ywhere. Did you leave your tea uncovered for a minute the
flies around you hastened to drown themselves in it! And as for jam!
Successfully to eat a slice of bread and jam was a feat, and one requiring
careful preparation. You had to make a tunnel of one hand, wave the
required mouthful about with the other for a few seconds in order to
disturb the flies on it, then pass it quickly through the tunnel and into
the mouth before they could settle again. One man nailed a piece of
mosquito-netting to the front of the mess table and with himself as the
pole made a kind of tent, so as to eat his food in comfort.

But meal-times were among the minor evils; it was in the tents, during the
hours when we could do no work, that we suffered most. Rest was impossible.
The mere touch of clothing was almost unbearable in the heat, but it was
better to swathe the head in a fly-net and roll a blanket round the
outlying portions of the body, than to strip to the buff and lie exposed to
the attacks of those damnable flies.

It is no light thing that sends a strong man into hysterics or drives one
sobbing from his tent, to rush about the camp in a frenzy of wild rage. Yet
the flies did this--and more; they were carriers of disease. Behind the
clouds of flies lurked always the grim spectre of dysentery; and of all our
troubles perhaps this is the best known to the people at home. The
Mesopotamian Commission ventilated it so thoroughly that there is no need
to pile on the agony here. One may say, however, that the sufferings of the
men in Egypt from this terrible disease were, certainly in somewhat less
degree, those of their comrades farther east. And we will let it go at
that.

Meanwhile, what of the Turks? During the six weeks we spent putting the
camp into a state of defence they kindly refrained from annoying us, and
beyond an occasional encounter with our patrols and a false alarm or two,
nothing occurred to disturb the even tenor of our digging. When we had
finished this strenuous pursuit, every ten days or so flying columns were
organised to look for them and, if possible, drive them out of their rocky
fastnesses thirty miles away.

One of the few vulnerable points in these hills was the Raha Pass and
incredibly difficult it was even to approach. The joys of trekking over
the sandy desert we knew, the desert in the rainy season we knew, but they
were as nothing compared with the rocky desert of Sinai. Not only was there
the deep sa