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Updated: June 16, 2025
They said there were many wadis in Nogal, but the largest one was in the Mijjertaine country, where its waters were deep and large, with extensive forest around it, frequented by numerous herds of elephants. Those in advance of my line of march, on the road to Berbera, were all mere nullahs, like Yubbe Tug, or Jid Ali Tug, and were not used for agricultural purposes.
At dawn officers were sent out to locate the 7th and Argylls. The latter were found among the wadis of Blazed Hill but the former, after a gallant attempt to rush Outpost Hill, had dug themselves in less than 200 yards from the Turks with a burnt-out tank on their left and were completely cut off by five hundred yards of open country which no one could cross owing to the Turkish fire.
At the fourth mile, near a fort, we turned sharply to the north, past Jebel Riah, where Wadi Riah comes in, and then reached a wide open space, where Wadi Silib joins in. Jebel Shaas was beyond us, very high, and Wadi Ghiuda to the right. This large open space is girt with mountains 500 to 5,000 feet high, and is a great junction for the waters from Wadis Reban, Silib, and Ghiuda.
We had several ups and downs, and passed wadis running in close to us before we began to descend by what must have been a fearful road for the camels, down the two precipices and the two flights of rolling stones, into the Wadi bin Ali. The way was far better than that of the day before; the very Jabberi never saw such a road as that, they said.
Behind them stretched Happy Valley, seeming to run right up to the tree-crowned summit of Ali el Muntar, while on its left were Kurd and Border valleys and the sand dunes, and on its right a tumbled mass of green uplands with sudden red cliffs marking nullahs and wadis. The position of the town itself was shown by the minaret of the mosque and one or two other taller buildings.
These wadis undoubtedly show extensive traces of strong water action; they curve and twist as the streams found their easiest way to the level through the softer strata, they are heaped up with great water-worn boulders, they are hollowed out where waterfalls once fell.
But this water erosion was probably not that which would be the result of perennial streams flowing down from wooded heights, but of torrents like those of to-day, which fill the wadis once in three years or so after heavy rain, but repeated at much closer intervals.
'Rest' was only a comparative term. Brigades were on the move each day in country which was one continual rise and fall, with stony beds of wadis to check progress, without a tree to lend a few moments' grateful relief from a burning sun, and nothing but the rare sight of a squalid native hut to relieve the monotony of a sun-dried desolate land. The troops were remarkably cheerful.
The wadis cross the valleys wherever torrent water can tear up rock, but the yeomanry found their beds smoother going, filled though they were with boulders, than the hill slopes, which generally rose in steep gradients from the sides of watercourses. During every step of the way across this saw-toothed country one appreciated to the full the defenders' advantage.
From St James's Park to Beitania the Battalion had been continuously engaged in very strenuous operations, marching, fighting, or road-making over the roughest of country, without roads or landmarks, up precipitous hills, through boulder-strewn wadis, against an obstinate and determined foe, never sure of the next meal, tired almost beyond endurance and many almost bootless, in the worst of weather, cold and wet, and only slightly less miserable than the camels.
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