CHAPTER II. "somewhere East of Suez..."

"SOMEWHERE EAST OF SUEZ..."

If you look at the map of Egypt and follow the line of the Suez Canal to its southernmost point, then continue a little down the Eastern shores of the Gulf of Suez, you will see--if the map be a good one--the words "Ayun Musa," which being interpreted mean: "The Wells of Moses."

Now let your finger continue its journey due east, pausing not for mountains nor yet rivers, and it will inevitably arrive at a spot the name of which is variously spelt Nekhl, Nakhl or Nukul.

Concentrate on this for a moment and you will see that in enemy hands it formed a very effective jumping-off place for an attack on the southern terminus of the most important commercial waterway in the world and a vital artery of the British Empire. Moreover, it was very difficult of attack, for it was defended by a range of exceedingly unpleasant and precipitous hills, the passes through which were held by the Turks. Hence the agitation of the authorities and the sudden importance of Ayun Musa as a defensive barrier to Suez.

It was to this lonely spot that we were ordered to proceed with the least possible delay. Having collected all the stores and camp equipment we could lay hands on, and after the usual circus in entraining the horses, we started for Suez. Incidentally, this was the last time we boarded a train as a complete unit for more than two years.

With Suez the last vestige of green was left behind us, and turning south after crossing the canal we entered upon that vast desert trodden by the Israelites thousands of years ago when they fled from the persecuting hand of Pharaoh.

It is to be admitted that we failed to observe, till later, the undoubted grandeur of the scene, for we were mainly concerned with getting our guns and overloaded vehicles along. Time after time they sank almost up to the axle-trees in the heavy sand and time after time did the sweating horses pull them out and struggle on again. One G.S. waggon, laden till it resembled a pantechnicon, was soon in dire straits. Originally starting with a six-horse team it acquired on the journey first one extra pair, then another--with a spare man mounted on each of the off-horses--and finally arrived in camp at the gallop with twelve horses and eight drivers.

Nobody saw anything funny in it. When you are dog-tired, hungry, and, worse still, when you arrive after dark in a new camp, nothing short of a cold chisel can gouge humour out of anything. All you want is a large and satisfying meal, after which your blankets.

In the morning we found that our usual fate had overtaken us: we were again pioneers in a new land. There it was, just our allotted square on the map, as flat and bare as a billiard-table.

Yet the country was not unimpressive. A thousand yards away to our right were the tamarisks of Moses' Grove, the only spot of verdure in sight; far in our rear and to our left ran range upon range of low, even-topped hills of unimaginable barrenness, the approach to which lay over a vast plain, broken by innumerable smaller hills, grand in its utter desolation; and in front of us stretched a level, shimmering expanse of sand as far as the silvery ribbon of the Gulf of Suez, beyond which, and dominating the whole scene, the gaunt, black mass of Gebel Atakah (Mountain of Deliverance) thrust its mighty pinnacle into the sky.

Such was the place destined to be our home for six torrid months; and we had to transform it into a fortified camp! Small wonder that we quailed at the prospect of work more punishing than any we had yet known, for literally everything had to be done; we had what we managed to bring with us, and that was all.

There followed days of unremitting toil. We turned our attention to road-making and with bowed backs and blistered hands shovelled up half the desert and put it down somewhere else; the other half we put into sandbags and made gun pits of them. We dug places for the artificers, kitchens for the cooks, walled-in places for forage, and but for the timely arrival of a battalion of Indian infantry we should have dug the trenches round the camp; we were mercifully spared that, however.

By way of a change we dug holes: big holes, little holes, round holes, square holes, rectangular holes; holes for refuse; wide, deep holes for washing-pits; every kind of hole you can think of and many you can't.

We never discovered for what purpose most of these holes were dug, but we dug them; and as a special treat we were allowed to dig an extra big hole, lined and roofed with sandbags, wherein to hide two hundred thousand rounds of S.A. ammunition lest the Turks in a moment of aberration should drop a bomb on it. All this in a temperature of over 100 deg. in the shade at nine o'clock in the morning!

For summer was leaping towards us with giant strides, and it was one the like of which Egypt had not known for seventy-five years. Day by day the sun waxed stronger until work became a torture unspeakable and hardly to be borne. With the slightest exertion the perspiration ran in rivulets from face and finger-tips; clothes became saturated and clung like a glove to our dripping bodies; and if a man stood for a time in one place the sand around was sodden with his sweat.

Then, too, we had the usual difficulty about drinking water, for there was none in the camp. The Wells of Moses, twelve in number, were brackish and only fit for the horses.

Consequently every drop had to be brought from the Quarantine Station, three miles away, on the shores of the Gulf of Suez; and twice daily did the water-cart plough a laborious way through the sand. I think it was the very worst water we ever had, all but undrinkable, in fact. It was so heavily chlorinated and nauseous that one drank it as medicine. It tasted the tea, it spoilt the lime-juice, and even the onions failed to disguise it in the daily stew.

Fortunately there was washing-water in abundance, as we quickly discovered in our digging operations. Two or three feet down the sand was quite moist, and if the hole was left for a time, brackish water percolated through in sufficient quantities for a bath. It was the daily custom, after evening-stables, to rush across to the washing-pits, peel off our saturated clothes and stand in pairs, back to back, while a comrade poured bucket after bucket of water over our perspiring bodies until we were cool enough to put on a change of clothes.

And how we revelled in it! It was one of the few alleviations of those torrid, arduous days. You who dwell in temperate climes, with water--hot and cold--at a hand's turn, will perhaps accuse me of labouring the point. I cannot help it; no words of mine can express what it meant to have that clean feeling just for an hour or two. It was ineffable luxury; it helped us to endure.

For there were other things to add to our daily burden.

You will doubtless remember the Plagues of Egypt.... At least three of these survived at Ayun Musa to harass, thousands of years later, unfortunate soldiers who were trying to win a war. We had lice, boils and blains, and flies--particularly and perpetually, flies.

The first-named were not so terrible, for as wood was fairly plentiful we soon made rough beds and thus kept our clothes and blankets off the sand.

The second and third caused the medical authorities in the East more trouble and anxious experiment than all the other diseases put together.

The slightest scratch turned septic. It was the rule rather than the exception for units in the desert to have 50 per cent. of their strength under treatment for septic sores. There was no help for it; active service is a messy business at best. It was appallingly difficult to give adequate treatment. Sand would get into the wound; if it were cleansed and covered up, the dry, healing air of the desert had no chance; if it were left open the flies made a bivouac of it--and the result can be imagined!

There were men who were never without a bandage on some part of their person for months on end, and it was a common sight to see a man going about his daily work literally swathed in bandages. It was not until we had advanced well into Palestine, where there was fruit in abundance, that this plague diminished and was in some measure overcome.

But infinitely worse than any other was the plague of flies. When we arrived at Ayun Musa there was not a fly to be seen. Within a week you would have thought that all the flies in the universe had congregated about us. They were everywhere. Did you leave your tea uncovered for a minute the flies around you hastened to drown themselves in it! And as for jam! Successfully to eat a slice of bread and jam was a feat, and one requiring careful preparation. You had to make a tunnel of one hand, wave the required mouthful about with the other for a few seconds in order to disturb the flies on it, then pass it quickly through the tunnel and into the mouth before they could settle again. One man nailed a piece of mosquito-netting to the front of the mess table and with himself as the pole made a kind of tent, so as to eat his food in comfort.

But meal-times were among the minor evils; it was in the tents, during the hours when we could do no work, that we suffered most. Rest was impossible. The mere touch of clothing was almost unbearable in the heat, but it was better to swathe the head in a fly-net and roll a blanket round the outlying portions of the body, than to strip to the buff and lie exposed to the attacks of those damnable flies.

It is no light thing that sends a strong man into hysterics or drives one sobbing from his tent, to rush about the camp in a frenzy of wild rage. Yet the flies did this--and more; they were carriers of disease. Behind the clouds of flies lurked always the grim spectre of dysentery; and of all our troubles perhaps this is the best known to the people at home. The Mesopotamian Commission ventilated it so thoroughly that there is no need to pile on the agony here. One may say, however, that the sufferings of the men in Egypt from this terrible disease were, certainly in somewhat less degree, those of their comrades farther east. And we will let it go at that.

Meanwhile, what of the Turks? During the six weeks we spent putting the camp into a state of defence they kindly refrained from annoying us, and beyond an occasional encounter with our patrols and a false alarm or two, nothing occurred to disturb the even tenor of our digging. When we had finished this strenuous pursuit, every ten days or so flying columns were organised to look for them and, if possible, drive them out of their rocky fastnesses thirty miles away.

One of the few vulnerable points in these hills was the Raha Pass and incredibly difficult it was even to approach. The joys of trekking over the sandy desert we knew, the desert in the rainy season we knew, but they were as nothing compared with the rocky desert of Sinai. Not only was there the deep sand to contend with but one had to climb hills and descend valleys covered with huge boulders. It was a creditable feat merely to get over the ground at all; manoeuvring was out of the question.

An eight-horse team could with difficulty pull a gun and its limber over fairly level ground; frequently twelve horses were required and sometimes as many as sixteen! And it was really wonderful to see them intelligently thrusting all their weight on the breast-collars, heaving and straining to get their load over a nasty place. These were the days, too, when the heat whipped off the rocks in waves and the sun's rays beat upon the back like strokes from a flail; when it was impossible to march during the noontide hours and one crawled under the limbers for shelter; and when a man looked longingly at his water-bottle, even though the water therein was almost boiling.

For the most part these flying columns drew blank. Rarely did the Turks and their Bedouin allies come out and fight, but confined themselves to sniping and harassing our cavalry-patrols at night. Every day these would return to camp bearing the body of a comrade, killed without seeing the hand that killed him; and once, saddest of all, two riderless horses, famished and almost mad with thirst, dashed up to the watering-troughs in camp. Their riders were never found.

We had to wait long weeks before our chance came. (Even then it came only just in time, for we left Ayun Musa for good the following day.)

It was rather a curious affair. The solution to the whole question lay in our being able to get the guns to the top of a certain hill commanding the Raha Pass. If this could be accomplished things would be very warm indeed for the people in the Pass.

It took twenty-six horses to pull the gun to the top of that hill! The rest was easy; almost too easy. The Turks had no heavy artillery, so we sat about in the open smoking and watching our guns shell them out of their holes into the arms of the Indian infantry, who went forward with a pleased smile to receive them.

But the urgent need in those days of the army in the East was aircraft; fast, modern machines, that is. There was a lamentable lack of anything that could go near the Fokker or Taube; the men were willing, but the machines were woefully weak. Almost with impunity the Turks came over and bombed the camps in the area; the one at El Shatt always received particular attention, possibly on account of its proximity to Suez, more probably because it was the largest and most strongly-fortified camp in the vicinity. Suez itself was attacked many times, as might have been expected, both on account of its immense oil-tanks and its position as the southern entrance to the Canal. Curiously enough, Turkish aircraft never troubled us much at Ayun Musa, though of course there was the usual "wind-up."

As a start we were ordered to convert our eighteen pounders into anti-aircraft guns. This meant digging pits with a weird kind of platform in the middle; this was for the reception of the gun-wheels alone. The trail was thus left free, which enabled the gun to be tilted sufficiently for high-angle fire. We never did fire at any aircraft from these pits; they looked very nice, however.

Nor did this finish the business. About this time the word "camouflage" appeared in the East and curiously enough, synchronising with its arrival, the mandate went forth that our tents were to be camouflaged. Now the army is a very wonderful place for teaching one to make bricks without straw, but if the other materials are lacking----?

Matters were at a deadlock till a bright lad suggested that there might be a little desert-scrub about if we looked for it. He was quite right; there was a little, a very little. About one bush to the half-mile was the average, and usually under a boulder at that. Every morning we rode forth and scoured the desert for that elusive scrub. As we had, by the process known in the army as "wangling," acquired sufficient tents and marquees for a battalion, there was a large quantity to find. Ultimately, after weeks of searching, we obtained enough, and to stimulate keenness, a prize was then offered for the best camouflaged tent. The winners' was really a very beautiful affair, but apparently the honour--or the scrub--was too much for the tent, for it collapsed during the night.

Shortly after this we had a further insight into the infinite possibilities of the desert. For a fortnight it had been intolerably hot, and rarely was the noon temperature below 120 deg. in the shade. No work was done between the hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., except at midday when the horses were watered and fed; and we loathed the whistle that summoned us from our tents into the blinding sunlight to perform this duty, necessary though we knew it to be. We literally prayed for the night and the cool breeze from the sea. The Mountain of Deliverance was in truth a symbol to us; for as we watched the sun sink slowly behind its sheltering bulk we knew that another day was done. We wondered wearily what this devastating heat could mean; it was like nothing in our experience.

One evening the whole sky was aflame with lurid light and we missed the revivifying breeze. In its place came a hot wind from the south-east, and although the sun was setting we could feel the sickly heat increasing momentarily. Presently, far over the eastern desert could be seen a gauzy cloud of immense size travelling towards us at a tremendous pace. In a few moments we were in the midst of an inferno of swirling sand and suffocating heat. It was the dreaded khamseen.

Men rushed blindly for their tents and swathed their heads in shirts or blankets in order to keep out as well as might be the flying particles of sand. Fortunately for us the high embankment in our rear protected the camp to some extent and we never got the full force of the sandstorm.

For three days it raged. Little work was possible beyond watering and feeding the horses. The short walk from the horse-lines to the watering-troughs was sheer torment, for the hot wind came down the slope like blasts from a furnace. It did literally turn the stomach. Many a man staggering blindly along with his three or four horses would pause, vomit violently and carry on. The horses neither drank nor ate much, poor brutes, but all day long stood dejectedly with drooping heads, their backs turned to the scorching wind. It was a scarifying experience. When, on the evening of the third day, the familiar wind came up from the sea we had the feeling one has on coming out of a Turkish bath into the cooling-chamber.

Another welcome tonic was the news that the brigade was ordered to Salonica. We felt that any change would be for the better; in any case it could not well be worse. And so we fell to making our preparations with light hearts, confident that in a few days we should be on the move again, perhaps--who could say?--towards a real war.

At the last moment a wire came cancelling the move. The disappointment was so bitter that it knocked all the life out of us for days. We felt like a boxer who, after a knock-down blow, rises at the count of nine, say, and is at once sent down again for good. The knock-out blow was that in our case the rest of the brigade did actually leave the camp, in addition to which the Indian infantry who had lain alongside us also went elsewhere. We felt thoroughly aggrieved.

I suppose every unit at some time or other during a period of enforced stagnation has had this grievance. Nobody loves you. You feel that some one in the high places has a grudge against you. You can hear him saying to his underlings: "Let me see. So-and-so is a pretty rotten camp, isn't it? I'll keep this battalion or that squadron or the other battery there. Do 'em good. Mustn't coddle 'em." And you are kept "there" for weary months.

Most of us knew that the conditions in Salonica were as bad as, if not worse than, those obtaining in Egypt, so why on earth were we pining to go there? There is no prize for the answer, but I suspect it was the eternal desire for a change, of whatever nature. Besides, except for the heat, flies, septic sores, the khamseen, bad water, dysentery, vaccination, inoculations many and various, digging holes, and a depressing sameness about the scenery, we had, according to some, little to grumble at.

We were not unduly harassed by the Turks; indeed, it was our function to harass them. We slept peacefully in our beds o' nights except for a pernicious system of false alarms. We had now a metre-gauge line on which our forage was brought into camp, thus saving us a fatigue. Moreover, on this line we could take an occasional joy-ride in a tram like an Irish jaunting-car, drawn by two mules probably also of Irish descent, who invariably ran away with the tram, and, desiring later to rest awhile, were as invariably thrust forward again by the violent impact from behind of the oncoming vehicle.

We had a very passable canteen with sometimes real beer in it. And above and beyond all these joys we had recently made an ice-chest. True, we were dependent upon a somewhat fortuitous supply of ice, brought by boat across the Gulf from Suez to the Quarantine Station, thence by special fatigue-party, armed to the teeth, into camp; and it usually suffered considerably en route. But think of a long, really cold drink waiting for you at the end of a three-days' stunt into those iniquitous hills, when you came in covered with sand and with a throat like a dust-bin! Half of it went at a gulp to wash the sand down; the rest one drank slowly and with infinite content. That ice-chest had the prestige of a joss.

Looking back, however, on the summer of 1916 and taking count, as it were, of the things that amused us and helped us to carry on, I find that we were for the most part self-supporting. To the best of my recollection, except for visits of inspection by the Great Ones, which of course do not count, there were only two occasions when we had strangers within our gates.

The first was when the navy, some forty strong, in high spirits and a G.S. waggon, came to cheer us up.

And here I should like to ask why it is that the moment the sailorman is ashore he goes forth and looks for a horse, quite regardless as to whether he has ever put a leg across one before or no. For them, too, a horse has but one pace: a full-stretch gallop. It took hours to catch all the riderless horses after the navy had started for their gentle exercise, but we got heaps of fun out of it and it was very good to see somebody from the outside world.

The other time was when we had a concert in Moses' Grove and a regimental band came from El Shatt to entertain us. It was fine to sit there under the tamarisks around an immense camp-fire and listen to a really good band playing the old favourites again and giving us a few new ones, to be whistled or sung about the camp for weeks.

The mail, of course, kept us happy where nothing else could, for not only was it the single link with home and all that it meant, but it brought us newspapers which, while carefully avoiding all reference to the armies in the East, did tell us of the war as they waged it in France. Also, it introduced Bairnsfather to us. "The Better 'Ole" became almost an institution; we could speak with authority on "'oles." And "When the 'ell's it goin' to be strawberry?" was the unfailing jest at meal-times, as we scraped the layer of flies from the top of the inevitable Tickler.

No doubt these things will strike you as trivial. Quite so. But when you remember our complete isolation, that for six months we saw no one but ourselves, so to speak, you will understand that if one did not laugh at trivial things one simply did not laugh at all--and in the desert that way madness lies.

For there were days when one hated the sight of one's best friend, when the mere sameness of everything drove one almost to distraction, and when the heat and the little exasperations of our daily work kept the temper constantly on edge. One had to laugh at something; it was the only way to keep sane. So, if there should occasionally creep into these pages a somewhat frivolous tone, I crave your indulgence, for it was truly the atmosphere in which we, in common with other lonely outposts, lived and worked. It was fatal to take life too seriously; wherefore, as we had little else to laugh at, we laughed at ourselves.

But to all things an end. The weary time of waiting and preparation was almost over. Sparse news filtered through that the northward advance towards Palestine had already begun; that there had been heavy fighting at Katia, where the Turks, under cover of a desert mist, surprised and cut up--but failed to defeat--our cavalry; and that we had at Romani inflicted the most summary defeat on the enemy since he made his abortive attack on the Canal in 1915.

All of which, said the wiseacres, seemed to point in one direction; that all the available troops would very soon be required for the more considerable business at the northern end of the desert; in other words, that we should shortly be on the move again. And for once the prophets were right, for suddenly there was a great to-do in the camp; such a polishing of guns and a burnishing of stirrup-irons and bits and chains, such a cleaning of harness and saddlery as had never been known.

When it was done one of the elect came down and inspected us, after which we went out into the desert beyond and fired at targets the ranges of which had been carefully taken days before, so as not to disappoint the great man by bad shooting. Whereupon, when he had expressed himself satisfied with the accuracy of our fire and the smartness of our drill, he went away; and presently came others, still more elect, for whom there was more cleaning and burnishing, and who further declared their entire approval. Finally the Commander-in-Chief himself came and inspected all the troops in the area; and the work was as before, only more so. Now, when he too was pleased, we knew that a move was what the Americans call a "cinch." And so it proved. To wind up with a flourish, as it were, we went out to the hills again for a last--and, as it happened, most successful--attempt on the Raha Pass, when we climbed the hill mentioned earlier in this chapter.

Marching orders were awaiting us on our return. We were to trek to El Kubri, a post on the Canal near Suez, there to await train accommodation. This time the orders were not cancelled.