ficers encourage the
Egyptian boys in the Camel Transport Corps. At Julis the roadway
passes through the village. There was an ambulance column in
difficulties in the village, and while some cars were being extricated
a camel supply column came up in the opposite direction. The camels
liked neither the headlights nor the running engines, and these had to
be made dark and silent before they would pass. The water was running
over the roadway several inches deep, carrying with it a mass of
garbage and filth which only Arab villagers would tolerate. Officers
and Gyppies coaxed and wheedled the stubborn beasts through Julis,
but outside the place the animals raised a chorus of protest and went
down. They held me up for an hour or more, and though officers and
boys did their utmost to get them going again it was a fruitless
effort, and the poor beasts were off-loaded where they lay. That night
of rain and thunder, wind and cold, was bad alike for man and beast,
but beyond a flippant remark of some soldier doing his best and the
curious chant of the Gyppies' chorus you heard nothing. Tommy could
not trust himself to talk about the weather. It was too bad for words,
for even the strongest.

It took our car ten hours to run forty miles, and as the last ten
miles was over wet sand and on rabbit wire stretched across the
sand where the car could do fifteen miles an hour, we had averaged
something under three miles an hour through the mud. Wet through,
cold, with a face rendered painful to the touch by driven rain, I
reached my tent with a feeling of thankfulness for myself and deep
sympathy for the tens of thousands of brave boys enduring intense
discomfort and fatigue, coupled with the fear of short rations for the
next day or two. The men in the hills which they were just entering
had a worse time than those in the waterlogged plain, but no storms
could damp their enthusiasm. They were beating your enemies and mine,
and they were facing a goal which Britain had never yet won. Jerusalem
the Golden was before them, and the honour and glory of winning it
from the Turk was a prize to attain which no sacrifice was too great.
Those who did not say so behaved in a way to show that they felt it.
They were very gallant, perfect knights, these soldiers of the King.

CHAPTER XIII

INTO THE JUDEAN HILLS

When the 52nd Division were moving out of Ludd on the 19th November
the 75th Division were fighting hard about Latron, where th