I went up to the O.Pip at two thirty this morning to give the Ayrshire observing officer any help he could have wanted with regard to the zone. I was up there till five but there was no attack. At six o’clock we had 35 camels, struck our camp, and sent it onto Romani and followed on with the guns; we’ve come into action in the open here, behind the first line redoubts. They sent up three more battalions from the 42nd Division tonight.
From our reconnaissance today the old Turk at last means serious business. One of the Anzac patrols went out to Ogratina this morning but found it held by an advance guard of two hundred Turks who drove them back, though luckily with only a few casualties. This afternoon an Anzac patrol to Katia captured a patrol of these Turks.
Our last aeroplane to reconnoitre tonight has come in with the news that the Turks have now got eight thousand men and six guns at Ogratina (12 miles away) and are digging themselves in there. Their main body is at Bin el Abd.
Divisional headquarters have warned us that the attack is very imminent, and will in all possibility be tonight. If the chance offers, we are to go out on mobile column, but otherwise shall fire from our positions here.
We’ve got about ten thousand men in all here, including the Anzacs and the 157th Brigade at Mahamdiya so ought to be able to hold them; but the worst of it is they attack at night always and not by day.
One of our gravest problems here is the native labour corps. There are about eight thousand of them, and three time during this evening they have tried to break through the front line. They know what’s on just as well as we do, and there is no shadow of doubt that half of them are in the pay of the Turks, but the infantry have now rounded them all up and marshalled them back about three miles down the line.
It is very much a case of sleeping with one eye open tonight.