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Updated: June 11, 2025
At present we had to lie still; no man was to move about, and sentries with fixed bayonets were stationed at front, flank, and rear, ready to give the alarm at the first sign of danger. Behind us were the kitchen, horse-lines, and latrines. The position of these varies as the wind changes, and it is imperative that unhealthy odours are not blown across the bivouac.
He heard of the tribesmen under Khumel Khan one evening. At dawn his tents stood empty and the horse-lines were long bands of brown on the green grass. The pegs were up; only the burying beetles labored where the stamping chargers had neighed overnight.
To prowl round and round some magazine, store, or boundary-stone with his carbine at the "support," or to tramp up and down by the horse-lines, armed only with his cutting-whip; to stand in a sentry-box while the rain fell in sheets and there was no telling what the next flash of lightning might reveal that was what would send him to a lunatic's padded cell.
The landscape had changed utterly, the country was alive, and had found voice; the horse-lines were broken, and all the animals, from the colonel's charger to the humble pack horse, were on the move. The little squares, dotted brown, had taken on new shape, and were transformed into companies of moving men in khaki. We were out on the heels of the retreating foe.
First you come to a metropolis of horse-lines, which makes you think that a mammoth circus has arrived. Then you come to plank roads and little light railways, running out like veins across the mud. Far away there's a ridge and a row of charred trees, which stand out gloomily etched against the sky. The sky is grey and damp and sickly; fleecy balls of smoke burst against it shrapnel.
But the shelter, ingeniously constructed of hop-poles and straw thatch, was more or less rain-proof, and had the advantage of being so close to the horse-lines that half a dozen strides brought the drivers alongside their 'long-nosed chums. It was early evening; but the horses having been watered and fed, the labours of their day were over, and the Wheel and Lead Drivers were luxuriating in bootless feet while they entertained the Gunner who had called in from his own billet in the farm's barn.
We raided the horse-lines of a Turkish regiment that had camped beside a stream, securing all the horses we needed and stampeding the remainder! Thus we escaped through the gap that regiment had been supposed to close. We got away with their baked bread, too, enough to last us at least three days! That was not far from Diarbekr.
Resmith gave a scarcely perceptible smile. "Look here," he said. "I'm just going round the horse-lines. If you'll come with me I'll show you a thing or two, and we can choose a mount for you. Then after dinner if you like I'll take you through the orders for to-morrow. By the way, there's a telegram for you." The telegram read: "Girl. Everything fairly satisfactory. Don't worry too much.
What signs of the coming storm! Hardly a minute passes as we speed along without its significant sight; horse-lines, Army Service depots bursting with stores, a great dump of sandbags another of ammunition. And as I look out at the piles of shells, I think of the most recent figures furnished me by the Ministry of Munitions.
At the Circus there was a remarkable sight, a huge camping ground covering several square miles, every available spot on it packed with dumps and horse-lines, artillery parks, bivouacs, and tents. All the roads round here were full of troops on the move, and of lines and lines of lorries either coming or going.
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