CHAPTER IX

THE DESERT

I know more about the desert in Egypt than any other part of it, for it
was on the desert we trained. There were sham fights galore, but it
was mostly squad and company drill, until if some devil had scooped out
our brain-boxes and filled them with sawdust we could have carried out
the orders just as well. In fact, one fellow must have gone mad with
the monotony of it and perpetrated the rhyme, to the tune of "The Red,
White, and Blue":

"At the halt, on the left, form platoons,
At the halt, on the left, form platoons,
If the odd numbers don't mark time two paces,
How the hell can the boys form platoons?"

I don't know whether the author was ever found, but I know plenty that
were laid out for singing it. We began to have a sinking feeling that
we would not be in the real scrap at all, for a good part of our time
was taken up in forming "_hollow square_," a formation that is famous
in the British army as having been only once broken, but is only of
value against savages, and "furphies" (unfounded rumors) spread that we
were going into Darkest Africa or the Soudan. However, we also
practised echelon for artillery formation, that is, breaking a company
into chunks and throwing it about at unequal distances, so that a shell
falling on one chunk would not wipe any of the others off the map.
Then there was more gloom, for that looked as if the war was real, and
there must be something in what the papers were saying after all.
About this time some of the boys' letters began to contain more war
news even than the papers, for the padre, who was regimental censor,
informed us that if he let our mail go home unpencilled there would be
many mothers weeping at the danger their boys were in, as they
described fierce battles in the desert. Even as it was, letters were
published in home papers that showed our regiment to have been four
times annihilated while we were in training! The only shots these
fellows heard all day were the popping of the corks in the wet canteen!
(No charge to the "drys" for this story!)

And then, of course, we route-marched--in the desert, please remember;
a very different thing, Mr. Rookie, to the same thing on made roads!
For one thing, we were not supposed to do more than fifteen miles a
day, but on the desert there were no milestones, and the distance was
"estimated" by the officer in command. Some of these officers must
have been city treasurers in