was finally dissipated, for we
moved--no, the train never arrived--to the big concentration camp at Suez,
and there started preparations in real earnest. It was strange to be
amongst people again after so many months of comparative solitude, and
stranger still to see houses and streets and civilians. Not that we had
much time to look around, for with the coming of the cool weather the hours
of work became appreciably longer.

Every day long columns of infantry went forth to get themselves into hard
condition by strenuous route marches. Dotted about the camp were little
groups of specialists and others practising their several trades. Here was
a bombing-school urgently killing imaginary Turks; there a squad of
bayonet-fighters engaged in the same pleasurable pursuit; while farther
away an eager band of signallers with their handy little cable-waggons laid
a wire at incredible speed.

Away out on the plain a string of harassed recruits trotted round a rough
manege lustily encouraged to a rigid observance of the good old maxim,
"'eels an' 'ands low; 'eads an' 'earts 'igh," by the astonishing profanity
of their riding-master; and beyond them their more proficient comrades
charged with wild yells upon a long line of stuffed sacks representing a
terror-stricken foe waiting patiently to be spitted.

Hard by these perspiring cavalrymen a battery of horse-artillery struggled
to master the intricacies of driving with fourteen-horse teams. These were
arranged in three rows of four abreast with one pair in lead, while of the
drivers three rode the near-horses and three the off-horses, with one
driver riding the near-horse of the leading-pair; a complicated business
requiring much skill and nicety of judgment in order to get the best out of
the horses.

Occasionally an apparently wild chaos of guns and limbers and horses
proclaimed that the battery had been successfully brought into action;
usually, however, the work was confined to getting the vehicles along under
these novel conditions. Alongside our own, French artillery with their
natty little "75's" daily strove to put the finishing touches to their
preparation.

It was to the confines of the camp that one went for the final signs that a
"show" was surely preparing, for here were all the dumps of material which
was to minister to the needs of an army in the field.

Sacks of grain and bales of tibbin stood in huge pyramidal mounds;
multitudinous rows of boxes containing bu