This kind of
alpine-climbing-cum-fighting was as different from the fighting on the
desert as it could well be, and only the infantryman, who did most of it,
could tell you which he detested the more. As one of them said, in the
Judaean hills you were mountaineer, pack-mule, and soldier all in one; and
it is not for a mere helpless artilleryman to paint the lily.

When Nebi Samwil had been captured and consolidated the whole line took
root, as it were, and prepared to beat off the increasingly violent attacks
of the Turks, while the engineers started to improve the roads and other
means of communication. The railway had to be brought up from Belah, no
easy task in the rainy season; for if laying the line across the desert had
been difficult, it was infinitely worse building it from Belah across the
Shephaleh to the British line. The Wadi Ghuzzee was a raging torrent by
now, and even a few miles from its mouth the turbulent waters were a
constant source of worry and anxiety to the engineers. I believe I am right
in saying that three times in the winter months was the bridge over the
wadi washed away by the floods, and each time the engineers had incredible
difficulty in building it up again. While it was down all traffic beyond
Belah was necessarily suspended and troops coming up the line from Kantara
were often three weeks on the journey to their respective units.

Frequently enough when men did at last arrive at their destinations it was
only to find that their battery or battalion had moved to some other part
of the front, generally with an unpronounceable name of which nobody had
ever heard! Few things are more wearisome than searching for a unit in such
a country as Palestine, especially in that part which comprises the Judaean
hills. Men coming up from the base in those winter months were often given
three, four, and sometimes six days' rations, so difficult was it for a man
to reach his unit.

The Turkish railway from Beit Hanun relieved the pressure to some extent,
when the damage it had suffered from our shells had been made good. The
only way it could be used was in conjunction with the mercantile marine,
who landed stores on to the beach as they had done at Belah before the
second battle of Gaza. One such landing-place was at Wadi Sukerier, a
bleak, inhospitable swamp north of Ascalon, where a great dump was
established in the mud, the supplies from which were transported north by
camel convoys. The great obs