ose days at Tel el Fara was eternal weariness;
we were always tired. "Stand-to" was at half-past two in the morning, when
we harnessed up and waited for orders. Often our cavalry would sight a
Turkish patrol and away we went across the wadi into no-man's-land playing
hounds to the Turkish hare. Rarely did we approach near enough to get a
shot at him for he departed at the gallop at first sight of us, and in
addition to his start he had the foot of us for speed. Then we trailed
back, generally after dark, scratched a hurried meal and went to earth
again till 2.30 a.m. the next day, when the whole business perhaps had to
be done once more. The Australians thoroughly enjoyed chasing old Johnny
back to his lair, and sometimes landed themselves in a tight corner through
over-keenness. They always managed to scramble out again somehow,
occasionally with the aid of our guns, most often without any help but
their own mother wit.

The Australians were rather difficult fellows to know intimately, mainly I
think, on account of their self-consciousness and an inordinate fear of
ridicule. With our brigade we had been good "cobbers" since the second show
at Gaza, where we were able to help them out of a nasty hole, and once
their confidence was gained the Australians were very stout allies. But
they were drawn more to the Scottish than to any other British troops.
Perhaps it was the Scots clannishness that attracted them. They influenced
enormously troops brigaded with them, as far as externals were concerned.

It was the habit of the Australians to cut off the sleeves of their
graybacks at the shoulder, thus making the shirt look like a loose kind of
gymnasium vest. We copied this, and it did certainly make for comfort and
freedom of movement. You would see a squadron going to water with scarcely
a shirt-sleeve between them; and some of the men also dispensed with the
shirt and rode mother-naked to the waist! The usual state of their saddlery
would have sent a British General of the "spit and polish" type into a fit
of apoplexy, for a harness-cleaning parade was a thing unheard of amongst
the Australians. They used to say that the horses needed all the care;
bits and stirrup-irons did not matter.

The popular idea, I believe, is that all Australians are born in the saddle
and that they dash about doing wonderful things with a lariat before they
are out of long clothes. This is ludicrously wide of the mark. The
percentage of Austral