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A narrow gauge railway ran from Deir Sineid to Ludd, and this we had put in order and were working with captured engines and rolling stock. Neither line, however, was entirely satisfactory. In dry weather all went well, but when it rained the communications were invariably cut. A spell of very bad weather now broke, and for three days it rained continuously and very heavily.
The appalling weather conditions made it impossible to get more than the bare necessities of life forward from railhead, and tons of Christmas luxuries sent from England through Egypt lay soaked and rotting in dumps at Deir Sineid. January was much too wet for operations in this country. In February, however, General Allenby determined on the capture of Jericho.
Even Gaza, though it saved them so many toilsome miles, did not help them greatly because of a terrible piece of road north-east of the station, but Beit Hanun was comfortable and for the relief brought by the railway's arrival at Deir Sineid they were profoundly grateful. But this is anticipating the story of Gaza's capture.
The Turks were badly in need of rails for the line they were then constructing down to Deir Sineid, and they had lifted some of the rails between Asluj and Kossaima, but during our raid we broke every rail over some fifteen miles of track.
This was established during the rainy season of 1917-18, and most of the rain in Palestine fell on the Rest Camp. Troops returning from Kantara to rejoin the Desert Corps stopped at Deir Sineid en route. Sometimes, more particularly when the railway was flooded, the congestion was so great that one tent to sixteen men was considered a liberal allowance by the authorities.
Many thousands of the troops in Palestine will, I fancy, have pleasant memories of these two camps, if only because you could, if you wished, bathe for twenty-four hours every day; and it was a wonderful sensation to feel really clean. Those who had the misfortune to sojourn for a while at Deir Sineid, however, will remember the Rest Camp there with quite different feelings.
"During the 8th, then, the advance was continued, and interest was chiefly centred in an attempt to cut off, if possible, the Turkish rearguard which had held the Tank and Atawineh systems. Considerable captures of prisoners, guns, ammunition and other stores were made, especially at Huj and Deir Sineid, but no large formed body of the enemy was cut off.
Then the 155th Infantry Brigade went forward and, swinging to the right, drove the Turks off the rising ground north-west of Deir Sineid, the possession of which would determine the question whether the Turk could hold on in this quarter sufficiently long to enable him to get any of his material away by his railway and road.
Then we knew that to-morrow would be like to-day and that there would be no gaps in the ranks when next the earth swung into the morning sunlight. But November tore old associations to shreds. We left Major Findlay and Lieuts. Townsend and Scott beyond the pleasant orange-groves of Herbieh, sleeping among old comrades on the bare ridges of Sineid. Captain Buchanan left us on the road to Emmaus.
In that case, our own broad gauge line from Kantara, which, immediately on the fall of Gaza, had been brought through to Deir Sineid, would have been continued along the route of the Turkish line from Deir Sineid to Junction Station. The first months of working this Turkish line, still in its narrow gauge condition as captured, did not afford a promising outlook.
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