shift, and so hard pressed were we to find the numbers required that
some men had sometimes to be put into two shifts on the same day, which,
with the marches to and from camp, made as hard a day's work as one
could wish to avoid.

On Sunday, April the 3rd, a heavy battery on our side made an unprovoked
assault on the Turkish lines, to which they were not slow to respond and
several shells fell within the confines of our camp. Most of the men
were away however on fatigue, and no one was hurt. On the 7th the
Battalion took over a section of the outpost line and the fatigues
slackened off, but most men were still employed for a shift by day in
addition to their outpost duties. The covering parties were now pushed
further out to protect reconnaissances by senior officers, while in the
darkness long camel convoys went out to fill with water the old cisterns
which dotted the hills beyond the wadi. The enemy outposts moved
forwards at night, and going out at dawn one often saw them withdrawing
or watched the distant figures of Turkish cavalry on the sky line
towards Mansura. There is a romance about the fighting Turk that one
could never feel about the Bosche. One knew all about the latter, the
names of the towns in which he lived, and what he did and thought and
how he was educated. There was no mystery about him. But the Turk was
different. He hailed from strange provinces about whose positions and
whose very names we were more than hazy. He spoke a strange language,
lived in strange ways on impossible food and uttered strange cries or
sudden invocations to Allah in the silence of the night. He was unknown
and mysterious and when we went patrolling against him in the dark there
was a creepy feeling which was quite distinct from one's natural
misgivings about his bayonet or bullet. But as yet we more than kept our
distance. Sometimes a patrol working its way along the rough ridges
towards Gaza would be met with a shower of long range bullets, but for
the most part we did our work undisturbed--and so did he. In fact the
real problem of an O.C. covering party was to find out who else on our
side was covering too and where they were. On one occasion an officer of
the 5th, having posted his own men in the valley, went up the southern
ridge, where he discovered some compatriots lying out in the dew with a
keen eye on Burjaliye and Apsley House, which they believed to be full
of Turkish snipers. On his way back he was nearly shot