ft for a time, brackish water percolated through in
sufficient quantities for a bath. It was the daily custom, after
evening-stables, to rush across to the washing-pits, peel off our saturated
clothes and stand in pairs, back to back, while a comrade poured bucket
after bucket of water over our perspiring bodies until we were cool enough
to put on a change of clothes.

And how we revelled in it! It was one of the few alleviations of those
torrid, arduous days. You who dwell in temperate climes, with water--hot
and cold--at a hand's turn, will perhaps accuse me of labouring the point.
I cannot help it; no words of mine can express what it meant to have that
clean feeling just for an hour or two. It was ineffable luxury; it helped
us to endure.

For there were other things to add to our daily burden.

You will doubtless remember the Plagues of Egypt.... At least three of
these survived at Ayun Musa to harass, thousands of years later,
unfortunate soldiers who were trying to win a war. We had lice, boils and
blains, and flies--particularly and perpetually, flies.

The first-named were not so terrible, for as wood was fairly plentiful we
soon made rough beds and thus kept our clothes and blankets off the sand.

The second and third caused the medical authorities in the East more
trouble and anxious experiment than all the other diseases put together.

The slightest scratch turned septic. It was the rule rather than the
exception for units in the desert to have 50 per cent. of their strength
under treatment for septic sores. There was no help for it; active service
is a messy business at best. It was appallingly difficult to give adequate
treatment. Sand would get into the wound; if it were cleansed and covered
up, the dry, healing air of the desert had no chance; if it were left open
the flies made a bivouac of it--and the result can be imagined!

There were men who were never without a bandage on some part of their
person for months on end, and it was a common sight to see a man going
about his daily work literally swathed in bandages. It was not until we had
advanced well into Palestine, where there was fruit in abundance, that this
plague diminished and was in some measure overcome.

But infinitely worse than any other was the plague of flies. When we
arrived at Ayun Musa there was not a fly to be seen. Within a week you
would have thought that all the flies in the universe had congregated about
us. They were ever