weighted by the mess box and X.'s valise--with its
extra blanket and extravagant under-clothing. Great would be the
searchings of heart. Still everything always came right in the end--the
Brigade sent us some "buckshee" camels at the eleventh hour, or at worst
we got permission to send some stuff by train, when it could be
delivered in due course somewhere within reach. Something always did
have to go by train anyway, for we had now a second blanket per man, and
there were not enough camels to carry these, so that round about a move
the men had a succession of cold nights, after the second blanket had
gone on, before it could be brought up to the new area.

[Illustration: CAMEL LINES, EL ARISH.]

Long before dawn on a "mobile" day we would rise in the chilly dark--it
was still worse if we were on outpost to boot--and raucous voices would
be heard bidding "No. 3 Platoon, hurry up with those blankets," or "No.
12, fall in for water issue." The blankets carried by camels had to be
rolled lengthways in bundles of ten, and the rolls were then tied on to
the camel saddle, where the outer ones brushed the flanks of that smelly
and freely perspiring creature. Breakfast would be issued--a half
canteen of tea and a bit of ham, taken delicately from the fingers of
the orderly man, as he fished it out from the dixie lid--a small enough
bit it was, too, most mornings. One orderly officer still remembers the
impassioned complaint of a hungry soldier who "wouldn't insult his
youngest child by offering it a meal of that size." And how these
wonderful people, the orderly men, ever managed to divide up their
meagre supply to a ravening company before daylight, when half the men
were engaged on various fatigues--no one but themselves can tell. Then a
hasty loading of camels, and putting on of equipment, and we would fall
in as the day began to break. Company parade and a wait, a move to
battalion parade and a wait, then to Brigade rendezvous if the whole
Brigade were on the move, and another wait, till the pack seemed
dragging at the shoulders like a living thing before the regularly
divided hours of march and halt began. The sun came up and it grew hot,
and at a convenient halt the men would remove the cardigan they had put
on in the shivery hours of darkness. Hotter and hotter but not so
thirsty these days, for we were more acclimatised and this was winter.
At last a call for company commanders and they would ride forward to get
the bi