order into Palestine, we were actually a
long way from the land of milk and honey; and it may here be stated that
the troops saw little milk and less honey even when they did at last reach
that delectable spot.

In the coastal sector--we rose to the dignity of "sectors" when trench
warfare began--the infantry amused themselves by making a series of
night-raids the cumulative effect of which was considerable. They were
carried out on a small scale with meticulous regard for detail, as was very
necessary if only because the storming parties had rarely less than a
thousand yards to cover before they reached their objectives.

Most of these operations were for possession of the sandstone cliffs on the
Turkish side of the wadi and the terrain was generally the beach itself,
which from Belah to beyond Gaza was rocky and dangerous and in few places
more than fifty yards wide. At the mouth of the wadi, which had to be
crossed, there were shifting sands extremely difficult to negotiate
especially at high tide. After some weeks of successful nibbling, which
exasperated the Turks into a vast, useless expenditure of ammunition, the
infantry firmly established themselves along the coast to a point just
south of Gaza, beyond which it was not expedient to go. Here they proceeded
to make homes for themselves by digging holes in the face of the cliffs and
lining them with sand-bags.

They became, in fact, cave-dwellers, though they certainly had army rations
to eat in place of the raw bear of their troglodytic ancestors; and their
caves were not dug here and there according to the indiscriminating taste
of the diggers. They were cunningly conceived with a keen eye to defence
as well as comfort. So elaborate was the system that it was universally
known as the "Labyrinth," and no apter name could have been devised.

Long months afterwards, when "the strife was o'er, the battle done," I rode
along this stretch of beach where the cliffs for upwards of a mile were
honeycombed with caves of different sizes, all of them made by the hand of
man. There were neat steps cut in the sandstone leading from one to the
other; narrow ledges along which you crawled, clinging like a fly to the
face of the cliff; and outside some of the caves was a kind of sandstone
chute which presumably served the same purpose as did the banisters of
irresponsible boyhood's days. I cannot imagine what else the occupants
could use them for, nor when they had reached the