With Our Army in Palestine Part 3

You called for a popular song or recitation and you got it, and as many more as you liked to ask for. One of these talented ladies used to give a recitation which became a permanent feature of her programme in Egypt. She would come to the front of the stage and say confidentially to the audience, "Do you know Lizzie 'Arris?" And back would come a mighty bellow, "Aiwa!" This rite was always insisted upon before the artiste could proceed, though she obviously enjoyed it almost as much as we did. She might probably be amused to know that--such is fame!--amongst the thousands of troops who heard her recite she was always known as "Lizzie 'Arris."

Early in the New Year the Mecca myth was finally dissipated, for we moved--no, the train never arrived--to the big concentration camp at Suez, and there started preparations in real earnest. It was strange to be amongst people again after so many months of comparative solitude, and stranger still to see houses and streets and civilians. Not that we had much time to look around, for with the coming of the cool weather the hours of work became appreciably longer.

Every day long columns of infantry went forth to get themselves into hard condition by strenuous route marches. Dotted about the camp were little groups of specialists and others practising their several trades. Here was a bombing-school urgently killing imaginary Turks; there a squad of bayonet-fighters engaged in the same pleasurable pursuit; while farther away an eager band of signallers with their handy little cable-waggons laid a wire at incredible speed.

Away out on the plain a string of hara.s.sed recruits trotted round a rough manege l.u.s.tily encouraged to a rigid observance of the good old maxim, "'eels an' 'ands low; 'eads an' 'earts 'igh," by the astonis.h.i.+ng profanity of their riding-master; and beyond them their more proficient comrades charged with wild yells upon a long line of stuffed sacks representing a terror-stricken foe waiting patiently to be spitted.

Hard by these perspiring cavalrymen a battery of horse-artillery struggled to master the intricacies of driving with fourteen-horse teams. These were arranged in three rows of four abreast with one pair in lead, while of the drivers three rode the near-horses and three the off-horses, with one driver riding the near-horse of the leading-pair; a complicated business requiring much skill and nicety of judgment in order to get the best out of the horses.

Occasionally an apparently wild chaos of guns and limbers and horses proclaimed that the battery had been successfully brought into action; usually, however, the work was confined to getting the vehicles along under these novel conditions. Alongside our own, French artillery with their natty little "75's" daily strove to put the finis.h.i.+ng touches to their preparation.

It was to the confines of the camp that one went for the final signs that a "show" was surely preparing, for here were all the dumps of material which was to minister to the needs of an army in the field.

Sacks of grain and bales of tibbin stood in huge pyramidal mounds; mult.i.tudinous rows of boxes containing bully-beef, condensed milk, dried fruit, biscuits, cocoa, and tea, seemed to stretch for miles. One walked down streets of bully-beef, as it were; loitered in squares bounded by biscuit-tins; dodged up alleys flanked by tea-chests and cases of "Ideal"

milk. Through the streets and squares came an endless procession of lorries and G.S. waggons, pa.s.sing on their lawful occasions.

After all, the final word rests with the A.S.C. All your preparation, all your study of new methods, all your concentrations of guns and men and horses are futile--and how futile!--if the Army Service Corps says: "Sorry, gentlemen, but we can't feed you; and if we could, there's nothing to carry the food in." In the beginning this was especially true of Egypt; for there was a lamentable shortage of nearly everything that goes to the successful waging of war. It took nearly two years of patient endeavour before an advance could really be considered, and by far the greater part of that time was devoted to ama.s.sing supplies and organising means of transport. It was a colossal task, the magnitude of which was never even imagined by the people at home.

There was practically nothing in the country. We wanted sleepers, rails, and locomotives for the railway; pipes, pumps, and other materials for the water-supply; waggons, motor-lorries and light-cars for transport purposes; sand-carts, cacolets, and ambulances for the R.A.M.C.; and, with the exception of most kinds of vegetables, food.

All this had to be brought overseas.

There may not at first sight seem to be any striking connection between an enemy submarine and the date of an offensive. When, however, that submarine torpedoes and sinks a vessel containing two million pounds' worth of absolutely essential material, such as locomotives or motor-lorries, the connection becomes less, as the date of an offensive becomes more, remote.

In fact, as neither a locomotive nor a motor-lorry, nor a boat wherein to carry them can be built in five minutes, the offensive temporarily recedes from view, until the next boatload of material is safely landed.

Add to this the facts that a hundred and fifty miles of desert had to be cleared of an enemy who fought with the most bitter determination all the way, that a railway had to be constructed, and an adequate water-supply had to be maintained over the same desert, before an offensive on a large scale could even be dreamt about, and the connection mentioned above becomes strikingly obvious.

Those people at home who, from time to time, asked querulously, "What are we doing in Egypt?" should have seen Kantara in 1915, and then again towards the end of 1916. Failing that I would ask them, and also those kindly but myopic souls who said: "What a picnic you are having in Egypt!"

to journey awhile with us through Kantara and across the desert of Northern Sinai. For the former there will be a convincing answer to their query; the latter will have an opportunity of revising their notions as to what really const.i.tutes a picnic.

And we will start now, while the scent is hot, for already the infantry have begun their march and guns and waggons are rumbling along the roads from Suez to Kantara, the gate of the desert.

CHAPTER IV

KANTARA AND THE RAILWAY

At this point it would be as well to confer with the map once more. Be pleased to imagine that we have trekked northwards from Suez, through the beautiful little town of Ismailia, "the emerald of the desert," thence to Ferry Post, which was a position of considerable importance when the Turks attacked the Ca.n.a.l in February 1915, and finally to Kantara, where we will pause to see if an answer can be found to the query propounded in the preceding chapter.

If our inquiring friends had sailed down the Ca.n.a.l in 1915 they would have seen at Kantara--had they noticed the place at all, which is unlikely--a cl.u.s.ter of tents, a few rows of horse-lines, some camels, a white-walled mosque, and a water-tank close to the water's edge; while their nostrils would have been pungently a.s.sailed by the acrid smell of burning camel-dung.

It is at least probable that the last-named would have made the most striking impression. (It is still a powerful characteristic of Kantara.) Certainly they would never have guessed from its appearance what Kantara was destined to become: the terminus of the great military railway running across the desert and through Palestine, a military port of the utmost value, the beginning--or end--of the main road into Palestine, and the biggest base in Egypt.

They are to be excused; no one would. Kantara did not unduly lift its head in those days, and one did not, perhaps, at a first glance fully appreciate its unique geographical position; for it is situated within easy reach of Port Said and Suez, the two great termini of the Ca.n.a.l, and is thus conveniently near the sea.

Moreover, the Turks were only some fourteen miles away, and the time was not yet ripe. It is ill.u.s.trative of our early limitations that our postal designation was "Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Ca.n.a.l Defences." Note that no idea was then entertained of anything beyond defending the great waterway.

Nothing else could be done. We had simply to hold off the Turks and make s.h.i.+ft as best we could, meanwhile collecting materials and making preparations for a definite offensive when the psychological moment arrived.

Originally the troops were on the west bank, near the station, which is on the State Railway from Port Said to Cairo and Alexandria, until some one high in authority suggested that as we were supposed to be defending the Ca.n.a.l, and not the Ca.n.a.l defending us, it would be as well to move over to the other side. The fact is, this would have been done much sooner had it not been that the Turkish attack in February caused what is called a vertical draught in political circles in Egypt, and it needed a very great man indeed to order the move.

We were still dependent on Port Said for rations and supplies, while all the water was brought up from the same place by boat and stored in the big tank. The means of communication between the east and west banks were somewhat primitive. At Kantara a pontoon bridge and a decrepit chain ferry of uncertain moods maintained irregular intercourse with the other side. It used to be one of our diversions to watch the ferry bringing across the daily ration-waggon, whereof the horses, frightened by the clank of the chains, frequently bolted the moment the "door" of the ferry was lowered.

To the right, in the direction of the camp, was a particularly nasty incline, so the waggon usually decided to go to the left through the lines of the Bikanir Camel Corps; whereupon the horses, having an unconquerable aversion to camels, at once stampeded, and our rations were in dire jeopardy. There were, too, a few rowing-boats for pa.s.sengers, but these were either on the other side when you wanted them or were too full of holes to use.

Patrol-duty and spy-hunting were our princ.i.p.al occupations, as in most of the other Ca.n.a.l stations; certainly few dreamed of the greatness in store.

It was not until the spring of 1916 that Kantara dropped its mantle of obscurity and began to take its place as our princ.i.p.al base of operations.

From then onwards the place hummed with ever-increasing activity, for the danger of a further attempt on the Ca.n.a.l was now somewhat remote, and work could be carried on in comparative safety.

One day, perhaps, a scribe will rise up and write of the doings of the Royal Engineers in this war, more particularly of their deeds in such places as Salonica, Mesopotamia, East Africa, and Egypt; where, in addition to the usual shortage of tools and material, they had to wrestle with every conceivable kind of geographical obstacle that a bountiful Nature could place in their way. The present scribe can only write of what they did in Egypt and Palestine, and not half of that can be told.

As far as Kantara is concerned they came, they saw, they conquered. What they saw was a desert which they proceeded to transform into a city, certainly of tents and huts, but "replete with every convenience"--as the house-agents say. As a start they pensioned off the aged chain ferry into decent retirement and built a goodly swing bridge, over which were brought timber to be cut into beams and joists; nuts and bolts and screws, and an olla podrida of materials.

When this was done a gentleman called the a.s.sistant Director of Works came and made a plan of the city. Here a difficulty arose. In this climate a white man has his limitations, and one of them is that hard manual labour when the sun is summer-high is exhausting in the extreme, and is, moreover, explicitly forbidden between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. by the authorities.

It was then that the voice of the Egyptian Labour Corps was heard in the land. Little is known outside the country of this admirable corps, yet it is scarcely too much to say that they saved the situation here as elsewhere. Recruited from almost every cla.s.s of the native community, from the towns and cities, from the Delta, from their "belods" in the far-off Soudan, they came in thousands to dig and delve, to fetch and carry, to do a hundred things impossible for a white man to do in that climate. It is difficult to over-estimate their usefulness; though not as a rule big men, they would carry for considerable distances weights that a far bigger white man failed even to lift.

Their staple diet consisted of bread, onions, lentils, rice, dates, and oil--with perhaps a little meat after sunset. They drank prodigious quant.i.ties of water, and could not in fact go for long without. Firmly but fairly treated by their British officers and non-commissioned officers, they went anywhere and did anything; and wherever you found the sappers, there, too, you would see the khaki galabeahs and hear the eternal chant: "Kam leila, kam yom?" of the E.L.C. Under their hands Kantara took shape.

Supervised and directed by the Engineers, gangs of them made roads, workmanlike affairs calculated to stand the strain shortly to be imposed on them by the daily pa.s.sage of thousands of lorries and waggons. Eastward from the Ca.n.a.l what had been a mere track, fetlock deep in sand, became a broad road macadamised for ten kilos, from which radiated similar roads in all directions, and on which ab.u.t.ted presently the great camps that seemed to spring up like mushrooms in a night.

Alongside the roads other gangs laid watermains connected directly with Port Said, for it soon became utterly impossible to bring an adequate daily supply of water by boat. At certain points stand-pipes were erected so that working-parties and other troops could fill their water-bottles without having to go far to do so; in the hot weather every extra yard tells.

This was the beginning of the pipe-line laid stage by stage as the army advanced, across the desert and far into Palestine. We shall see more of it later.

Then the A.D.W. collected his carpenters and bricklayers and bade them instruct their dusky labourers in the building of gigantic mess-huts, in size and shape not unlike a hangar, capable of providing meal accommodation for hundreds of men at a time; ration and store-huts for the numerous camps; brick enclosures for the kitchens; incinerators, and a thousand and one things necessary for the troops.

It was a liberal education to watch a British N.C.O. working with the gang of natives under his command. Usually his entire vocabulary of Arabic consisted of about ten words, of which the following are a fair sample:--

Aiwa--Yes.

La--No.

Quais--Good.

Mush quais--No good.

Igri!--Quickly!

Ims.h.i.+!--Clear out!

Ta-ala henna--Come here.

With these, comically interpolated with English expletives, he performed marvels, from stone-breaking to bridge-building.

Presumably he gave his instruction by some process of thought-transmission, an art that seems peculiarly suited to the genius of the British soldier.

"Quais!" he would say, when a man had done a job to his liking, and the man's comrades crowded round carefully to examine the work, after which they went away and copied it faithfully. If on the other hand, the man failed to do what was required of him, there would be an aggrieved bellow of: "La! Mush quais!" and the perspiring native would get down to it once more, while the others charged up again to see what in future to avoid.

Moreover, whatever mistakes they made subsequently it was rarely that one.

"Igri, Johnny!" or alternatively and more forcibly, "Get a bloomin' igri on, Johnny!" was the favourite e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of an N.C.O. when he wanted to cure that tired feeling peculiar to the Egyptian native. (All natives answer to the name of Johnny, by the way.)