eep into the range it was
possible for us to feed our front. We had no luck with the weather.
In advancing over the plain the troops had suffered from the abnormal
heat, and many of the wells had been destroyed or damaged by the
retreating enemy. In the hills the troops had to endure heavy rains
and piercingly cold winds, with mud a foot deep on the roads and
the earth so slippery on the hills that only donkey transport was
serviceable. Yet despite all adverse circumstances the infantry and
yeomanry pressed on, and if they did not secure all objectives, their
dash, resource, and magnificent determination at least paved the way
for ultimate triumph.

To the trials of hard fighting and marching on field rations the wet
added a severe test of physical endurance. The troops were in enemy
country where they scrupulously avoided every native village, and no
wall or roof stood to shelter them from wind or water. The heat of
the first two weeks of November changed with a most undesirable
suddenness, and though the days continued agreeably warm on the plain
into December, the nights became chilly and then desperately cold. The
single blanket carried in the pack--most of the infantry on the march
had no blanket at all--did not give sufficient warmth to men whose
blood had been thinned by long months of work under a pitiless Eastern
sun, and lucky was the soldier who secured even broken sleep in the
early morning hours of that fighting march across the northern part of
the Maritime Plain. The Generals, with one eye on the enemy and the
other on the weather, must have been dismayed in the third week of
November at the gathering storm clouds which in bursting flooded the
plain with rains unusually heavy for this period of the year. The
surface is a very light cotton soil several feet deep. When baked by
summer sun it has a cracked hard crust giving a firm foothold for man
and horse, and yielding only slightly to the wheels of light cars;
even laden lorries made easy tracks over the country. The lorries
generally kept off the ill-made unrolled Turkish road which had been
constructed for winter use and, except for slight deviations to avoid
wadis and gullies cut by Nature to carry off surplus water, the supply
columns could move in almost as direct a course as the flying men.
When the heavens opened all this was altered. The first storm turned
the top into a slippery, greasy mass. In an hour or two the rain
soaked down into the light