5th Great Britain. Army. Highland Light Infantry. Battalion

“ MOUTH OF WADI EL ARISH.
But in Brigade night operations platoon commanders and even company commanders and greater men still abandon themselves with the rest to an appalling nightmare of moving in sudden jerks through a gloom full of whispered oaths and the creaking of rifles and of ill-fitting equipment. There are long chilly halts, when the men rub their bare knees to keep them warm or drop into an uneasy doze—then sudden orders passed along in a hoarse undertone, and a frenzied effort to change formation and keep touch with the swaying line. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was bitterly cold for bare knees and drill shorts. Several times the curious high-pitched cries with which the Turkish outpost keeps up his courage or reports his whereabouts issued from the darkness in front, but there were no developments, and about 11.30 p.m. unmistakable sounds from the rear announced the fact that the Brigade had arrived. How it was that the Turk did not also hear the inevitable disturbance caused by the arrival of some thousands of men, tool limbers, mules and camels, in utter darkness over unfamiliar and very rough country, will always be a mystery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They subsequently confessed to certain qualms when, themselves about 100 yards from the hedge, they perceived, through a gap, the glowing end of a cigarette, slowly waxing and waning as an undisciplined Turk, disobeying all the rules of war, solaced his vigil with tobacco. The escape of a single infidel from the garden, or even his noisy decease, would have given away the whole business, and they were much relieved when some careful stalking revealed nothing more alarming than an inconsiderate fire-fly slowly moving its wings across its luminous body. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For twenty hours those men, in their tropical kit, endured the enemy's sniping and machine-gun firing, and the bitter cold and hunger and misery, hearing in the early morning the wind-borne chimes of the chapel bell in Kubeibeh calling the brothers to matins, until dawn found many of them unable to speak. During the night a squadron patrol of Hyderabad Lancers rode across the hills from the 75th Division into our lines, a truly wonderful feat across unknown country held by the enemy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our progress was frequently interrupted by flares sent up from the trenches somewhere in front. To our inexperienced eyes it seemed that the lights were very near us, for they showed up vividly the whole ground over which we were moving, every little clump of scrub standing out sharp and distinct as in the glare of a powerful searchlight. From repeated study of Notes on Trench Warfare in France, we had become permeated with the theory that where one's presence is revealed by a flare, safety from rifle or machine gun fire is only to be attained by lying down and remaining perfectly motionless. ”

“ Such sights as the withered hand of a Turk sticking out from the parapet of a communication trench, or the boots of a hastily buried soldier projecting from his shallow grave, produce on one's first experience of them an emotion of inexpressible horror. ”

“ Sometimes the maddened beasts broke away and galloped off, shedding their precious burdens as they went, determined—as one of the men observed—"to finish this —— mobile in clean fatigue." The other half of our live stock, the pack mules, who are impervious to fear, but possessed of seventy devils of contrariance and misplaced humour, on the excuse of the near proximity of their bête noire, the camel, indulged in their most violent antics, kicked, jibbed or bolted, blocking the track and causing a halt which had to be followed by a wild sprint to regain touch. ”

“ The camels were tired too, and a tired camel stretches its long neck down to the dust. Then comes an angry private and falls over the neck in the dark and camels and men hate each other, each giving audible expression to their emotions after their kind.
We waked at dawn on the 26th to the noise of heavy firing in the north, and found a green and pleasant world blanketed in mist. The 53rd and 54th Divisions, with the cavalry, were attacking Gaza and this mist, the despatches afterwards told us, just prevented their complete success. ”

“ Leave to Cairo brought a most welcome change to those fortunate enough to get it, while the remainder could console themselves with football and bathing, and the Brigade and Divisional "stunts" kept us fit and healthy. Those whose duty brought them into connection with the camels had their fill of excitement, and one still recalls a picture of an infuriated camel chasing all and sundry round the camp, with a fantassy on one side of its pack and a company storeman, who had mounted to preserve the balance, uttering lamentable cries on the other. ”

“ The retreating enemy had made a thorough job of the cross-roads, and guns and transport had to make wide detours. But before we arrived the civilians were busy, some with shovels, others with their hands, filling in the enormous craters. The people seemed to be dazed with excitement. The sudden relief after four years of misery proved too much for one poor woman, who in her sheer joy lost the kindly light of reason. We halted for a few hours at Chene Raoul, but time was precious, and by night we were in comfortable billets across the Belgian border. ”

“ He had trained us in Scotland before and after the outbreak of war; he had commanded us in Gallipoli and in the desert. His love of his Battalion had kept him from going on home leave, and now, after having brought us through the never to be forgotten advance from Gaza to the Auja, and having been in the last engagement of any consequence we had in Palestine, the rigours of the campaign had killed him. One lost many friends and gallant soldiers in the course of the campaign, but the blank left by the death of our honoured Colonel seemed different to all others. ”

“ It was still more trying to look on the unburied dead lying in groups in front of the parapet; and further away, near the Turkish lines, the bodies of so many of the Scottish Rifles who had been swept down by concealed machine-guns only a week before in their gallant attempt to advance without artillery support.
It is well that this acuteness of feeling soon becomes blunted. One quickly learns to regard such things as an inevitable aspect of one's everyday environment. Thank God for this; life in the trenches would otherwise be unbearable. ”

“ 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 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? ”

“ During all this time the various Beaches and Rest Camps were regularly shelled by the enemy's heavy guns on the reverse slopes of Achi Baba and—with even deadlier effect—from the Asiatic coast. The beaches and the roads leading to them over the ridge received most of this unpleasant attention. We used to watch the big shells bursting over the cliffs and wonder how life could be possible on the beaches below. Many tales reached us of casualties in the administrative and non-combatant services whose work lay there, and many of the marvellous escapes of individuals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nothing tries troops like fighting in pitch blackness. Every man is a law unto himself and the only things that tell are grit and discipline. The Battalion might be weary and footsore, hungry and tired, battle-weary and nerve-wrecked, yet the men always had that little reserve of heart left which lifted them through the most trying day or the most deadly night. ”