sentery, heat,
flies, bad water, no water--they took them as a matter of course, and went
forward nor stayed for any man.

In the course of twelve months they cleared the enemy out of a hundred and
fifty miles of desert over which they built the railway, laid the
pipe-line, and made the wire road, that their comrades who followed later
might come safely and quickly to the Great Adventure over the border.

And these are their memorials, for they did a great work.

CHAPTER VI

"THE LONG, LONG TRAIL"

The British soldier on the march is really rather a wonderful person; he is
so entirely self-contained. This, by the way, refers not so much to his
manners as to his methods.

To begin with, he has to carry all his goods and chattels on his person.
The infantryman has his pack and equipment, a wonderful assortment of
articles that bristle out from him like the quills on a porcupine, and
which he generally describes as "The Christmas Tree"; with which, too, he
can do most things, from preparing a meal for himself to digging a trench.

The "gunners" and the cavalry, while fortunately for them not obliged to
carry a pack, may take only what they can cram into their haversacks or
pack on to their saddles, and that is necessarily somewhat limited in
quantity. Kit bags and tents are of course left behind. In fact, when we
struck the caravan road leading into Palestine we were destined for many
months to a nomadic, gipsy-like existence, sleeping under the stars, and
scratching for our meals with what means our ingenuity could devise.

I remember seeing, the morning we left Kantara, a steam-roller puffing
stolidly along the road--a ludicrous sight, too, there in the desert--and
it seemed when we left it behind that we were snapping the last link which
bound us to civilisation. As it transpired later, this particular trek was
considerably more civilised than any we had hitherto taken; we had, in
fact, most of the ha'pence and few of the kicks experienced by our
predecessors. Indeed, we had ample opportunity of seeing how much they had
accomplished, and how extraordinarily well it had been done.

As I have said, the railway for the most part ran parallel with the road,
and at no time was it more than a mile away. Every third day the train
brought a load of forage and rations to the appointed stations on the line,
to which each unit sent its representatives to bring back supplies for
three days.

We had, if I remember