A permanent camp of Royal Engineers close at hand lent a fatigue. By three o'clock the virgin depôt was well established.
At four, through a cloud of dust, the advance-party (mostly Staff Officers on horseback) rode in very hot and very thirsty. Brigade Majors boast a thirst at any time and in any weather. Aggravated now, it had first to be assuaged. The Battalion of Pioneers who followed us by train had mapped out the plan of camp on paper, and now proceeded to conduct battalions; for they followed close in the heels of their staffs, dusty and sweating under their packs, and dragging a weary way through the yielding sand. Lucky Majors rode, and surveyed their perspiring men from the cool and luxurious height of a horse. The battalions plumped down in the sand and the sun where they stood. The camel-trains followed, plonking along with their flat-spreading feet and aspiring noses and loads of ration, blankets, tents, tables, and general camp impedimenta. Their Indian "dravees" led them by the nose. They gurgled with the heat, and foundered on very slight provocation indeed.
By five the whole flight is established in bivouac lines. For a couple of hours there is feverish bustle at the supply depôt. Half the issuing is carried out by lamp-light. The battalions settle down to sleep with the sun, and there is little energy left for horse-play, though there is a good deal of singing, and even concerts improvised.
But the whole camp is quiet by nine; the men are sleeping in the sand under the moon; there are no lights except in the two tents erected for Staff Officers.
You're wakened at four the next morning by the camp astir, to be off at sunrise. But they have their ration, and you don't get up, but thank Heaven you're a part of no flight.
A part of nothing—for the moment. That's the beauty of this mission. You're subject to nobody. You've brought your own supplies, built your own depôt, and can dictate to Staff Captains and Colonels and to all the tin-hats who may approach you for ration. A supply officer is deeply respected, ex-officio. Though he be a mere Subaltern, it is known he holds the distribution of fleshly favours. The officer drawing ration who is incivil is in danger of being the worse for it; only the respectful get baksheesh.
The Fortress Company of Anglesey Engineers camped permanently, who had lent an emergency fatigue, turned out to be a boon and a blessing. It took less time than usual to penetrate the admirable English reticence surrounding their companionable qualities. The penetration began with a neighbourly invitation to their regimental sports, held conjointly with those of a detachment of Hyderabad Lancers camped at Mahsamah for patrol purposes. They united in a half-day's competition in foot-racing, football, jumping, tug-o'-war, cycle-racing, and the rest of the athletics common to Indians and Britishers. Beside, the Hyderabads gave exhibitions in horseback-wrestling, tent-pegging, cleaving the lime at the gallop, and allied exercises, in which Englishmen do not compete. The Captain of the Lancers was a young Indian aristocrat who spoke English faultlessly, and was a regular and interesting member of the Anglesey mess.
The English gentlemen who drew him and the Supply Officer were in no way roughened by a six months' campaign at Suvla Bay. Gordon was an Irishman from Trinity College, Dublin, who had preceded his course in engineering by reclining in Arts three years and browsing richly and refraining resolutely from cram—an engineer balanced ideally between the world of mere mathematical horse-sense and a gentle other-worldliness, and rich in a fitful and whimsical Irish humour that was good to live with; a man devoted to duty (when any was put in his way, which was seldom), otherwise exercising himself genially upon self-appointed surveys, geological rambling, artful shooting, photography, and banter. No tongue in the mess was a match for his; he emerged from argument with ease and credit always, and left his opponents floundering. A fearless, tender-hearted, courteous Irish gentleman, modest to the point of self-effacement and able to the point of genius. His mother was a friend of Edward Dowden and his circle, and Gordon had in store a rich fund of anecdote relating to academical Dublin.
The Medical Officer—"Doc," familiarly—was a Scotchman with a burr and a subtle uncaledonian quality of humour, and a sparkling intellectuality quite out of harmony with the traditional Scotch lumbering cerebration. Doc was lovable; and a butt through his popularity, though not a butt who took it lying down. But he was never a match for Gordon, though he usually routed the Captain—also a Scotchman—whose hobby was the facetious discussion of ways and means to getting a competent M.O. attached. The Doc's duties were purely nominal, the care of any who might fall victims amongst the Angleseys to toothache, boils, vermin, colds, gashes—any ills, in short, to which men in a desert camp might be liable. For the rest, he shot with the mess, dawdled with "films," perused his Scotch newspapers, improvised schemes in sanitation, dabbled in canal parasites and mosquito larvæ, and forged jokes.