ridges and were obviously settling down for the summer. There appeared to
be no need for the mounted divisions _en masse_ to remain on the right
flank, especially with transport strained to its utmost limits to maintain
them there.

The "heavies" were the first to leave the valley, then the anti-aircraft
gun rumbled away on its lorry, and finally we were left in sole possession.
At dusk on the fifth day after our arrival we too departed; and the
engineers were busy striking the canvas water-troughs in the nullah as we
passed. All through the night we travelled, and the journey was a
repetition of our first retreat from Gaza, except that this was a voluntary
retirement. We seemed to cross the wadi half a dozen times and might, in
fact, have done so, for it wound fortuitously across the whole of our
front, and we were everlastingly climbing into or out of steep-sided
places. The heavy traffic of the last few days had churned up the whole
countryside into a powdery dust, which rose in such heavy clouds as to make
breathing difficult, and to see even the man immediately in front was next
to impossible.

In the early hours of the morning we came to Sheikh Nuran, a position which
had been very strongly fortified by the Turks but evacuated without a
struggle, like those previously at Rafa, when we attacked Gaza the first
time.

I remember little about this camp save that the Turks had left it in an
unspeakably filthy condition, causing us to spend days clearing away their
refuse.

CHAPTER XII

CAVE DWELLERS AND SCORPIONS

It soon became evident that we should make no more attempts on Gaza during
the summer, and while both sides were preparing for the inevitable finale,
a species of trench warfare began. This had little resemblance to the kind
that obtained in France, where the rival trenches were frequently within a
stone's throw of each other. Here, the nearest point to the Turks was on
our left flank, where the trenches were perhaps eight hundred yards apart.
Then the line, which for the most part was that taken by the wadi in its
meanderings, gradually swung south-eastwards till on the right flank we
were at least ten miles away from the enemy; which does not mean that
profound peace reigned in this region--on the contrary. The main reason for
this wide divergence was the old difficulty of maintaining mounted
troops--or indeed, troops of any kind--in a waterless country. Though
officially we had crossed the b