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For a month the Turks did nothing but keep the British troops occupied by petty raids and feint attacks, which were worrisome, but better than utter stagnation. On March 22, 1915, a Turkish column with guns and cavalry appeared near the canal near El Kubri, and their advance guard of about 400 encountered a patrol of nine men under Havildar Subha Singh of the Fifty-sixth Punjab Rifles.
We were to trek to El Kubri, a post on the Canal near Suez, there to await train accommodation. This time the orders were not cancelled. Having got us to El Kubri and told us to wait for a train, the authorities apparently washed their hands of the whole affair and forgot all about us. For six weeks we waited at a siding which seemed to be ashamed to look a train in the face.
But the outstanding event of this period of waiting was the visit of one of Miss Lena Ashwell's concert parties to El Kubri. It will ever remain a fragrant memory, for it was the first time we had seen English ladies for nearly a year and it brought home very near to hear them sing. They gave their concert in a specially constructed "hall" in the desert.
Among the posts thrown out into the Peninsula, none at that time was more desolate or remote than the sandy ridge called Ashton-in-Sinai, apparently in honour of Ashton-under-Lyne. It lies many miles to the east of the Little Bitter Lake. The trek to this spot by way of Kubri and Shallufa was an ordeal even for our seasoned troops in the blazing heat of an African summer.
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