as in truth a symbol to us; for as we watched the
sun sink slowly behind its sheltering bulk we knew that another day was
done. We wondered wearily what this devastating heat could mean; it was
like nothing in our experience.

One evening the whole sky was aflame with lurid light and we missed the
revivifying breeze. In its place came a hot wind from the south-east, and
although the sun was setting we could feel the sickly heat increasing
momentarily. Presently, far over the eastern desert could be seen a gauzy
cloud of immense size travelling towards us at a tremendous pace. In a few
moments we were in the midst of an inferno of swirling sand and
suffocating heat. It was the dreaded khamseen.

Men rushed blindly for their tents and swathed their heads in shirts or
blankets in order to keep out as well as might be the flying particles of
sand. Fortunately for us the high embankment in our rear protected the camp
to some extent and we never got the full force of the sandstorm.

For three days it raged. Little work was possible beyond watering and
feeding the horses. The short walk from the horse-lines to the
watering-troughs was sheer torment, for the hot wind came down the slope
like blasts from a furnace. It did literally turn the stomach. Many a man
staggering blindly along with his three or four horses would pause, vomit
violently and carry on. The horses neither drank nor ate much, poor brutes,
but all day long stood dejectedly with drooping heads, their backs turned
to the scorching wind. It was a scarifying experience. When, on the evening
of the third day, the familiar wind came up from the sea we had the feeling
one has on coming out of a Turkish bath into the cooling-chamber.

Another welcome tonic was the news that the brigade was ordered to
Salonica. We felt that any change would be for the better; in any case it
could not well be worse. And so we fell to making our preparations with
light hearts, confident that in a few days we should be on the move again,
perhaps--who could say?--towards a real war.

At the last moment a wire came cancelling the move. The disappointment was
so bitter that it knocked all the life out of us for days. We felt like a
boxer who, after a knock-down blow, rises at the count of nine, say, and is
at once sent down again for good. The knock-out blow was that in our case
the rest of the brigade did actually leave the camp, in addition to which
the Indian infantry who had lain along