CHAPTER V. The Wire Road

THE WIRE ROAD

I suppose there is on each of our many battle-fronts at least one familiar road; by which I mean a road traversed regularly of necessity by the many, and remembered afterwards with feelings either of anger, of respect, or of loathing, almost as one regards a human being.

I have heard men who fought in France speak of a certain road between Bapaume and Peronne with a metaphorical lift of the cap; a famous Irish division who came to Egypt from Salonica, utter winged words when they refer to a heart-breaking road in that malaria-stricken hole; and presumably it is the same elsewhere.

We, too, have our road--perhaps the most famous, as it is the oldest, of them all. It is famous not merely in its present aspect, but chiefly for its history, extending almost as far back into antiquity as Time itself, and for its hallowed memories; it has, moreover, seen many, many wars.

It is the great caravan route from Egypt into Palestine. Eastwards from Kantara it runs, across the desert of Northern Sinai to El Arish, thence onwards to Jerusalem and Damascus. Phoenicians, Romans, Moslems, and Jews have traded and fought over it. Napoleon came this way in his hurried dash into Egypt, and here, too, most of his army left their scattered bones. It is hallowed by the journey of Joseph and Mary with the infant Christ, fleeing into Egypt from the wrath of Herod.

Nineteen hundred odd years later the British soldier fought his way eastwards and northwards over the same route on his mission to free the Holy Land from the ambitions of a modern Herod. Almost the sole reason for its existence is the wells. The original road, considered as such, is singularly unimpressive; it is, in fact, little more than a mere track in the desert, when it is visible at all, for the ever-shifting sand obliterates as fast as they are made the imprints of marching feet.

The wells regulate the general direction, as on all the great caravan routes, and also the distance of a day's march. One may be quite certain that the ancients did no unnecessary wandering in the desert, but took the shortest cut from one well to another. Hence, the track follows its milestones, as it were, and not vice versa.

We did the same, and until the laying of the pipe-line rendered the army more or less independent of them, all the marching and fighting in this desert were for the possession of the wells that marked the old-time halting-places. Nowadays, the military road runs alongside the older one.

It is no ponderous affair of logs, or stones, or asphalt; a very simple, homely thing went to its making: just wire-netting, with a two-inch mesh, the kind one uses for the fowl-run! Laid in three rows, and pegged down on to the sand, it is wide enough for infantry comfortably to march four abreast. Simple though it sounds, it is astonishingly effective, and, indeed, the sensation is almost that of walking on a hard, macadamised road.

The cavalry may not use the road, nor the transport, nor the artillery; it is exclusively for the infantry, and deservedly so, for only they, who, carrying a rifle and pack, have trudged along ankle-deep over that blistering desert, know what a relief it is to march for an hour or two on a good road. And further, it is the infantry who bear the heat and burden of the day. All through the summer of 1916--and I have said elsewhere what manner of summer it was--they fought and died that the way might be made clear for those to follow them, and that the engineers could lay the road some of them would never use.

People at home generally are under the impression that there was no fighting in Egypt at all for two years; that the troops there had no difficulties to encounter nor hardships to endure; and that life, in fact, was one grand, sweet song.

Ask the men from Lancashire, or the Scottish Territorial division who came from the horrors of Gallipoli, or the Yeomanry, or the Australian Light Horse, what they think of the song of the Sinai desert, as they heard it in 1916!

I fear that in this matter I am somewhat like Mr. Dick with King Charles' head; yet it is maddening, and indeed most monstrously unfair, that the work of these splendid men should pass unnoticed and unsung. It need hardly be said that I am not complaining on my own behalf. Heaven forbid! At the time the wire road was being made, we were away out East of Suez, digging holes and making other roads, with merely the discomforts peculiar to the place to endure.

But to the pioneers the glory, who conquered both the desert and the Turks. There was none of the pomp and circumstance of war about their work, no great concentration of men and horses and guns, no barrage nor heavy gunfire for days in preparation for an attack, no aircraft--though the ancient buses in use did wonderful work, considering their limitations--nothing but a few thousand men in their shirt sleeves; and it was out of their sweat and blood that the way was made clear for them that followed.

Everywhere and in every respect, save courage and endurance, the enemy held the advantage. During his slow retreat the choice of ground almost invariably lay with him; and the Turk has a nice eye for position, as we found on many occasions bitterly to our cost. Nor did he miss any opportunity of making a surprise attack, as on that black Easter Sunday of 1916, when he crept up and fell upon the Yeomanry at Katia and Oghratina, two cavalry posts east of Kantara. Under cover of a desert mist the Turks crawled past the outposts and fell upon the sleeping men in overwhelming numbers.

Yet even these odds were not too great. Taken completely by surprise as they were, the Yeomanry fought with everything they could lay their hands on: sabres, rifles, bayonets, mallets, pegs, even with bare fists, asking no quarter and with no thought of surrender. They knew that no help could possibly arrive in time, for the Turks attacked simultaneously at both places; yet they fought on with desperate courage until the Turks at length retired, unable to break the gallant little band.

And who now remembers the names of these places, except the relatives of those who fell there, and the few who, fighting, came safely through? They were little affairs of outposts, mere skirmishes, perhaps, but they paved the way for the larger task. And who now speaks of Romani? Yet it was one of the decisive battles of the war. Here the Turks made a magnificently organised attempt to break through our defences and reach the Canal. It was indeed a wonderful feat to bring an army of nearly 30,000 men across a sparsely watered desert, with their nearest railhead a hundred and fifty miles away. We found it difficult enough later with the help of the railway. Not only did they bring an army, but dragged, on sledges, heavy guns up to 8 inches in calibre with them--a very rude shock to our experts, who pronounced it impossible until they saw our observation posts on the summit of Kattigannit literally plastered with heavy shells.

For nearly a fortnight the Turks struggled to get through. First they tried to break down our defences between Romani and the sea. Foiled in this they swung across to the other flank and fought for possession of the chain of hills dominating this region. Mount Royston, Mount Meredith, and the long, whale-backed Wellington Ridge all changed hands at least once, and the last-named became the principal Turkish position, around which a terrible struggle raged for nearly two days.

The infantry and dismounted cavalry advancing to the attack had first to cross a broad stretch of uneven country as bare as the back of the hand, and swept from end to end by machine-guns. They sank over the boot-tops into the sand at every step, they were hampered by their equipment, and the blazing August sun made their rifles almost too hot to hold.

Painfully the long line struggled on, halted a little while and lay down, for human endurance has its limits, then went forward again. So, alternately forcing themselves through the sand, and lying down for very want of breath, the sweating men came to the foot of the ridge, sadly decimated in numbers, but unconquerable in their determination to get to the top.

Now they made a last great effort, and, swearing, sliding, sometimes sinking up to the knees, sometimes crawling, and all the time swept by a murderous fire, these wonderful men reached the redoubt and at length got to grips, only to be thrust back again by the no less determined Turks.

Again they came, a mere handful, and again they were driven back. Now a second wave reached the slope, and with the shattered remnant of the first made a great rush, obtained a footing and kept it. It was sheer hand-to-hand fighting of the fiercest kind; every man marked his man and went for him with the bayonet.

The Turks gave back thrust for thrust; they yielded no ground, but died where they stood. Quarter was neither asked nor given. Men fought in little groups until one or the other was wiped out, when the survivors rushed away and gave a hand elsewhere. And at last victory was to the strong, and Wellington Ridge was won--at a price.

Yet although the capture of the ridge turned their position, the Turks elsewhere retired but slowly, contesting every attempt at an advance with most bitter determination.

All through these scorching days the battle raged, and even the fine work of the cavalry failed to break them, for they knew that with every yard they retreated, their cherished dream of crossing the Canal receded farther and farther. It was not a question of "reculer pour mieux sauter"; the Turks knew that if they were driven out of a position they left it for good; wherefore they fought with the courage of despair. They had to go, however, for nothing human could stand against the inexorable advance of our men.

But the fighting, bloody and desperate though it was, was not the worst of the hardships endured by both victor and vanquished; many things pass unnoticed in the heat of battle. It is afterwards, when the pursuit is spent, and a man thinks of a meal and a drink, that he counts up his hurts. In the fight he has perhaps thrown away his haversack to give himself more freedom of movement, or a chance bullet has pierced his water-bottle; and there he is, miles from anywhere, with neither rations to eat nor water wherewith to slake the thirst that seems to be gnawing his throat away. Nor has he the chance of obtaining more, except from a comrade.

There were small parties of men concerned in the remoter fighting who advanced too far, and when night fell, lost touch with the main body. For forty-eight hours some of them were lost in the desert; water and rations were soon all gone, and they suffered intolerably with the heat. Hunger they could endure, but they were driven to dreadful and unnameable expedients to quench the thirst that consumed them.

When at last they did find their comrades, their tongues and lips were so blackened and swollen that the first drinks had to be given through a straw.

Imagine the plight of the wounded, lying on the slopes of Wellington Ridge and elsewhere, racked with pain, and tortured almost to madness by flies and thirst, exposed for hours to the merciless rays of the sun, until the stretcher-bearers, working though they were like men inspired, had the opportunity to carry them away to the rear.

And then, what? Here were no swift, easy-running cars, no comfortable hospital-trains to whirl them down to a Base where there were baths, clean linen, and kindly sisters to make them forget what had passed. Instead, two or three bell-tents wherein doctors and orderlies, worked almost to a standstill and rocking on their legs with fatigue, strove to dress the wounds of the maimed and shattered men.

Nor was this the worst. After the wounds had been cleansed and bound up as well as might be, came the journey down to Kantara. The lucky few were carried in sand-carts, but the large majority went on camel-back, lying in a cacolet. A cacolet is a kind of stretcher-bed with a rail round it, and a hood over the top to protect the occupant from the sun. Each camel carried two cacolets, one clamped to each side of a specially constructed saddle. To a wounded man the motion was the very refinement of torture, especially if the other cacolet were occupied by a heavier man. At one moment the cacolet swung high in the air, and the sufferer was banged against the lower rail; the next, it was at the other extreme, and he was almost thrown out--there was no rest from the maddening motion until a merciful unconsciousness brought relief to the tortured body.

By means of cunningly placed blankets the medical authorities did all that was humanly possible to mitigate the terrible jolting, but with all their care and ingenuity even the shortest journey in a cacolet was a nightmare.

The miracle was that even the uninjured men could endure so much. One could--and did--live on bully-beef and biscuits for weeks at a time and take no harm, provided one could get water. But the Turks had a habit of poisoning the wells as they retreated, and the most stringent orders had therefore to be issued, forbidding men to drink of water unexamined by a medical officer. It was pitiful to see the horses, too, after two or three days' hard riding, watered perhaps once in all that time; for the lightest driver or cavalryman, with his equipment, rides at least eleven stone, a heavy burden to carry over the sand in the heat.

Out of such troubles was the victory of Romani won. It meant that a few more miles of railway could be built; that the wire road could go forward once more; that the pipe-line could carry onward its precious freight; and that the Canal was safe.

Of like nature, too, were the victories at Bir El Abd, where the Turks held on to their positions with such extraordinary tenacity that it was literally touch-and-go which side retreated; but those dour Scotchmen could take a deal of hammering, and the Turks had to go in the end; at Mazar, at Maghdaba, and at Rafa, on the border, where the Turkish dream of an Ottoman Egypt was shattered for ever. So they retreated into Palestine, with the shadow of yet a greater cataclysm upon them.

This, then, was the work accomplished by those early pioneers, and scarcely the half of it has been told. Let those who sat in their arm-chairs in England demanding querulously what we were doing in Egypt judge of their achievement.

They marched and toiled and fought--a few scattered, solitary graves mark the places where some of them lie buried. If they fought only in their thousands and not in their tens of thousands, the reason is simple: in all the peninsula between Kantara and El Arish the wells may be numbered on the fingers, and before an army can be used, its means of procuring food and drink must be assured. Water did not exist in sufficient quantities for a big army, nor was there any transport available for food. Dysentery, heat, flies, bad water, no water--they took them as a matter of course, and went forward nor stayed for any man.

In the course of twelve months they cleared the enemy out of a hundred and fifty miles of desert over which they built the railway, laid the pipe-line, and made the wire road, that their comrades who followed later might come safely and quickly to the Great Adventure over the border.

And these are their memorials, for they did a great work.