nestling in the hills the two Beth Horons, and south of us lay the
picturesque capital of the tribe of Dan.

While we were still settling down we sent 4 officers and 200 other
ranks daily on road-making fatigue, but later on the entire battalion
was turned on to repair the road from Latron to Beit Sara. At the same
time Captain Andrew was busy with a large class teaching the Lewis gun
to officers and men, Mr Scott's flags "spoke" from every knoll, and Mr
Gall smartened the backward squad on the drill-ground below. We had
quite a good rifle range, and quite a fair football field, and life
was really very pleasant.

On 18th February Lieut.-Colonel Younger rejoined us. He had gone off
to Cairo on leave where he was seized by Dr Tuke and put to bed in the
Citadel.

We had now pretty well completed our road, so on the 24th we left our
comfortable camp and marched six miles to our new bivouac area in an
olive grove just north of Beit Sira. We had to make a new road to link
up with the Ram Allah road at Tattenham Corner. It was a most
picturesque wadi covered with olive trees, and what was more important
with any amount of stones suitable for road-making just at hand. On
the Latron-Beit Sira road stones were scarce and had to be man-handled
in limbers or baskets often quite a distance, but here were stones of
every size within a few yards of the road. It was a 16-foot road
bottomed with large stones, then two layers of smaller stones and
blinded with gravel. Everyone went at it like a schoolboy on holiday,
and we completed our road two days before scheduled time, on one
occasion actually doing 1-1/2 yards of road per man.

On 5th March we left our camp going by our newly completed road to
Tattenham Corner, into the Wadi Ain Arik, and up the Wadi Sad to our
halting place not far from the village of Ain Arik. We were now
campaigning again and our baggage was cut down to the bare
establishment, with one notable exception--oatmeal. We had arranged
for a regular supply from home to start as soon as we went abroad, and
though we were often short of many things we always had our oatmeal.
Our supplies had accumulated while we had been in the hills, and we
now found ourselves with about 30 cwt. for which there was no room on
the transport. This we were absolutely determined not to lose, so we
sent it on ahead about ten miles and dumped it in a wadi with a couple
of men to look after it.

Next day we continued our journey throug