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Updated: May 24, 2025
The next day, two German sea planes attacked Calais, on the French side of the Channel, dropping bombs on the port and the encampments. They returned to their base undamaged. German aeroplanes also raided Kantara, thirty miles south of Port Said, and fired on Romani with machine guns. A number of casualties occurred at Kantara.
I believe I am right in saying that three times in the winter months was the bridge over the wadi washed away by the floods, and each time the engineers had incredible difficulty in building it up again. While it was down all traffic beyond Belah was necessarily suspended and troops coming up the line from Kantara were often three weeks on the journey to their respective units.
But for once the cynics were wrong, and on June 13th the 11th Manchesters arrived to relieve us, and we marched gaily back to Kantara at any rate if not gaily it was getting on for 130° in the sun quite early in the day still with a good heart. We were even complaisant when we found ourselves crowded into one camp area with the 7th, and with most of the tents to put up.
Well-constructed narrow gauge lines were laid down between Ludd and Jaffa, and between railhead and various distributing centres close behind the front line. The line from Junction Station to Beersheba was changed from narrow to broad gauge and extended to Rafa. Thereafter the line was double from Kantara to Rafa.
So sedulously were the records of trades kept that the authorities never lost touch of the men, especially of those engaged in intricate or delicate trades. On one occasion a skilled instrument-maker journeyed 1200 miles to Kantara in order to do a job for which he happened to be the only man at the moment available! And similar cases might be multiplied almost indefinitely.
Henderson, D Coy's S.M.; Galbraith on whom descended Colthart's wonderful knack of obtaining whatever he wanted; Storrer Mosh alias Morrison Storrar of A Squadron and A Coy. Mack, one of the best we got from the 10th Battalion, and they were all good fellows; Corporal Gibb, who looked the part so well that he was appointed Acting Q.M.S. by the Stores Officer at Kantara! And Many More.
To save pressure at the Alexandria docks and on the Egyptian State railway, which, giving some of its rolling stock and, I think, the whole of its reserve of material for the use of the military line east of the Canal, was worked to its utmost capacity, and also to economise money by saving railway freights, wharves were built on the Canal at Kantara, and as many as six ocean-going steamers could be unloaded there at one time.
It is rather wonderful to think that this water was carried with us by pipe line all the way from the Canal, and was actually Nile water brought to Kantara by the Sweetwater Canal. The banks of the Wadi Ghuzzeh were almost everywhere precipitous, and anything from ten to twenty feet high.
At night we posted sentries and went on long adventurous patrols from post to post. There was no enemy; but the desert itself still had a certain amount of mystery and romance about it. It was less flat than round Kantara and dotted here and there with coarse, green scrub, while a mile to the south of Hill 70 stood a little group of seven palms.
It is famous not merely in its present aspect, but chiefly for its history, extending almost as far back into antiquity as Time itself, and for its hallowed memories; it has, moreover, seen many, many wars. It is the great caravan route from Egypt into Palestine. Eastwards from Kantara it runs, across the desert of Northern Sinai to El Arish, thence onwards to Jerusalem and Damascus.
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