they would ride forward to get
the bivouac areas allotted to them--for these things were arranged
beforehand now--we did not sit and grill in the sun while the Staff
dealt with the question. On arrival platoon commanders got their areas
from the company commander, and explained to their men that they might
bivouac "between that clump of scrub and that mound." Arms piled,
equipment taken off, a rush for the most desirable sites, fatigue
parties detailed to unload, and the cooks set to work to produce tea or
heat the Maconochies. Hard words over a missing roll of blankets, bitter
complaints at the loss of someone's bivouac pole, arguments between the
loading party and the escort who "had had to reload six camels by the
way," a little digging of trenches for the night outposts--and so ends
another dull day with the same business often to be repeated on the
morrow.
On December 4th we moved forward again to Salmana, three days later to
Abu Tilul, and the next day to Bir el Mazar, twenty-five miles west of
el Arish. Part of these mobiles lay over Sabkhet, where it was possible
to keep step and the pipers attached to each company could amaze the
desert rats with alien music. The hard work fell on the flank guards,
who had to move over heavy sand and to keep up with the column rejoicing
in the better going, and putting on the pace accordingly. The sun at
this time of the year was not so fierce that balmorals could not be worn
with safety all day, but sun helmets were still retained, and had to be
worn whenever we moved, there being no other way of carrying them. We
were allowed a good deal of latitude in the matter of the tunic and a
man might choose whether he would increase the warmth of his body by
wearing it, or the load on his back by putting it in his pack. Water
sterilisers were part of each man's kit--in order that in the event of
his having to drink unauthorised well water he should be able to kill
off some of the more ferocious bacilli likely to be found therein. They
were contained in glass bottles, which were easily broken in the pack,
and the little tablets, especially when damp, showed the most
extraordinary power of eating holes in the kit, and even of making their
way through the pack itself, till it looked as if it had been partially
burnt. As damaged articles could not be quickly replaced, a ragged pack
often added to the bizarre aspect of the British soldier, with his
dew-whitened helmet, squashed out of all decent shape, shirt of varied
hue rolled back from sunburnt chest and arms usually marked by a dirty
white bandage or two, drill shorts stained, blackened and often torn,
bare knees, puttees and rather disreputable boots. It is said that
General Allenby when he took over the E.E.F. was much shocked at the
sartorial appearance of the infantry. We must indeed have afforded a sad
contrast to the cavalry in France, but the conditions of life certainly
did not lend themselves to spit and polish.
Of El Mazar there is little to record. The country was getting more and
more hilly, the sand ridges running roughly parallel N.W. to S.E. On the
western side they presented long gentle slopes, very trying to scale,
while on the eastern they fell sharply into the succeeding valley, so
that the well-earned down hill was over in a minute of scrambling over
the boot tops in a cascade of sand. Camels could only take these steep
slopes at an angle, and it was often very difficult to get them and the
Lewis gun pack mules along. The night we arrived at Mazar was memorable
on account of our divisional pipe band and the band of the 42nd Division
both playing at the same time during mess at their respective
headquarters which were a very short distance apart and both only about
a mile in rear of the outpost line. A few nights previous Brigade
Headquarters issued an order that all nocturnal noises must be
immediately reported and steps taken to stop such noise. This probably
referred to the camel drivers who had a habit of singing native chants
far into the night and consequently disturbed the rest of those who
wished to sleep. However, this opportunity could not be missed. The C.O.
drafted a message which was at once signalled to Brigade Headquarters as
follows: "Listening Post reports nocturnal noises vicinity of Division
Headquarters. What action is to be taken?" The Brigade reply which
arrived a few minutes later was very brief and pointed; it ran, "Put the
cork in the bottle."
All thought now centred on the taking of el Arish, some twenty-five
miles further east, and well protected by Turkish trenches cleverly
revetted with scrub, and dress rehearsals were held in which the whole
force took part, and which meant a good deal of heavy marching. Between
Mazar and el Arish lay a big belt of country where water could not be
obtained even by well digging, so that not only men but camels and
horses had to be watered from supplies brought up by rail and stored in
great canvas covered tanks. The provision of a sufficient quantity to
supply the force for a number of days was thus the condition of a
successful advance. On December 16th we moved forward to el Maadan, Kilo
128 on the railway, a march of twelve miles, which owing to the
difficult country Colonel Morrison noted as "probably the most fatiguing
the Battalion has yet undertaken." Here the outpost line was held by the
42nd Division and we were engaged on digging and road making. The latter
operation consisted in cutting scrub and flattening out a track at a
reasonable gradient. On this long rows of ordinary rabbit wire netting
were pegged down four abreast and the result was a "road" which very
greatly increased the pace and extent of infantry marching. The wire
prevented a man from sinking into the sand and was comfortable enough to
walk on, if one was careful not to catch one's toes. Unfortunately these
roads followed and did not precede the force, and the 52nd Division
usually formed the leading infantry, with the result that the Battalion
never had the advantage of them for a "mobile" until after el Arish was
passed, and then only for a few miles.
On December 20th we moved to Kilo 129 and took over a bit of the outpost
line from the 6th Manchesters and that evening we occupied the trenches
in orderly silence as usual. Sentry groups were put out, rifles loaded
and all hope of a smoke put away till the dawn. As darkness fell,
however, there appeared from the westward a great cloud of dust and
columns of mounted men, and Horse Artillery, their gun-wheels broadened
with pedrails, moved through our line and proceeded to camp immediately
in front of our silent and alert sentries. They off-saddled and huge
fires sprang up like magic, great columns of tired horses moved
backwards and forwards to water, and the air was filled with the
cheerful din of Australian talk and song. Rumours had been floating
about all day that the Turks were evacuating and the sudden arrival of
the cavalry left little doubt as to their truth. The pressing problem
for the officer was how to explain to his scandalised men that the
Anzacs were not violating all the rules of properly conducted warfare.
This was done by postulating far flung cavalry outposts in the dim
distance. One has often wondered whether they existed except in our
imaginations; but the Anzac likes to conduct war in his own way, and if
somewhat casual about details, many a Turk will witness that he has a
firm grasp on the essentials. We felt justified in relaxing somewhat our
usual vigilance and spent a peaceful night. Long before dawn, however,
the cavalry had moved off with uncanny speed and quietness, and
surrounded el Arish before daylight, after a brilliant ride over
unknown, unmapped, and very difficult country in the dark. Within the
next few days they attacked the Turks at Maghdaba and Rafa--each thirty
miles from el Arish--inflicting heavy defeats and capturing many
prisoners in each case. The story of all this has been well told by Mr.
Massy in _The Desert Campaigns_. But the unhappy infantry had of
necessity to be left out.
One great service the cavalry invasion did render us. The Australian
light horseman has the bump of acquisitiveness even better developed
than the Lowland infantryman, and having a horse on which he can hang
his trophies he can give this penchant greater scope. But when he is
going into action--or believes himself to be--he unhesitatingly
sacrifices all that will incommode him in the serious business of war.
In consequence the ground recently vacated appeared at dawn to our
astonished eyes covered with a litter of discarded possessions. When
_we_ moved camp it was our honourable custom to pick up and burn or bury
every tin, every fragment of paper and every match and cigarette end and
to leave the desert swept and garnished as we found it--or better. So
our first thought was one of scandalised amazement at the extreme
untidiness of the business. Our next was less disinterested. We were on
mobile rations, bully, biscuit, milk and jam. Vegetables and the "wee
piece ham" had disappeared. Surely Australians did not live like that.
Nor were we disappointed. Foraging parties returned laden with sides of
bacon, cheese, bread, Maconochies, sacks of onions and dessicated
vegetables, enough to make us quite certain of a full meal on Christmas
Day, so long as we did not move in the interval. Nor was this all.
Folding benches and tables, matting and bivouac poles, frying pans and
canvas buckets, books and tobacco, a watch and even a real live horse
were discovered--all the things which stand for wealth among such a
primitive tribe as we then were. It is rumoured that hot and blasphemous
Australian Quartermaster-Sergeants rode back that evening to retrieve
some of their property. Well, they did not find it all. People who like
bacon shouldn't leave it lying in deserts in front of hungry Scotchmen.
Our own orders to advance were cancelled, and we stopped on at Maadan.
The evacuation of el Arish was rather an anti-climax. No one wants
another war, and it would not be honest to pretend that we were all
fire-eaters living for nothing but the joy of a scrap. At the same time
a life of dreary monotony on a dead land becomes more endurable when
there is the hope of coming excitement and the spur to effort of a
definite place to be won. And when a man is keyed up to the idea of a
fight, life seems dull and flat if he is suddenly told that it will not
come off.
The weather, however, did its best to give us something to think about.
It rained most nights, with thunder and lightning accompaniments, and
the damp and dismal hours of darkness seemed endless in the exposed
picquets. Save for the Australian loot it looked like a fasting
Christmas. Parcel mails could not be sent up, for every camel was
required to convey food and fodder on to the cavalry. The cigarette
ration was behindhand and most of the men were without a smoke. The
officers could torture themselves with the thought of five turkeys
ordered in Port Said and unlimited mess stores lying sixty miles away at
Romani. But at the last moment all was changed. A parcel mail came
in--and the spectre of bully unrelieved vanished--the five turkeys,
personally conducted by a versatile officer's servant, made their
appearance--together with sufficient _Daily Telegraph_ plum puddings for
every one to get a piece, and last but not least, a determined Brigadier
held up a ration convoy, and refused to let it through until he obtained
enough cigarettes for a small issue to the Brigade. This action
increased the sympathy which all felt for a tragedy which afflicted
Brigade Headquarters at this time. Their live turkey shepherded up the
line with extreme difficulty, suddenly, though perhaps not
unjustifiably, died before any one had time to kill it. Captain Kennedy
was immediately summoned to conduct a post mortem and had regretfully to
decide that it was not fit for human consumption, adding however that if
it were sent up to our headquarters they would make quite sure.
So there was some attempt at Christmas cheer in the holes in the sand
into which the weather had driven us, for we who had once set our
bivouacs to catch every breath of wind, now dug ourselves down three or
four feet to avoid the sand-laden and icy blast. (We were thus also
admirably protected against the bombing raids of the Turk's aeroplanes.)
The three outpost companies had their vigil cheered by the distant drums
and fifes of an English battalion playing "While shepherds watched their
flocks by night--all seated on the ground," and felt a new and poignant
sympathy with those whose watch must have been so like our own.
The great spell of Christmas seemed even to have touched the hearts of
G.H.Q. for on Christmas Eve the C.O. received a wire through Brigade
to ask "How many of your officers have wives in Egypt?" He was compelled
to reply that no officer had managed the feat suggested. But it is nice
to speculate on how the staff in Cairo, who doubtless had, felt their
hearts go out to their less fortunate brethren of the fighting forces
and how they hatched a plan for special private wires from wife to
husband at this season of goodwill. Let no cynic obtrude other motives
for that famous telegram.
[Illustration: BAGGAGE CAMELS ON SHORE NEAR EL ARISH.]
On December 29th we moved forward again to Kilo 139, near Abu Feleifil.
We left behind us Captain Wightman as Post Commandant at Kilo 128, a
position which he held with true Scottish tenacity long after the whole
post had melted away, and he had no one to command except his batman,
another of the same bull-dog breed. He only admitted defeat when the
last of the water in the canvas tanks was consumed, and the passing
ration train had given up leaving anything for him to eat, and steamed
past the forgotten post with a derisive whistle. At 139 we enjoyed heavy
rain storms, bleak cold days, and a tearing wind; which raised a
sand-storm as soon as the rain had sunk in. We were, however, free of
outpost duty on the 31st and able to take off our boots at night for the
first time for a fortnight, and a surprising number of us were able to
celebrate the new year with a nip of something better than chlorinated
water. On the 5th we took the outpost line again, but in the interval we
did several route marches and saw the excellent Turkish trenches at
Masaid among palm trees, growing scattered over a wide area, quite
unlike the little concentrated hods with which we were familiar. We were
now only a mile or two from the sea, and the roar of the surf reached us
day and night, but bathing had lost much of its attraction with the
change of weather and was even rather dangerous. On one day the
sand-storm was so bad that it was impossible to leave camp. Anything
left in the open was rapidly buried, and our food and drink, our ears
and eyes and mouths were kept full of grit for twenty-four hours.
On January 8th we were off again and moving down to the coast, marched
on to el Arish. The going was naturally very heavy, but we thus avoided
the almost impassable jumble of high sand-dunes inland. On that day the
Anzac cavalry passed us on their way to fight at Rafa, riding down the
beach in long lines, and making a very impressive sight. The effect was
rather spoilt by the inconsiderate attentions of some Turkish planes but
no harm was done. We reached our bivouac area south of el Arish about
two. It is a curious commentary on the complaints of the cold that we
have just voiced, that the men of a new draft reached el Arish, running
with sweat and vowing they had never been so hot in their lives, in
spite of being in shirt sleeves, while the rest of us wore our tunics,
and were hardly even thirsty.