With Our Army in Palestine | Page 6

is on the move, it ceases to exist till it reaches the next place on the time-table; and if rations or water are lost in the desert you go hungry, and, worse still, thirsty, for there are no more to be had.
Most of those who took part in it will remember that trek when others are forgotten. Rations were short, forage was short, everything was short, especially the ropes by which the horse-buckets were lowered into the wells; which last remark perhaps needs explanation.
All journeys in the desert are regulated by the distances between wells, which may be twenty, thirty, and sometimes more miles apart. At some of them we found the old-fashioned "shadouf," or native pump, which, clumsy though it was, helped matters considerably.
Usually, however, we had to rely on horse-buckets, and it was any odds that our ropes were too short to reach the surface of the water. The experienced driver would take a rein to the well with him, for lengthening purposes if necessary, but often some unfortunate wight, having found his rope two or three inches too short, would be seen struggling to hold his thirsty horses with one hand while with the other he endeavoured to unfasten his belt to make up the extra inches.
It was a maddening business, this watering the horses. Poor brutes! They would come in after a long day's trek, on short rations, with often a twenty-four hours' thirst to quench, and then have to stand round a well and wait perhaps for hours!
Even the quietest of them began to fidget and strain at their head-ropes the moment they scented the water.
As for the mules, there was simply no holding them. On one occasion--it was after a forty-mile march--a mule, frantic with thirst, broke away from his owner, and in a desperate attempt to get to the water, fell headlong down the well! A crowd of infuriated soldiers, with drag-ropes and everything that wit of man could devise, laboured for hours to get him out, while their comrades, equally infuriated, held anything up to a dozen animals apiece and made strenuous efforts to prevent them from following his deplorable example.
[Illustration: NATIVE MARKET AT MERSA MATRUH. [To face p. 16.]
But, if the watering difficulty was the worst of our troubles, the shortage of forage was almost as bad, for the meagre ration of grain was about as satisfying to the horses and mules as Alfred Lester's famous caraway seed was to him.
The mules were the worst; they were insatiable. They ate the head-ropes that fastened them to the horse-lines, and the incensed picket spent half the night chasing them and tying them up again with what was left of the rope. Fortunately we obtained chains at railhead, and as these were uneatable they turned their attention to the horse-blankets and ate them! Soon it was impossible to "rug-up" at night, for there was not enough rug left. We used as pillows the nose-bags containing the following day's grain, and many a time were awakened by a half-famished mule poking an inquisitive muzzle under our heads.
Our own personal worries mainly concerned washing and shaving. Water was much too precious to be used for such purposes, so the problem was easily solved; we did neither. And in any case we had little time. We were up and away before dawn, we trekked anything from twenty-five to thirty-five miles a day, and when we had attended to the needs of the animals and had something to eat and drink ourselves, we were too tired to do anything but roll into the blankets and sleep until a disgruntled picket roused us for another day. Occasionally some sybarite would be seen using the remains of his evening tea as shaving-water and laboriously scraping a three days' growth of hair from his face; but he was the exception. We were a ragged, unwashed, unshaven crew--yet mighty cheery withal.
And so we came to Alexandria, where baths, new clothes and boots, and, best of all, a mail awaited us.
CHAPTER II
"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