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Updated: June 10, 2025
The first sight that the men beheld on quitting the train was a prisoners' camp, in which were many Germans, living evidence of the activity a few miles in front. The Battalion was billeted in Méricourt for two days. Here there was every indication of activity. Having been on a quiet front for several months the men were not used to the whir of a busy railhead.
Moreover, the army insists and rightly that camps be left clean and free from rubbish. Rations, forage and water were the chief things to be considered or rather, the problem of packing them on to limbers and in waggons for they had to last us to railhead, some days' march away.
In January 1917 the military railway from the Suez Canal had been constructed across the Sinai Desert and the first train was run into El Arish, about ninety miles from the Canal. I was asked by General Headquarters to send a cablegram to London announcing the fact that railhead was at El Arish, the town having been captured a fortnight previously after a fine night march.
I had spent nearly a week in Mombasa, and was becoming very anxious to get my marching orders, when one morning I was delighted to receive an official letter instructing me to proceed to Tsavo, about one hundred and thirty-two miles from the coast, and to take charge of the construction of the section of the line at that place, which had just then been reached by railhead.
"Them that are carrying him now won't jolt him," said Oscar, the pious Swede. B Company lost nineteen men in the raid. Two days later the Company went off on a ten-day leave. Claude's sprained ankle was twice its natural size, but to avoid being sent to the hospital he had to march to the railhead. Sergeant Hicks got him a giant shoe he found stuck on the barbed wire entanglement.
Such a position can hardly be reconnoitred except by attack. It could not be turned except by a long flank march, which, if successful would have occupied several days, during which the camp and railhead would have to be strongly guarded.
Each engine must first of all haul enough water to carry it to Railhead and back, besides a reserve against accidents.
It was always doubtful whether XXth Corps would be able to close up the gap between it and the XXIst Corps owing to the length of its marches and the distance it was from railhead, and the scheme therefore provided that the XXIst Corps should confirm successes gained on our right by forcing its way through the tremendously strong Gaza position to the line of the wadi Hesi and joining up with Desert Mounted Corps.
And when they would send him still further back to M'buyuni he broke out from hospital one night, and, with his native orderly, boarded the train to Railhead and marched the other 200 miles to Morogoro. Here I met him on the road starting out on the next long trek of 125 miles to Kissaki.
We travelled to the railhead where I got off on my arrival on June 5; but this time the train took us about two miles beyond the station. Then we marched to a camp about three miles behind the front line. We remained there, in tents, all the afternoon. Colonel Best-Dunkley came into B Company's mess tent.
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