Every decent soldier is proud of the arm to which he belongs and which he deliberately joined of his own free will on enlistment or enrolment, and it is hard on him to ask him to serve in any other, but it has sometimes to be done, and it has been proved once and again that an Englishman of pluck, spirit and average intelligence can serve his country and serve it well under any circumstances. In the Boer War, for instance, thousands of foot soldiers had to take over horses and act as mounted men. In the same campaign, after the Boers had lost their artillery, many of our gunners were formed into battalions of infantry. In the Great War hundreds of all arms took to fighting in the air, and, if the navy wanted them, soldiers would man submarines to-morrow. As a matter of fact, soldiers have in the old days served on the fleet in the capacity of marines. It being recognized, then, that if at any time there be a surplus of one kind of soldier and a deficit of another, that surplus will easily be taught to fight in other guise than he has been trained to do, the bulk of the Yeomanry in Egypt changed on the 1st February, 1917, into infantry soldiers. The county ideas and associations were respected as much as possible, and so it came about that the Royal East Kent Yeomanry then at Sollum was amalgamated with the West Kent (Q.O.) Yeomanry quartered at Matruh, a coast town about 125 miles west of Alexandria; they became the 10th Battalion of the Buffs, under the command of Major A. O’B. ffrench Blake, who was appointed Lt.-Colonel in the absence, due to sickness, of Lt.-Colonel Lord Sackville. The strength of the battalion was 46 officers and 875 other ranks; A and B Companies were men of the East Kent, and C and D West Kent Yeomanry. A period of intensive infantry training now commenced. The 10th Battalion formed part of the 230th Brigade and 74th Division. The other battalions of the brigade were made from the Sussex, Suffolk and Norfolk Yeomanry and became battalions of the same county regiments.
Early in March the battalion moved to Sidi Bishr, near Alexandria, the move taking no less than thirteen days to accomplish, and here the battalion was equipped. Drafts of 2 officers and 140 men joined on the 16th March and these were nearly all Buffs, no fewer than 64 with previous war service. Thus came into being the 10th Battalion of the “Old Buffs.”
Its earlier history is as follows: at this time the Eastern Force under Lt.-General Sir Charles Dobell was concentrated about El Arish, through which the railway ran, on the northern coast of the Sinai Peninsula; whilst the Desert Column, under Lt.-General Sir P. Chetwode, was at Sheikh Zowaid about twenty miles further up the coast towards Palestine. This column was very strong in mounted men, and some of them were in advance of Sheikh Zowaid covering the further construction of the coast railway line, which was being pushed on towards Rafa, the frontier town of Egypt and Palestine. Murray’s plan was to advance slowly and steadily up the coast, moving troops forward just as fast as the railway could be made to supply them. The railhead, by the 16th March, was at Rafa, and now it became necessary to hold the great Wadi[18] Ghuzze in order to protect what had been constructed. The enemy occupied the ground from Gaza through Sheria to Beersheba. Though the Buffs did not arrive on the scene of conflict at Deir el Belah till the 11th April, it is as well to state here that in March an attempt was made on the town of Gaza, and on the 26th of that month it was actually enveloped; but our mounted troops could not keep the field for want of water and had to retire across the Wadi Ghuzze while the enemy was pouring in reinforcements from the north and north-east, so that a second attempt met with such strong opposition that the whole force retired over the Wadi and took up a strong defensive position.
II. Second Battle of Gaza
The next attempt was arranged to commence on the 15th April and was to consist of two stages: the first object being the occupation of Sheikh Abbas and the ridge south of Gaza; then, these points being held, careful arrangements in every detail were to be made and a supply of water organized. Meanwhile, however, the enemy was getting stronger every day, not only in numbers but in the development of his fortified line. Gaza itself became a very important fortress. On the 15th April the Buffs were ordered on outpost duty to take a line just north of the Wadi Ghuzze, and the next day came battle orders and company commanders went out to reconnoitre the position for the Second Battle of Gaza.
From Sheria to Gaza is sixteen miles and the enemy was in force the whole distance. The 52nd and 54th Divisions were told off to seize what was known as the Abbas Ridge and the 74th (Yeomanry) Division was detailed as General Reserve; therefore at 1.15 a.m. on the 17th our brigade left its bivouac and reached its battle position at 4 a.m. The ridge was taken shortly after with very little opposition, and the remainder of the day and the whole of the 18th were devoted to consolidating what was won and preparing for further advance by the 52nd Division on the left and the 54th on its right, which was to be aided by a containing attack by cavalry. The work was carried out according to plan, and the task set the troops was found to be a very difficult one. The casualties were heavy, particularly in the case of the 54th Division. The cavalry attacked at dawn and achieved success, but only one brigade of the reserve (74th Division) was utilized this day and our battalion, bivouacked in a barley field, had merely to watch the cavalry action in progress.
As a net result of the fighting the 54th Division had advanced as far as possible without exposing the flank which rested on the 52nd, but the latter had found such extremely broken ground, which was occupied by so many nests of machine guns, that its progress had been stayed and another day’s fighting seemed to be a necessity. Orders were therefore circulated that all ground was to be maintained with a view to the renewal of the attack the following morning, namely, the 20th April, but it appeared that Sir Archibald Murray changed his mind, on the strong representation of General Dobell that the prospect of success was not sufficient to justify the great number of casualties bound to occur. So slow, deliberate trench warfare was decided on until more reinforcements should arrive, and, on the 23rd, the Buffs occupied a line in Wadi Ghuzze in the neighbourhood of Tel el Jemmi, and then commenced a long period of trench digging saddened by the inevitable conclusion that the great victory, which had been confidently expected and greatly looked forward to, had failed to eventuate.
The heat was now becoming intense; that scourge of the country, the hot Khamseen wind, was blowing, work was hard and, what was worse than anything else, water was scarce. However, after a few days, a move was made to Shellal and Hisea, still in the Wadi, and here more water was found and men could indulge in a wash. For a considerable period the digging of trenches was proceeded with, amidst all sorts of trials and troubles: the heat grew fiercer and fiercer as the season advanced; and, with the heat, animal life in the shape of scorpions, lice, flies, mosquitoes and spiders flourished and multiplied exceedingly. Wadi Nukahbir runs from near Sheikh Abbas into the great Ghuzze Wadi at Sheikh Nebhan, and there are many tributary Wadis to Nukahbir. These smaller nullahs received from our army the names of the tribes of Israel in order to distinguish them, and the next move of the Buffs, which took place on the night of the 27th May, was to the Wadi Levi, which is close to Sheikh Abbas, and from this centre working parties were sent out day and night to improve the front-line trenches or make elaborate redoubts in the second line of defence. During the stay in this Wadi the battalion suffered a good deal from sickness, there being many cases of scarlet fever and diphtheria; also nearly everybody developed boils and blains. It was discovered later that the dug-outs occupied had been previously inhabited by men suffering from the more serious complaints, but the sores were directly attributable to the want of vegetables owing to the difficulties of transport. It has nearly always happened in war time that septic sores have broken out amongst the soldiers and it has always been from the same cause. Lack of transport meant amongst many other things lack of vegetable food, and this in its turn means corruption of the human blood.
On the 28th June, 1917, General Sir Edmund Allenby, G.C.M.G., K.C.B., took over from Sir Archibald Murray the supreme command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, and the principal result of this was, to the Buffs, that their long period of hard digging work was very soon changed to one of strenuous training. On the 9th July the battalion left Wadi Levi and marched to a reserve area, and there, after a few days’ refitting and rest, commenced the practice by day and night of attacks over open country together with some musketry. On the night of the 7th August the battalion marched to the sand dunes two miles south-west of Belah for field firing, and, after another move to the hills above Belah, the 5th of September found the Buffs commencing to dig again, the work being done at night at a point near where the Wadi Ghuzze joins the sea and where sea bathing made a very welcome change in the mode of life. Signs and tokens were at this time becoming more and more noticeable that, as the hot summer was nearing its limit, the new Commander-in-Chief had been arranging for some active and energetic war business against the enemy and that a fighting period was coming with the autumn. As a matter of fact, Allenby had early determined to postpone his great operations till the cooler season. The Turkish front extended from what was now the fortress of Gaza as far as Beersheba. There were well-fortified localities all along this line, which was thirty miles in length. This was a considerable extent to hold, but the lateral communications were good, and help and reinforcements could be comparatively easily brought to any particular point on the front which might be threatened by the English.
Water was Allenby’s trouble. He could not keep the field without it and it affected his whole plan of campaign. No stroke at all could be effected without long and careful preparations for the necessary supply of water, and no preparation, however careful, could make that supply anything but a meagre one. A pipe-line 147 miles long brought up what was actually necessary from the Land of Egypt as far as the Wadi, whence it was camel-borne to the troops. There was, however, water at Beersheba and the general determined that it should be his. He would make a tremendous demonstration, in which the fleet would co-operate, opposite Gaza and cause the enemy to believe that he was determined to take that place. Then, while this great feint held the Turks’ attention, he would strike resolutely at Beersheba on his other flank. There were great difficulties in the way. There were no roads, which meant that pack animals must carry all necessary stores, and the country was so cut up by Wadis that even to move these camels and mules became a very considerable difficulty. The railways were improved: the coastal line was pushed on to Khan Yunos; another was made from Dera Belah to a point on the Wadi Ghuzze, and a new one as far towards Beersheba as was safe. The men were carefully trained to exist on as little water as possible and to march with empty water-bottles. Operations were to commence on the 31st October, and cavalry was to make a wide turning movement and come down on Beersheba from the north and north-east.