e Battalion went into well-earned rest.

On the 7th November the Battalion marched out from Regent's Park with 29
officers and 699 men. By the 1st of December it had lost 25 officers and
368 men, more than half its total strength. In the three weeks the men
had not ceased from fighting and marching. They had been often on half
rations, without tobacco or home mail, never sufficiently clad and
without any real rest or sleep. The fighting had been mainly night
attacks, over unknown and unseen ground, to positions which had to be
located by the enemy's fire. Nothing tries troops like fighting in pitch
blackness. Every man is a law unto himself and the only things that tell
are grit and discipline. The Battalion might be weary and footsore,
hungry and tired, battle-weary and nerve-wrecked, yet the men always had
that little reserve of heart left which lifted them through the most
trying day or the most deadly night.

[Illustration: SKETCH SHOWING ROUTE TAKEN BY BATTN. BETWEEN GAZA AND
JAFFA NOVR-DECR. 1917]

The month of November, 1917, marked a great change in the Battalion. The
good days of Sinai, when war meant only an enemy aeroplane in the grey
morning, were gone. Then we knew that to-morrow would be like to-day and
that there would be no gaps in the ranks when next the earth swung into
the morning sunlight. But November tore old associations to shreds. We
left Major Findlay and Lieuts. Townsend and Scott beyond the pleasant
orange-groves of Herbieh, sleeping among old comrades on the bare ridges
of Sineid. Captain Buchanan left us on the road to Emmaus. Lieuts.
M'Lellan and Price and Sillars lay on the rocky hill-top of Beth-horon.
With them a goodly company of non-commissioned officers and men, who
marched with us and drilled with us and fought with us and died gamely
with their faces to the enemy.

CHAPTER XIII

FROM TAHTA TO THE AUJA.

Two companies, one of the Royal Irish Regiment and one of the 7th Dublin
Fusiliers, arrived at 10 p.m. on the 1st of December to relieve us, and
about 11 p.m. 7 officers and 320 N.C.O.'s and men, all that now remained
of the Battalion, turned their backs on Tahta. It was with mixed
feelings that we moved off in the pitch darkness: regret for the many
good fellows who had lost their lives in the last two days: thankfulness
that we ourselves had escaped: joy that at length there was a prospect
of a few days' absence from the enemy's attentions: and hope (vain, it
must be