side us also went elsewhere. We felt
thoroughly aggrieved.

I suppose every unit at some time or other during a period of enforced
stagnation has had this grievance. Nobody loves you. You feel that some one
in the high places has a grudge against you. You can hear him saying to his
underlings: "Let me see. So-and-so is a pretty rotten camp, isn't it? I'll
keep this battalion or that squadron or the other battery there. Do 'em
good. Mustn't coddle 'em." And you are kept "there" for weary months.

Most of us knew that the conditions in Salonica were as bad as, if not
worse than, those obtaining in Egypt, so why on earth were we pining to go
there? There is no prize for the answer, but I suspect it was the eternal
desire for a change, of whatever nature. Besides, except for the heat,
flies, septic sores, the khamseen, bad water, dysentery, vaccination,
inoculations many and various, digging holes, and a depressing sameness
about the scenery, we had, according to some, little to grumble at.

[Illustration: SUNDAY MORNING IN THE GULF OF SUEZ. [_To face p.32_.]

We were not unduly harassed by the Turks; indeed, it was our function to
harass them. We slept peacefully in our beds o' nights except for a
pernicious system of false alarms. We had now a metre-gauge line on which
our forage was brought into camp, thus saving us a fatigue. Moreover, on
this line we could take an occasional joy-ride in a tram like an Irish
jaunting-car, drawn by two mules probably also of Irish descent, who
invariably ran away with the tram, and, desiring later to rest awhile, were
as invariably thrust forward again by the violent impact from behind of the
oncoming vehicle.

We had a very passable canteen with sometimes real beer in it. And above
and beyond all these joys we had recently made an ice-chest. True, we were
dependent upon a somewhat fortuitous supply of ice, brought by boat across
the Gulf from Suez to the Quarantine Station, thence by special
fatigue-party, armed to the teeth, into camp; and it usually suffered
considerably _en route_. But think of a long, really cold drink waiting for
you at the end of a three-days' stunt into those iniquitous hills, when you
came in covered with sand and with a throat like a dust-bin! Half of it
went at a gulp to wash the sand down; the rest one drank slowly and with
infinite content. That ice-chest had the prestige of a joss.

Looking back, however, on the summer of 1916 and taking count, as it we