Our horses and men were deadly tired after their long march, and the
watering problem was acute. There was literally no water between El Arish
and Maghdaba, and the wells at the latter place were in the hands of the
Turks. However, the Imperial Camel Corps, the Anzacs, and the Royal Horse
Artillery, entirely oblivious to everything but their objective, captured
the whole series of redoubts and the survivors of the garrison, who fought
on till they were completely surrounded.

El Arish was chiefly remembered by us because we were able to take all our
clothes off for the first time in ten days, and indulge in the unwonted
luxury of sea-bathing. Throughout all our subsequent wanderings in
Palestine no joy ever approached that of a complete bath; indeed, it is
ludicrous to note the number of places about which everything was
obliterated from the memory save the fact that one had a bath there.

From El Arish onwards the track was now thick with marching men, and at
Sheikh Zowaid, another spot of green in the desert, we came to a great
camp, where it was easy to read the signs of a coming "show." The bivouac
areas were crowded with troops of all arms, and as fast as one brigade left
another marched in to take its place.

There is a subtle difference between a concentration camp near the front
line and one down at a base; something more purposeful, perhaps, in the
former than in the latter. There is, withal, considerable less ceremony.
Here there were canteens--observe the plural--of surpassing magnificence.
In the mere attempt to get near them we experienced something of what our
people were going through at home. The queues were prodigious! As two
canteens were rather close together we had carefully to note which queue we
were in lest we should inadvertently find ourselves at the end of one when
we ought to have been at the head of the other, or _vice versa_. In the
latter case the unobservant one would have his correct and ultimate
destination described with a wealth of epithet and in a variety of
dialects.

The ever-enterprising Y.M.C.A. had a marquee, too, where we could sit in
comparative comfort, where we met men from other units with whom we
exchanged views on how the campaign should be run, on the appalling
iniquity of those A.S.C. people at the base, who lived on the fat of the
land while the fighting men starved--a slight but very popular exaggeration
with the troops--on the possibility of a mail within the next