all so proud. At the same time we
realised that, in our capacity as dismounted yeomanry, we were not
pulling our weight either as yeomanry or infantry, and no other
regiment certainly appealed to us as much as our own Territorial
Infantry Regiment, and we were proud to link our record to the long
and glorious record of the Black Watch.

We spent five weeks altogether at Moascar, working hard at the
elementary forms of infantry drill and tactics, and on 8th January we
marched to our new camp El Ferdan, some ten miles along the Canal.
Here we continued our training, but of a more advanced kind, brigade
schemes, tactical tours and route marches, "jerks," bathing, and
football kept us busy and fit.

One day some of us went to see the Canal defences, dug the previous
year, about four miles east of the Canal. The sand was so soft, no
amount of ordinary sandbagging or revetting would make it stand up,
and all the trenches were made by sinking complete wooden frames into
a wide scooped out trench, and then shovelling the sand back on either
side of the frame. The original digging had to be about 20 feet wide
to allow them to sink the frames sufficiently deep in the sand. It
must have been a colossal work, and this was only a small portion of
the scheme, which included laying on water to the more important
defences, and laying out lines of light railways and roads from the
Canal eastwards, at intervals of seven and eight miles, the railheads
being linked by a lateral road.

On 4th March we left El Ferdan and marched to Kantara, the base of all
operations up the Sinai Railway, and there entrained for El Arish to
join the 74th (Yeomanry) Division. The journey of about ninety miles,
over the very recently laid railway, was timed to take some eight or
nine hours, and was uneventful and, though we travelled in open
trucks, was not too unpleasantly hot. The frequent short gradients
led to the most awful bumps and tearings at the couplings, but they
stood the strain all right.

[Illustration: THE BATTALION MASCOT.
_To face page 42_]

[Illustration: BATTALION COOKHOUSE, EL FERDAN.
_To face page 42_]

It was a very interesting journey to us, who knew only the Western
Desert, to note the difference between it and Sinai. To our eyes Sinai
did not appear to be a desert at all, as there were scrubby bushes of
sorts growing in nearly every hollow, various kinds of camel grass,
and even a few flowers--such as poppies and one or two s