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Updated: June 22, 2025
Those who only knew the line when officers could sleep in a cushioned sleeping car, and be whirled from the Gaza railhead at Deir el Belah to Kantara in eight or ten hours, have no idea what the line was capable of in its palmy days, when passenger traffic was not its forte of the hopeless efforts to find out where any train or any truck was going to, and when it would go there; the long halts and sudden unheralded departures, at the moment when the passengers had at last dared to get out to stretch their legs; the rending struggles to board mountainous trucks piled high with rations; the starving quest for biscuits in forgotten canteens at stations where no one ever lived.
I cannot imagine what else the occupants could use them for, nor when they had reached the bottom, how they climbed the steep incline again, except on hands and knees. There were wells, too, sunk in various places about the Labyrinth and adequately protected with sand-bags. Rations were brought up by camels who made the stealthy and perilous journey across the mouth of the wadi nightly from Belah.
The sandy earth was also a great nuisance in the region between Khan Yunus and Shellal, but between Deir el Belah and our Gaza front, excepting on the belt near the sea which was composed of hillocks of sand precisely similar to the Sinai Desert, the earth was firmer and yielded less to the grinding action of wheels.
It is a poor day for the British soldier when he cannot find some little dainty for his horse, or "win" an extra handful of grain when the quartermaster-sergeant is looking the other way; his first thought is always for his horse. When we had snatched a hurried meal we set out to look for water. The only known wells were at Deir el Belah, whither we proceeded.
Just as at Belah the mosquitoes battened shamelessly upon us and the frogs burst into mighty pæans of welcome, so at El Chauth the scorpions extended the glad hand if I may venture thus euphemistically to describe the spiked atrocity they wear lengthwise on their backs.
Camels only were used, in such numbers that from Belah to Khan Yunus the country was like a vast patch-work quilt of greys and blacks and browns.
The camp of General Headquarters where I was located was situated north of Rafa. The railway ran on two sides of the camping ground, one line going to Belah and the other stretching out to Shellal, where everything was in readiness to extend the iron road to the north-east of Karm, on the plain which, because the Turks enjoyed complete observation over it, had hitherto been No Man's Land.
Most of these operations were for possession of the sandstone cliffs on the Turkish side of the wadi and the terrain was generally the beach itself, which from Belah to beyond Gaza was rocky and dangerous and in few places more than fifty yards wide. At the mouth of the wadi, which had to be crossed, there were shifting sands extremely difficult to negotiate especially at high tide.
As a case in point: there was a large field ambulance alongside the main shell-dump at Belah upon which several bombs were dropped with disastrous results. One marquee full of sick and wounded men was completely destroyed.
Some divisions which had allotted to them the hardest part of the attack on Beersheba were drawn out of the line, and forming up in big camps between Belah and Shellal set about a course of training such as athletes undergo. They had long marches in the sand carrying packs and equipment. They were put on a short allowance of water, except for washing purposes.
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