y was easily overcome by
making a sort of track from one post to the next by clearing away the
scrub, and using this to make a clear edge to the track. The battalion
was augmented about this time by drafts from home, and the following
officers rejoined after having been invalided to England in 1915: Lt.
Douglas Norbury, 2nd-Lt. Bryan and 2nd-Lt. L. G. Harris, while a week
previous Major Allan had been posted to us from the 8th Manchesters as
second in command.

In the army coming events often cast their shadow before them; and this
shadow frequently takes the form of a visit by the Higher Command to the
troops who are to go into action. Hence, when the Divisional Commander,
Major-General Sir W. Douglas, had the 127th Brigade paraded for him at
Gilban, and when he complimented Brigadier-General Ormsby upon the fine
turn out, we gathered that our long period of waiting for the Turk was
over. He told us to husband our water, and these words I am sure rang
through many an officer's head in the following days. The 42nd Division,
he said, were expected to make a great coup, and many prisoners were to
be taken. Two days later the preliminary rumbles of the Battle of
Romani were heard, for the Turk had commenced an artillery and bombing
attack upon the garrisons there.

ROMANI AND KATIA.

The Turkish force, estimated at about 16,000, and much better equipped
than the flying column which had made the first attempt to cross the
canal in March the previous year, had been promised that they should
overwhelm the "small" British garrisons before the Feast of Ramadan.
They would then meet with no resistance and would enter victoriously
into Egypt, a sort of promised land after their hardships across the
desert. Many of them did enter Egypt and reached Cairo, but not in the
way they wished. They were marched through the city as prisoners, and
their presence as such undoubtedly created a profound impression upon
disloyal Egyptians.

Inspired by a number of German officers, however, they fought well and
vigorously in the early stages of the attack upon Romani. They had been
told that once they got on the hills in the neighbourhood of the British
positions they would see the Suez Canal stretched out below them, and
this probably urged them on to make almost superhuman efforts. In front
of Romani, in the region of the Katia oasis, mobile outposts furnished
by the Australian Light Horse were driven in after hard fighting, and
they fe