the sandhills the progress was slower and steadier, and the line
finished up a good deal nearer the Turk than on the right; but here
again the cactus hedges lined with machine guns proved too much for
us. Our Division was not used in this battle, being in reserve, which
was lucky for us, as those who were in the front line of the attack
all got a pretty severe knock.

On 19th April the Battalion left the outpost line on Sheikh Nebhan and
marched towards Gaza, resting during the middle of the day on a ridge
west of El Burjaliye, and moving in the afternoon on to Mansura Ridge
in support. On the evening of 22nd April the Battalion moved forward
to construct and occupy trenches at El Mendur, which was on the right,
or refused, flank of the line, and there the details again joined us.
There we had a good defensive position, but the trenches still had to
be dug and, as luck would have it, this digging, which ought to have
been nothing to our men fit as they were, in ordinary weather, was
turned into a very high trial indeed by a khamsin. This red-hot and
parching wind, blowing off the desert, makes thirst a positive torture
when water is limited, and it was very limited at that time. We were
getting rather less than half a gallon per man for all purposes, which
is perhaps just about the quantity used by the ordinary man for
cooking and drinking in the cold weather at home; but in a khamsin
when you are doing five or six hours' hard manual labour per diem, a
gallon is easily consumed. Luckily these heat waves only last about
three days, but it left us pretty limp.

After a fortnight here a start was made with thinning out the line, in
order to let some of those who had been engaged in the Gaza battle get
a spell in reserve. We moved a step to our left, taking over with our
Battalion the sector previously held by a brigade. Our portion of the
line was taken over by the 12th (Ayr and Lanark Yeomanry) Battalion
R.S.F., and we took over the line on the left previously held by the
5th and 7th Essex Regiments. Battalion H.Q. had a very comfortable
pitch at the top of the Wadi Reuben, near a junction of many tracks
which had been named Charing Cross.

Our week here meant another spell of steady work, as we had to convert
what had previously been a continuous line into a series of strong
posts, the intervals between which were covered by machine guns. This
was known as the Dumb-bell Hill Sector of the Sheikh Abbas Line, being
nam