Author: Alice Rhodes

Reveille at 4 am, exercised the horses. We are going to try and get everything done before 8 am if possible in the future. Been very hot all day thought not as bad as yesterday. I bathed at six thirty this evening; the water wasn’t smelling particularly nice and was rather greasy – small wonder with thousands of men bathing in it every day – but at any rate it was wet which is the great thing. Fifty men arrived from Railhead and Hill 70 yesterday, and thirty today, all with sunstroke.

A real scorcher today, by 9 o’clock in the morning it was 106 degrees in the shade and reached a climax at 3 pm by being 117 degrees. Tried to bathe in the morning but it was too hot to enjoy it. Osman, the native who comes down with things from Port Said, says it hasn’t been as hot for a good many years. There was a scorching hot breeze (khamseen) this afternoon which made things worse. We lay and gasped and dripped, only moving just to see the horses watered and fed. I hope we don’t get any more days as hot.

A large French trooper full of Japanese troops went down the canal this evening. I wonder if they are going to France?* Bathed about 7:30, but still felt just as hot afterwards.

*I heard officially later that they were French colonial troops from Cochin China, bound for Salonika.

From six to eight this morning General Parker had our brigade and the 1/2nd out practicing brigade together. I was doing orderly officer to Colonel Robertson. I had a lovely bathe this morning and stayed in nearly two hours!! The morning was quite as hot as yesterday, but a strongish wind got up in the afternoon and there were one or two small sandstorms.

An intelligence report sent round to us this evening from one of our agents at El Arish says that with the German forces there there are six long-bodied dogs with short legs and that they come when they are whistled for. It sounds as if the Boche was going to find some use for a Dachshund other than making sausages.

I bathed before breakfast. A “pow wow” by the Col. on brigade tactics during the morning. Too hot to bathe at midday, had to just sit and drip like a Turkish bath. I had a topping mail from home this afternoon. Bathed about six thirty. It’s been over 100 degrees in the shade again today, too much of a good thing.

Orderly dog today. I took the horses for a short early exercise to work the stiffness off. They all seem to be picking up again, and don’t look so bad as I expected to see them. Bathed at midday.

Orders came in this evening that we are to send out a party to bury the horse at Hill 40. We had tried to arrange for the camp out there to do it as they are nearest, but they weren’t having it. Being the unfortunate Orderly dog, I had to go out with the party. We left here at five thirty and had a four mile ride, a two hour dig, and four miles back, and got back here about ten pm, very dozy.

It’s been a grilling day again today, over 100 degrees in the shade.

One of the sick horses died in the night and I am not surprised, as yesterday was a very long trek for the climate. We spent a very uncomfortable day on Hill 70, a broiling sun and no shade whatsoever, and clouds of flies swarming everywhere and tormenting us all day. Jeans and the Colonel rode out during the morning and said we were to march the remaining seven miles back to camp in the cool of the evening. We left just after four and got back to Kantara about six. We lost the other sick horse just before we got to Hill 40.

I had a bathe soon after seven and it was nice to get in the canal again. “Kitty” has hardly turned a hair and was as happy and gay as ever coming in tonight, but I hope the staff won’t play any more games like that with us. We hear they are going to send us to Mahamdiya when they can find more water there.

Up at four this morning and Badcock and I with twenty men built a temporary ramp of sleepers and rails at the siding for entraining the guns. Elliott and Kenning marched to Railhead with the horses leaving at 5:30 this morning. It took them about six hours.

We were to follow with the men, guns, and baggage, leaving Kantara about 3 pm. But just before the train was due to go, we had orders from the B.G.R.A. cancelling the move, so everything has to be unpacked. I went up to Railhead with Elliott and Kenning, and my own kits and forage and food for two days, as the horses have got to stay there till further orders.

When I got to Railhead I found that the orders were again cancelled and that the horses were to return to Hill 70 for the night (15 miles back towards Kantara), the railway had got about three miles beyond the old Railhead and of course the horses had gone on there, so I had our truck of forage uncoupled and then went on till I found the horses. I got on my mare who was with them and we rode back to the old Railhead where we halted for a couple of hours, and watered and fed our horses (a thousand gallon tank of water had been sent up by rail and the water was hand pumped out into canvas troughs).

We left Railhead about 6:30 pm and got to Hill 70 at 10:30 pm., having had two short halts on the way. It was a nice cool night and a bright moon. At Hill 70 we watered and fed and had come down near the railway line to bivouac for the night. The horses have done over fifty miles today through deep sand all the time and mostly under a hot sun, and two of them look rather bad.

I shall soon be rolled in my waterproof sheet and fast asleep. The men are pretty tired and small wonder.

I took the early exercise this morning. I saw Edwards of the Somerset Horse Battery who came out on the same boat as us from England. They have just come up from Ishmailia and at present are camped on the west bank on the same place as we were. They expect to be pushed up to Romani in a few days, attached to the 3rd Anzac Mounted Division.

Bathed at midday. A lecture this afternoon by a medical officer on ‘Flies’. We came away feeling quite sick – his descriptions of the way they carried disease and how they put it in your food were too revolting for anything.

We are moving off tomorrow, so have been busy packing up this evening. Some of the West Ridings came in to have a cheery evening tonight with the result that we didn’t get to bed till after one. I hadn’t been in bed long before there was a very loud report, just like a bomb dropping close outside my tent, followed by an agonising yell. I looked out and saw Franklyn’s tent had collapsed and he really thought for a moment that the old Turk had dropped a bomb on him. As it was, it was only his tent pole that had snapped, without any apparent reason. Enemy aeroplanes dropped seventeen bombs on Port Said yesterday, so it is quite on the cards we shall get another visit.

The Intelligence Dept. sent us round a report saying that at one place in Sinai the Turks under Sirri Bay have got a force consisting of 800 mixed Germans and Austrians, 3000 Turks, 700 Syrians, and 1000 Arab camelmen, also guns and aeroplanes, and they have got other smaller forces dotted about so it looks as thought we may be busy.

Orderly dog today but Kenning took the early exercise for me and I hogged it in bed till 6:30, as we’d had a longish day yesterday. Bathed soon after stables, but as we’ve been the battery standing by all day we would only go down two at a time.

Experiments have been made during the day as to the best way of getting the guns over the heavy sand. We tried a team of twelve horses first, two abreast, then two lines of six abreast, and lastly three lines of four abreast, and I think we shall probably use the last method. So far the order stands good that our battery is to go out first, probably by sections, one on Thursday night and the other on Friday night.

The divisional band played tonight. We see in the Morning Post that came out last mail a Turkish report claiming that on Easter Eve one of their aeroplanes did a record journey and dropped bombs on the British Camp at Kantara. I suppose someone has got an iron cross for that lie.

I got up at three o’clock this morning and we got aboard a truck on the 4:30 “works” train for Railhead. It was pretty cold too until the sun got up – the sunrise over the sand hills was a gorgeous sight. There were horses to meet us at Railhead and also the Colonel of the infantry brigade who are going to hold Mahamdiya with us, and several engineer officers. We left Railhead about seven with a troop of Anzacs as escort; they were chiefly for flank guards to prevent us being fired on unexpectedly by Turks or Bedouins, as there are several parties of them about in that district.

We first rode due East to Romani, very heavy going through deep sand and under a hot sun. We passed just to the north of Romani. There it is intended to make Railhead, and at the rate they are laying the line at present (half to three quarters of a mile a day) they ought to reach it in a week or so.

From there we rode pretty well due North till we came to Mahamdiya, which is nothing more than a big sand ridge and some old ruins of a roman fort on the coast, but a very good defensive position as it is pretty well a certainty the Turks will attack by the Northern Route because the sand is harder and there is more water. We ought to give them a pleasant surprise. There are some splendid gun positions there and the camp will be on the sea shore behind the ridge. The great trouble is water: there are several oases dotted about, a little clump of date palms among the sand dunes, but the water in most of them is brackish. But there is one oasis three miles south of our position where the R.E. think they might sink a well and find good water, but it is a long way to take the horses.

We spent about an hour at Mahamdiya and then rode back to Railhead. By the time we got there we’d done just over twenty miles. We got a train back from there at four thirty and got back to Kantara soon after six.

Our orders at present are that our battery leaves here Wednesday evening, the guns to go up by train and the horses march. It is about twenty odd miles. We are to spend all Thursday at Railhead, and on Thursday evening are to hook double teams – that is to say twelve horses – into each gun and wagon and make the best of our way to Mahamdiya. It is a good eight miles through very heavy sand, but I expect we shall strike due North till we reach the coast, and then go East following along the coast on the harder sand. They are giving us twenty odd camels to take all our tents and stores. The idea is that the other two batteries of the brigade wait for a week or two till the railway is more advanced and the water supply more certain, and then join us there. But I shouldn’t be surprised if our orders are cancelled and we all have to wait for the railway, as it would be asking for trouble to send only a small force out with us with no chance of getting reinforcements up quickly. The old Turk is no fool and will probably try and mop up every small detached force we send out, and Bir-El-Adb is not very many miles away and we know he’s got a strong force there. But still ours is not to reason why.

I found a mail in when we got back to camp this evening, heard good news from all at home. Someone was sent some of the daily papers of April 25th and there was the account of the Katia and Duedar fight of April 23rd in them. It’s really scandalous they don’t tell people more – our accounts are quite as bad as the German ones.

Elliott caught a bass tonight, quite two pounds. He went out last night again after we’d turned in and got three more small ones with a landing net made of a mosquito net and an electric torch. The fish that come into the shallows seem to get dazed by the light and are fairly easy to catch.