With our army in Palestine

by Antony Bluett

To begin with, he has to carry all his goods and chattels on his person. The infantryman has his pack and equipment, a wonderful assortment of articles that bristle out from him like the quills on a porcupine, and which he generally describes as "The Christmas Tree"; with which, too, he can do most things, from preparing a meal for himself to digging a trench.

The "gunners" and the cavalry, while fortunately for them not obliged to carry a pack, may take only what they can cram into their haversacks or pack on to their saddles, and that is necessarily somewhat limited in quantity. Kit bags and tents are of course left behind. In fact, when we struck the caravan road leading into Palestine we were destined for many months to a nomadic, gipsy-like existence, sleeping under the stars, and scratching for our meals with what means our ingenuity could devise.

I remember seeing, the morning we left Kantara, a steam-roller puffing stolidly along the road—a ludicrous sight, too, there in the desert—and it seemed when we left it behind that we were snapping the last link which bound us to civilisation. As it transpired later, this particular trek was considerably more civilised than any we had hitherto taken; we had, in fact, most of the ha'pence and few of the kicks experienced by our predecessors. Indeed, we had ample opportunity of seeing how much they had accomplished, and how extraordinarily well it had been done.

As I have said, the railway for the most part ran parallel with the road, and at no time was it more than a mile away. Every third day the train brought a load of forage and rations to the appointed stations on the line, to which each unit sent its representatives to bring back supplies for three days.

We had, if I remember rightly, fresh meat and bread for one day, and the remaining two bully-beef and biscuits; in any case we certainly did not starve. Watering was rather more difficult, particularly just now, for the Bedouins, who somehow manage to exist in this barren land, were very fond of tampering with the pipe-line and then fading quietly away, with the result that exasperated engineers were dashing up and down with white lead and repairing tools, so that water was generally unobtainable from this source.

The trouble was that although the main was covered up, the continual movement of the sand left it exposed to the tender mercies of these Bedouins. Later, the engineers gathered scrub from the surrounding desert and replanted it in the embankment covering the pipe, thus binding the sand, and forming a firm and permanent barrier to future depredations. To obviate the present difficulty, large cisterns were erected at most of the stations on the line, and were fed from two-thousand gallon tanks brought up from Kantara on the train. Always our first business at the end of a day's trek was to ride away and look for the railway station, with its one solitary hut and the half-dozen tents occupied by the water-guard.

I have ventured to mention these details in order to show how very carefully the move across the desert of even one small unit, especially a mounted unit, had to be planned out from beginning to end, if it was to have rations and water in the right place at the right time; the least hitch and men had to go foodless for a day or even longer.

At Pelusium we had an exciting moment: the country hereabouts consists of a series of hillocks from behind one of which, without the slightest warning, reared up a monster of grotesque shape emitting unseemly noises. Simultaneously the horses reared up and made a spirited attempt to return to home and friends, and it was not until the turmoil had subsided a little that we realised what this uncouth beast was.

It was a Tank.

We had been mightily intrigued by hearing of the appearance in France of these monstrous engines of war, but as a cloud of secrecy hung over all their movements, had never up to that moment seen one. Those used on this front were much smaller than their French relations, and were as a matter of fact a comparative failure in Palestine. Whether the sand was too much for them, or the rough country over which they had to operate, I do not know, but after the third attempt on Gaza I believe they were never used. One could easily understand their striking terror into anybody, however, especially if their appearance on the scene were the least bit unexpected, for they were uncanny objects.