The flies were bad, but we were getting used to the heat—the tent temperature was usually between 100° and 110° during the hotter hours,—and a northerly wind helped to keep us going. On the 20th a pair of 18 pounders were put into Hill 70 and another pair into the Turk Top Redoubt, and their gunners, of the 2nd Lowland Brigade R.F.A., came to live with us. The guns were well dug in, but there was a general feeling that if they fired, most of the trenches, which were only a few feet away, would inevitably collapse. At Hill 70 Captain Wightman and Captain Moir joined the Battalion, with very little to say in favour of the Egyptian climate and obviously feeling the extreme heat.
Early in June astonishing rumours began to reach us about a "change of air" camp at Alexandria, and soon it came to be known that the whole Brigade were for a week's holiday there. The cynics scoffed, and the few who were anxious to display the fruits of a classical education could quote a line about "fearing the Greeks even when they bear gifts in their hands," the Greeks to us being that inveterate foe of every right-minded infantry man, until he gets a chance of putting up red tabs himself,—the Staff. But for once the cynics were wrong, and on June 13th the 11th Manchesters arrived to relieve us, and we marched gaily back to Kantara—at any rate if not gaily—it was getting on for 130° in the sun quite early in the day—still with a good heart. We were even complaisant when we found ourselves crowded into one camp area with the 7th, and with most of the tents to put up. As the afternoon wore on—(we had been up since 3 a.m. and were still hard at it in different fatigues)—a tendency to disparage holidays was noticed in some quarters, and when the next day we found ourselves in for a resumption of training pending further orders, the cynics had their innings. It lasted a fortnight—of crowded tents and extreme heat—the thermometer failing to fall much below 90° all night. Réveillé was at 4 a.m. and after three hours training, we came in for an eight o'clock breakfast, drenched in sweat, and regarding salt bacon with loathing. To add to the trials of the climate the entire Battalion was roused one night about midnight with orders to make all tents as secure as possible, hammer in tent pegs, etc., as the following message had just been received, "Typhoon proceeding north passed Suez 9 p.m." Few if any of us had ever experienced a typhoon and with thoughts of very shortly being blown here and there like the sand we set to work with a will, but unnecessarily. The great wind never came, and we learnt in the morning that the "Typhoon" that passed Suez was a tramp steamer homeward bound. But the optimists were not to be disappointed. On the 26th an advance party left us, and on the evening of the 28th the whole Battalion, with the exception of some few of the later drafts, entrained and reached Sidi Bishr next morning, smutty but hopeful.
Sidi Bishr rest camp was unlike anything that the oldest soldier can remember. It was run with the sole desire of making everybody happy. The tents were in the desert east of the town, half a mile from the sea. The men had no duties of any kind. No parades were allowed and there were special cooks and orderly men attached to each camp. On arrival the camp staff took the men over from their officers, who were told that they had no further responsibilities and could go off and enjoy themselves for a week. Every man was then given a pass into Alexandria, good up to 11 p.m. every night of the week, while for those whose finances could not stand this strain there were free concerts and cinemas in the camp itself, and a whole village of enticing restaurants and shops where fruit, drinks and souvenirs could be obtained. One need hardly say that the Battalion, keenly appreciating the kindness shown and the confidence reposed in them, repaid it by exemplary behaviour. There was hardly a case of drunkenness throughout our stay—no bad record for men who had been teetotal, through necessity and not through choice, for months—and were now exposed to the dangers of the vile though seductive liquor sold in the native bars.
Our holiday came to an end all too soon and we returned to Kantara in excellent form for whatever might be demanded of us. A draft joined us a few days after our return with Lieut. Girvan and our Quartermaster, Lieut. Clark. Plainly the days of sitting on the banks of the Canal and waiting till Turkey chose to attack us were gone for ever. The whole force was pushing slowly but surely to the east, and it was high time for us to help them push.
CHAPTER VII
THE SINAI DESERT—MAHAMDIYA, ROMANI, KATIA.
On the 10th of July, after handing over to the 5th Manchesters, the Battalion entrained for Mahamdiya. The curse was pronounced against it, "On thy flat feet shalt thou go—and dust shalt thou eat"; and it did not entrain again until it left Ludd at the beginning of the journey to France nearly two years later. The accumulation of stores resulting from several months comparatively civilised life had to be sorted out, and all but the barest necessities were left behind—a process which was constantly being repeated as the advance through the desert continued, the necessities becoming successively barer and barer. Two trains were required for the Battalion and its possessions, one leaving at 7.17 a.m. and the other at 4.15 p.m. They were composed of open trucks in which the men were packed with little regard to comfort. It was not a luxurious journey, but fortunately it was not a long one. After skirting the inundations the line ran for some miles across almost flat desert, and then entered a country of sand hills, writhing and twisting among the tumbled ridges till it reached Romani. Here we passed on to a branch line which took us north to the coast.
Our camp at Mahamdiya had been occupied by the Scottish Horse. It was pitched on a slope of sand less than a mile from the railway, and half a mile or so from the sea. The sea was the great feature of Mahamdiya. Its deep blueness rested the eye, wearied by the perpetual glare of the sand. The prevailing north wind blowing straight off it tempered the heat—and most important of all, it gave us the opportunity of being cool and clean for a delicious half-hour as often as we could spare the time to get down to it. No parade, not even the infrequent "fall in for pay," was so welcome as a bathing parade. Our supply of fresh water was extremely limited, and as drinking comes with most of us before washing, we should have been a dirty lot indeed without the sea. Even as it was, salt water, like a famous soap, won't wash clothes, and our hosiery suffered accordingly. Drinking water was issued at stated intervals, in the presence of an officer—and that was another occasion on which there were no absentees.
Some way east of the camp ran a line of barbed wire in a great sweep from the sea to the south, finally turning west to protect the whole locality. Behind it was a series of little posts occupied nightly by half the Battalion, while the rest slept in camp. The most northerly post was not a popular one. The roar of the surf forced the sentries to rely entirely on their eyesight; while the alarming number of marauding crabs, which manoeuvred over the area all night, gave one an uneasy feeling which usually begot a nightmare.