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Our horses and men were deadly tired after their long march, and the watering problem was acute. There was literally no water between El Arish and Maghdaba, and the wells at the latter place were in the hands of the Turks. However, the Imperial Camel Corps, the Anzacs, and the Royal Horse Artillery, entirely oblivious to everything but their objective, captured the whole series of redoubts and the survivors of the garrison, who fought on till they were completely surrounded. El Arish was chiefly remembered by us because we were able to take all our clothes off for the first time in ten days, and indulge in the unwonted luxury of sea-bathing. Throughout all our subsequent wanderings in Palestine no joy ever approached that of a complete bath; indeed, it is ludicrous to note the number of places about which everything was obliterated from the memory save the fact that one had a bath there. From El Arish onwards the track was now thick with marching men, and at Sheikh Zowaid, another spot of green in the desert, we came to a great camp, where it was easy to read the signs of a coming "show." The bivouac areas were crowded with troops of all arms, and as fast as one brigade left another marched in to take its place. There is a subtle difference between a concentration camp near the front line and one down at a base; something more purposeful, perhaps, in the former than in the latter. There is, withal, considerable less ceremony. Here there were canteens--observe the plural--of surpassing magnificence. In the mere attempt to get near them we experienced something of what our people were going through at home. The queues were prodigious! As two canteens were rather close together we had carefully to note which queue we were in lest we should inadvertently find ourselves at the end of one when we ought to have been at the head of the other, or _vice versa_. In the latter case the unobservant one would have his correct and ultimate destination described with a wealth of epithet and in a variety of dialects. The ever-enterprising Y.M.C.A. had a marquee, too, where we could sit in comparative comfort, where we met men from other units with whom we exchanged views on how the campaign should be run, on the appalling iniquity of those A.S.C. people at the base, who lived on the fat of the land while the fighting men starved--a slight but very popular exaggeration with the troops--on the possibility of a mail within the next
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