With Our Army in Palestine Part 4

"Imshi!" was the N.C.O.'s great word, however; he used it on all occasions implying a departure from his presence; when a man's face displeased him, for instance, and when he dismissed them for the day. They made a weird combination, these two, the dominant white man and the dusky native; but they built Kantara--and a few other places.

As the camp grew and grew so also did its needs. The Army Service Corps arrived in force and demanded for themselves a great depot, covering many acres, which was to be the Main Supply of the army advancing into Palestine. Materials and stores could not now be brought in sufficient quant.i.ties by the State railway on the other bank, and the traffic over the Ca.n.a.l bridges was becoming increasingly heavy. Accordingly the engineers found another outlet for their energies: they created a fleet!

Jetties and wharves were built on the east bank, and to them came presently numbers of strange vessels, broad in the beam like a barge, and with monstrous lateen sails that looked too unwieldy to be furled or set; and on their bows they bore the painted letters "I.W.T., R.E." and a numeral.

They were native feluccas, garnered from every ca.n.a.l and waterway in Egypt.

They brought grain and fodder for the horses, rations for the men, vegetables of all kinds from the fertile province of Fayoum, stores for the roads; and at Port Said and Suez material from the outside world was trans-shipped on to them for conveyance to Kantara. Loaded almost down to the water's edge they came to the jetties, tied up, emptied, and went away for more. Great wooden warehouses were built to receive the cargoes, and almost daily the number grew until they extended for miles down the Ca.n.a.l bank.

It would appear that the zenith of construction had now been reached, but as it became increasingly evident that the Turks would never again reach the Ca.n.a.l, so it was obvious that something more ambitious must be attempted, if the great advance was to be carried out successfully. For the feluccas were limited by their size to carrying articles of small compa.s.s, capable of being unloaded by hand; the larger implements of war were beyond them.

Thus the engineers had to tackle the enormously difficult problem of widening and deepening the Ca.n.a.l sufficiently to allow ocean-going steamers to come close in to the bank and discharge their cargoes directly on to the sh.o.r.e; this would serve the double purpose of time-saving in the transport of material, and lightening the strain on the ports of Alexandria and Port Said, which had borne a heavy burden since the war began.

It was no mean undertaking to make fundamental alterations in a great artery like the Suez Ca.n.a.l. No diminution in the traffic was permissible, since not only ourselves but the larger needs of the troops in France had to be considered. Supplies were being brought from Australia and India in large quant.i.ties, and most of the vessels had to pa.s.s through the Ca.n.a.l.

Thus the alterations had to be carried out while, as it were, the day's work was going on, and it took months of patient toil before the end was in sight. Indeed, I am not sure that the troops were not already in Palestine before the first ocean-going steamer drew up to its berth in the newly-made docks.

What made the business more difficult still was the incredible shortage of skilled labour. Owing to our deplorable predilection in the army for putting square pegs into round holes, there were trained engineers sweeping out mess-huts or carrying stretchers; capable mechanics digging holes or grooming horses; and skilled draughtsmen addressing envelopes and writing: "Pa.s.sed to you, please, for information and necessary action," on doc.u.ments referring to the momentous question as to whether No. 54321 Dr. Jones, R.H.A., should have a pair of new breeches at the public expense or pay for them out of his beer-money. All were very necessary tasks, no doubt, but requiring the right men to do them; and the engineers very urgently wanted the right men, too, not merely for making the docks, but for their multifarious activities in the field. In their search for them they went through the army like a scourge.

A trade-testing centre was established at Kantara to which from every unit in the field or at the base came butchers, bakers, miners, moulders, bra.s.s-founders, electrical, mechanical, and civil engineers, draughtsmen, men accustomed to all kinds of steel and iron work, and railwaymen. All were tested practically in their respective trades by an expert in that trade, after which they were graded according to their proficiency and knowledge, transferred to the engineers, and sent about their proper business. By this system the cream of the skilled trades was obtained; and there was the double satisfaction that the men were not only working at the jobs for which they were best suited, but were helping materially to win the war.

The scheme went further. As the supply of really skilled men was necessarily somewhat small, and the need great, the apprentices and semi-qualified men were eliminated from other units by the same process of selection, sent to Kantara and given the opportunity of learning more of their trade, being tested from time to time to learn the measure of their progress, until they could take their places amongst the qualified men.

Thus a constant supply was more or less a.s.sured, and the O.C. of a Field Company of Engineers requiring, say, a fitter or a wheelwright or a moulder, merely asked for them in much the same way as one orders a ton of coal; if the goods, so to speak, were to be had, he got them.

So sedulously were the records of trades kept that the authorities never lost touch of the men, especially of those engaged in intricate or delicate trades. On one occasion a skilled instrument-maker journeyed 1200 miles to Kantara in order to do a job for which he happened to be the only man at the moment available! And similar cases might be multiplied almost indefinitely.

While provision was laboriously being made to fit Kantara for its mission as a great base, means had to be prepared to send forward supplies and material to the army in the desert, now feeling its way towards Romani. One of the delights of the Egyptian campaign was that no sooner was one obstacle overcome than another rose up to bar the way. It was a useful aid to the development of character, no doubt, and at any rate a powerful incentive to the acquirement of a comprehensive vocabulary.

There was this ever-recurring question of transport. Hitherto the bulk of the carrying-work had been done by the much-abused camel, the ideal animal for the job, for he thrives where a horse will starve, and he need not be watered more than once every three days, or even less often, if necessary.

His only drawback is his comparative slowness of gait. He can do his steady two and a half miles an hour for ever and ever, but if an army suddenly takes it into its head to advance twenty miles the camel must somehow go with it, and some quicker form of transport must be organised behind to supplement his work.

Thus, born of urgent need, the Railway Operating Division came into being, and set about the construction of a railway. The difficulties at the outset were enormous. Not only was the line required quickly to follow in the wake of the now steadily advancing army, but transport had to be arranged to bring material from the docks to the railway in embryo. Again the camels stepped into the breach, and daily long convoys carrying stones and sleepers and rails went forward into the desert and dropped their loads at places appointed along the proposed route.

Another and more serious trouble was the lack of men; for if the engineers had to scour the army for men to make and organise the water-transport, they had to use a fine comb to get the railwaymen, since only a small percentage had been allowed to enlist in the first place. However, by the aid of the system aforementioned, they got together sufficient to meet the needs of the moment. The bulk of the men had originally been recruited from two of the great English railways, and either by accident or design, probably the latter, the authorities kept the men from each railway in separate companies.

The keenness was terrific. Right from the moment when the railway first thrust its shining tentacles across the desert, there was a compet.i.tion between the two as to which could lay the longer stretch of line in a day's work. Aided and abetted by the "Camels" and the E.L.C., they progressed at an astonishing pace, and in spite of all drawbacks from sand and the terrible heat, an average rate of one mile of line a day was maintained.

To the uninitiated it may seem that railway-making in the desert is a mere matter of dropping sleepers on to the sand as far as you want to go, bolting the rails on to them, and running non-stop expresses at once. On the contrary, except that no rivers had to be bridged nor tunnels made, laying a line over the desert requires at least as much care and preparation as elsewhere. For if there is one thing certain about this unchanging land, it is that the contours of the desert are eternally changing. The sand is continually silting, and a khamseen may alter the whole surface of the land, yet to the eye it remains substantially the same. It is only when you come to study the desert in terms of the theodolite, so to speak, that you discover its mutability; that which is a hill to-day may be a plain to-morrow.

All this had to be considered in making the railway-bed, which must have a firm foundation of stones and a suitable embankment. To put a mile of line down in a day and maintain that rate is, then, a fairly creditable feat.

Each company worked alternate days; sometimes one company would beat the record by a few yards, sometimes the other; there was little to choose between them from the point of view of efficiency.

Here is a story, which I like to think is true, of their intense rivalry and its results.

As the railway was approaching Romani--this was just before the battle--one company laid down a stretch of line beating the previous best by some distance, after which they mentioned the matter casually to their rivals, and retired to rest in the fond belief that they had effectually "put it acrost 'em." Life is full of surprises, however. In the chill hour before dawn the next day a band of soldiers, breathing profanity and determination, crept across the desert to the line, and made an attack on that record. All through the day they toiled, pausing seldom for rest or refreshment, and oblivious to everything but their work. Towards sunset a triumphant shout proclaimed that victory had been won. At about the same moment from the rear came another shout, which had in it nothing of triumph, the shout of a man anxious to do some one grievous bodily hurt.

It was a heated staff-officer who had been sent by the general to know what the d.i.c.kens they meant by getting in advance of the troops, whether they knew that they were pushing the railway right into the Turkish lines, and whether it was intended for our use or the Turks', etc. etc.

It had apparently taken the staff most of the day to see what was going on, but the facts were none the less correct; for the railwaymen in their enthusiasm had failed to notice anything but their general direction, which was, of course, perfectly accurate; the fact that they had indeed advanced beyond our lines had utterly escaped them! Later, the general is reported to have written praising the keenness of the two companies, but recommending that in future zeal should be tempered with discretion.

Whether the story be true or not is really immaterial, because the incident could quite easily have happened with these railwaymen; it took much to stop them.

Not only here but at Kantara a like activity prevailed. A line was laid running alongside the Ca.n.a.l bank, so that the wharves, and later the docks, were in direct connection with the main line: thus ships and feluccas could be unloaded direct on to a train. From this line also branch lines were made running through the main supply and ordnance depots, again to preserve continuity and save time. A network of sidings was constructed, and soon covered many acres of ground; sheds were built for the locomotives; repairing plant was installed and signalling apparatus erected; handsome stone buildings sprang up as station offices; and, in short, one morning Kantara woke up to find itself the possessor of a railway terminus complete in every essential detail, even down to a buffet for the troops.

Up to the end the engineers were incessantly extending and improving Kantara. In time substantial churches were built alongside Dueidar Road; playing areas were laid out and cinemas erected for the troops; and the Y.M.C.A. built lounges, concert-halls, and tea-rooms. Of these it is not necessary to speak, for they were but the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the place.

The princ.i.p.al attempt has been to present Kantara as it looked to us when we crossed the bridge that moonlight night in the early spring of 1917: a cl.u.s.ter of feluccas with their great masts bared to the sky; long lines of neat huts fringing the Ca.n.a.l; behind them a vast white city; away to the north the twinkling lights of the railway station; then, when the last gun and the last waggon had rumbled over the bridge, the broad highroad leading eastward to the desert and thence into Palestine.

It seemed a very miracle to us, who had lived there little more than a year before, that so much had been done. Possibly our inquiring friends, had they been riding with us that night, through those _five miles_ of sleeping tents, would have believed the evidence of their own eyes.

If visual testimony were insufficient, let the simple fact be recorded that we had to stop and ask the way!

CHAPTER V

THE WIRE ROAD

I suppose there is on each of our many battle-fronts at least one familiar road; by which I mean a road traversed regularly of necessity by the many, and remembered afterwards with feelings either of anger, of respect, or of loathing, almost as one regards a human being.

I have heard men who fought in France speak of a certain road between Bapaume and Peronne with a metaphorical lift of the cap; a famous Irish division who came to Egypt from Salonica, utter winged words when they refer to a heart-breaking road in that malaria-stricken hole; and presumably it is the same elsewhere.

We, too, have our road--perhaps the most famous, as it is the oldest, of them all. It is famous not merely in its present aspect, but chiefly for its history, extending almost as far back into antiquity as Time itself, and for its hallowed memories; it has, moreover, seen many, many wars.

It is the great caravan route from Egypt into Palestine. Eastwards from Kantara it runs, across the desert of Northern Sinai to El Arish, thence onwards to Jerusalem and Damascus. Phoenicians, Romans, Moslems, and Jews have traded and fought over it. Napoleon came this way in his hurried dash into Egypt, and here, too, most of his army left their scattered bones. It is hallowed by the journey of Joseph and Mary with the infant Christ, fleeing into Egypt from the wrath of Herod.

Nineteen hundred odd years later the British soldier fought his way eastwards and northwards over the same route on his mission to free the Holy Land from the ambitions of a modern Herod. Almost the sole reason for its existence is the wells. The original road, considered as such, is singularly unimpressive; it is, in fact, little more than a mere track in the desert, when it is visible at all, for the ever-shifting sand obliterates as fast as they are made the imprints of marching feet.

The wells regulate the general direction, as on all the great caravan routes, and also the distance of a day's march. One may be quite certain that the ancients did no unnecessary wandering in the desert, but took the shortest cut from one well to another. Hence, the track follows its milestones, as it were, and not _vice versa_.

We did the same, and until the laying of the pipe-line rendered the army more or less independent of them, all the marching and fighting in this desert were for the possession of the wells that marked the old-time halting-places. Nowadays, the military road runs alongside the older one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FELUCCAS BRINGING SUPPLIES TO KANTARA see p. 54. [_To face page 64_]

It is no ponderous affair of logs, or stones, or asphalt; a very simple, homely thing went to its making: just wire-netting, with a two-inch mesh, the kind one uses for the fowl-run! Laid in three rows, and pegged down on to the sand, it is wide enough for infantry comfortably to march four abreast. Simple though it sounds, it is astonishingly effective, and, indeed, the sensation is almost that of walking on a hard, macadamised road.

The cavalry may not use the road, nor the transport, nor the artillery; it is exclusively for the infantry, and deservedly so, for only they, who, carrying a rifle and pack, have trudged along ankle-deep over that blistering desert, know what a relief it is to march for an hour or two on a good road. And further, it is the infantry who bear the heat and burden of the day. All through the summer of 1916--and I have said elsewhere what manner of summer it was--they fought and died that the way might be made clear for those to follow them, and that the engineers could lay the road some of them would never use.

People at home generally are under the impression that there was no fighting in Egypt at all for two years; that the troops there had no difficulties to encounter nor hardships to endure; and that life, in fact, was one grand, sweet song.

Ask the men from Lancashire, or the Scottish Territorial division who came from the horrors of Gallipoli, or the Yeomanry, or the Australian Light Horse, what they think of the song of the Sinai desert, as they heard it in 1916!

I fear that in this matter I am somewhat like Mr. d.i.c.k with King Charles'

head; yet it is maddening, and indeed most monstrously unfair, that the work of these splendid men should pa.s.s unnoticed and unsung. It need hardly be said that I am not complaining on my own behalf. Heaven forbid! At the time the wire road was being made, we were away out East of Suez, digging holes and making other roads, with merely the discomforts peculiar to the place to endure.

But to the pioneers the glory, who conquered both the desert and the Turks.

There was none of the pomp and circ.u.mstance of war about their work, no great concentration of men and horses and guns, no barrage nor heavy gunfire for days in preparation for an attack, no aircraft--though the ancient buses in use did wonderful work, considering their limitations--nothing but a few thousand men in their shirt sleeves; and it was out of their sweat and blood that the way was made clear for them that followed.

Everywhere and in every respect, save courage and endurance, the enemy held the advantage. During his slow retreat the choice of ground almost invariably lay with him; and the Turk has a nice eye for position, as we found on many occasions bitterly to our cost. Nor did he miss any opportunity of making a surprise attack, as on that black Easter Sunday of 1916, when he crept up and fell upon the Yeomanry at Katia and Oghratina, two cavalry posts east of Kantara. Under cover of a desert mist the Turks crawled past the outposts and fell upon the sleeping men in overwhelming numbers.