anisers. The Army had fresh meat, bread, and
vegetables in a country which under the lash of war yielded nothing,
but which under our rule in peace will furnish three times the produce
of the best of past years of plenty.

A not inconsiderable portion of the front line was supplied with Nile
water taken from a canal nearly two hundred miles away. But the Army
once at the front depended less upon the waters of that Father of
Rivers than it had to do in the long trek across the desert. Then all
drinking water came from the Nile. It flowed down the sweet-water
canal (if one may be pardoned for calling 'sweet' a volume of water
so charged with vegetable matter and bacteria that it was harmful for
white men even to wash in it), was filtered and siphoned under the
Suez Canal at Kantara, where it was chlorinated, and passed through
a big pipe line and pumped through in stages into Palestine. The
engineers set about improving all local resources over a wide stretch
of country which used to be regarded as waterless in summer. Many
water levels were tapped, and there was a fair yield. The engineers'
greatest task in moving with the Army during the advance was always
the provision of a water supply, and in developing it they conferred
on the natives a boon which should make them be remembered with
gratitude for many generations.

In the months preceding our attack Royal Engineers were also concerned
in improving the means of communication between railway depots and the
front line. Before our arrival in this part of Southern Palestine,
wheeled traffic was almost unknown among the natives. There was not
one metalled roadway, and only comparatively light loads could be
transported in wheeled vehicles. The soil between Khan Yunus and Deir
el Belah, especially on the west of our railway line, was very sandy,
and after the winter rains had knitted it together it began to crumble
under the sun's heat, and it soon cut up badly when two or three
limbers had passed over it. The sandy earth was also a great nuisance
in the region between Khan Yunus and Shellal, but between Deir el
Belah and our Gaza front, excepting on the belt near the sea which was
composed of hillocks of sand precisely similar to the Sinai Desert,
the earth was firmer and yielded less to the grinding action of
wheels. For ordinary heavy military traffic the engineers made good
going by taking off about one foot of the top soil and banking it
on either side of the road.