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Realising that, if General Allenby's operations were successful, and no one doubted that, we should have a period of open warfare when troops would be called upon to make long marches and undergo the privations entailed by transport difficulties, General Bulfin brought as many men as he could spare from the trenches back to Deir el Belah and the coast, where they had route marches over the sand for the restoration of their marching powers.
Another division had been brought up, and the 52nd Lowland Division, who, by way of a startling change, had not been engaged in the first battle, also arrived from Khan Yunus to swell the tide of troops. Accordingly a branch line was laid from Belah down to the seashore, where immense quantities of ammunition and stores were landed from cargo-boats coming direct from Port Said or Alexandria.
By dint of the most extraordinary exertions on the part of the engineers, assisted gamely by the coloured sportsmen in the E.L.C., railhead was brought up to Belah by the first week in April.
The soil between Khan Yunus and Deir el Belah, especially on the west of our railway line, was very sandy, and after the winter rains had knitted it together it began to crumble under the sun's heat, and it soon cut up badly when two or three limbers had passed over it.
To the south numerous black patches indicated the presence of our troops and something of the activity at Belah; but most striking of all to the eye was the endless chain of camels extending to the distant horizon. What an enormous amount of wasted effort there is during a campaign! Herculean labour to meet the need of the moment.
The Royal Air Force provided the pièce de résistance of this period of comparative stagnation. By way of retaliation for a heavy Turkish bombing raid on one of the dumps at Belah, where amongst other things a field-hospital had suffered severely, they collected about thirty machines and flew over to Gaza.
This time was devoted to the equipping of the battalion on the scale applicable to this country, with transport, draught and riding animals, Lewis guns and such other equipment as we required for the operations on which we were to embark. Immediately we were ready to move, we were railed up to the Front, to Belah, which, at that time, was railhead.
Huge ordnance and supply dumps arose, workshops and depots were to be seen on all sides, a great bakery was installed and even a mineral-water factory. The importance of Ludd far eclipsed the quondam glory of Belah, and came nearer to rivalling that of Kantara. To an Englishman, the chief interest of Ludd lies in its being the place of martyrdom and burial of St. George.
And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, which Asenath the daughter of Potipherah priest of On bare unto him. And the sons of Benjamin were Belah, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim, and Ard. These are the sons of Rachel, which were born to Jacob: all the souls were fourteen. And the sons of Dan; Hushim.
The railway had to be brought up from Belah, no easy task in the rainy season; for if laying the line across the desert had been difficult, it was infinitely worse building it from Belah across the Shephaleh to the British line. The Wadi Ghuzzee was a raging torrent by now, and even a few miles from its mouth the turbulent waters were a constant source of worry and anxiety to the engineers.
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