 Section 7 of With the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt by Sergeant Major R.A.M.C. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 6 The Defence of Egypt in the West While plans for the defence of the Suez Canal against an attack from the East were being carried into effect, as already narrated, the protection of Egypt on its Western Front had been by no means neglected. The problem here in the West was very different from that confronting us in the Suez Canal area. Egypt has been very aptly described as a streak of mud drawn through a desert of sand. This streak, contaminous with the course of the Nile, stretches from Alexandria on the Mediterranean coast, due southward to the Sudan, a distance of about 600 miles. Leaving out of account the wide and fertile delta, this streak of deposited river mud, perhaps the richest soil in the world, has a breadth of from 1 mile to 15 miles, more or less cultivable on account of its appreciable rainfall, stretching westward from Alexandria for a distance of about 200 miles. Throughout the desert, lying within and near the vast right angle formed by these two streaks, there are numerous, though widely separated, Oasis, inhabited by various Bedouin tribes. It was against these tribes that we were now called upon to protect the Western Frontier of Egypt, a frontier which, owing to the peculiar configuration here described, extended practically for 800 miles. The question of the defence of this frontier did not seriously obtrude itself until the late autumn of 1915. The semi-political religious sect of Bedouins, taking its name from that of a prominent and powerful sheikh, El Sinusi, was widely distributed along the hinterland of North Africa. This sect came seriously into collision with the Italians in the War of 1912 in Tripoli. The headquarters of the Sinusi were at Siwa, one of the most extensive, as well as most distant, of the Western Oasis. The sheikh, El Sinusi, himself had hitherto always expressed a friendship for England, though he was bitterly opposed to the Italians. But when Turkey entered the war against us, the sheikh came under the malign influence of some Germanised Turkish officers, particularly that of Nuri Bey, a brother of Enver Pasha, and he began to waver in his allegiance. For some time he did not openly declare himself against us, but about November 1915 he gathered together a force of his followers, with the assistance of Turkish officers, and advanced against the coast of northern Egypt. The coast villages of Matra, Barani and Solam were at that time garrisoned by detachments of the Egyptian coastguards. On the arrival of the Sinusi at Solam and Barani these coastguards offered no resistance, and a considerable number of them deserted and joined the enemy. The local Bedouins and Arabs of the coast, for the most part, threw in their lot with the invaders. At this juncture our Western Frontier Force took the field. We reached Matra in advance of the Sinusi and occupied and held it. After some months of more or less defensive action, a bold push was made, the Sinusi were driven back, and eventually decisively defeated in two major engagements. Thereafter operations consisted mainly in seizing and occupying the various Oasis, and rooting therefrom the scattered remnants of the enemy. Most of these, together with the local Arabs, eventually gave in their submission and were disarmed. It became necessary, however, to garrison with British troops, the Oasis, and the most important places on the western fringe of Egypt to overall the population, among whom a certain amount of disaffection existed, owing to a widespread sympathy with the tenants of the Sinusi sect. The work of the RAMC on this frontier was peculiarly difficult and arduous, not only during the time of active operations, but throughout the tedious periods spent with the garrisons occupying so many remote and inaccessible spots. The climate of these western Oasis, as well as of the terrain lying immediately westward of the Nile, is such that, in the opinion freely expressed at the time by those best qualified to judge, our troops would not be able to withstand it unharmed during the summer heats. Malaria, plague, enteric fever, dysentery, smallpox and typhus were said to be indigenous to the district, and this by no means exhausted the list of local disabilities. To be forewarn, however, is to be forearmed, and our medical authorities laid their plans with commendable thoroughness and foresight. During the actual fighting period, the main difficulty of dealing with the sick and wounded lay in the matter of transport, a peculiar condition of the country being the vast distances that often intervened between the scene of hostilities and the base. Luckily, however, we were not dependent to any great extent on camel transport for helpless men, which had been such a trying feature of the campaign in Sinai. The camel cacolette is at best a cruel means of conveyance for a seriously wounded man. Its motion, when the animal was on the march, may be likened to that of a small boat in a choppy sea. If the camel had never before earned its title of The Ship of the Desert, some British sufferer would now certainly have hit upon the simile, but probably from no access of poetic fervour, and assuredly with a more than generous garniture of adjectives. Fifteen or twenty miles in a camel cacolette with a fractured femur would vitiate the vocabulary of a saint. Fortunately, the sand of the western desert, owing to the limestone substrata, was often so compact and smooth that the use of light motor ambulances with good axle clearance was found quite feasible. This was generally the case within the coastal area of operations, and, in a less degree, on the tracks between some of the OACs. While throughout the country, contiguous to the Nile, the motors were almost universally employed. Where, however, the motors could not penetrate, sand carts drawn by four mules necessarily took their place. In the subsequent treatment of sick and wounded on this frontier, in view of the great distances between the posts held by the troops and the inadvisability of evacuating all the cases to the general hospitals at the base of the force in Cairo, an ingenious arrangement was affected. Along the course of the Nile, facing the desert, there are certain small towns at widely separated intervals, and in each of these towns there is a more or less well-appointed native hospital. Such places are Fayoum, Beniswef, Minya, Asiut, Sohag, Kenna, Esna, and Aswan. Negotiations were concluded with the Egyptian Public Health Department, itself under the direction of a British RMC officer, for an allotment of space in the hospitals at all these places to be used for British patients, and be exclusively under the care of an RMC personnel, medical officers, and orderlies, as well as a Queen Alexandria's Imperial Military Nursing Service matron, and the necessary staff of nurses. The male medical staff for these hospitals was wholly drawn from the various field ambulances acting with the force, and the arrangement was specially useful in that it gave the RMC ambulance men the privilege of learning to work under nursing sisters, a faculty in which some otherwise capable orderlies are sorely lacking, while it also proved a good opportunity for gaining experience in nursing duties and general hospital routine. In addition to the partial use of these Egyptian state hospitals, field ambulance camp hospitals for the treatment of less serious cases were established in all the more important camps. The patients were, in almost every instance, accommodated in the very convenient European Privates Indian Patent Tents, or E-PIP tents, though Reed-Hurts were provided at certain places, and existing local buildings were occasionally used. Either the Regulation Iron Bedsteads, or the Native Angarib, like an oblong basket made of palm staves and turned upside down, were provided in all the camp hospitals, and a special schedule of equipment was added to the field ambulance establishments to bring them up to the standard of casualty clearing stations. Cases requiring special or prolonged treatment were sent to the Cairo General Hospitals, and during the hot weather it was found advisable to send a considerable number of men to convalescent hospitals in Cairo, before returning them to duty. In the cooler months of the year, however, very few convalescents were sent away from the area, most of the cases being redrafted to their units direct from the West Force Hospitals. But the treatment and care of the sick and wounded formed only part, and not the larger part, of the work of the R-A-M-C on the Western Desert. Under the trying climate and soil conditions, the maintenance of the health of the troops by rigid sanitary surveillance of the camps, and the adoption of preventative measures against disease, became all important. It was realised from the first that the health of the British troops in such an environment, especially during the trying heats of summer, could only be insured by giving the men in the permanent camps a high standard of bodily comfort, not neglecting also the psychological aspect of the question. It was stipulated that all troops should be housed in double skin tents, the well-trived improved E-PIP tent were available, but failing this the bell tent with double top. Meals were not to be taken in the sleeping quarters. Mess huts made of light wooden framework covered with grass matting were to be provided, and these huts were also to serve as resting places during the hottest time of the day. Fly-proof ladders for storage of food and properly sheltered cookhouses were installed. Shelters were also erected for stables, so that the men would not have to groom in the sun. Personal cleanliness among the troops was encouraged in all possible ways. Ablution places, and wherever the water supply would allow it, shower baths were provided on a liberal scale. Lastly, and not least important, all camps were established when any held practicable were allowed on the clean desert sand. Experience having proved that the proximity of cultivated land always meant the presence in the air of a disagreeable and highly infective dust which could not prove otherwise than a source of danger. The provision of water, good alike in quality and quantity, was an ever-urgent problem. It was not merely a question of providing drinking water, that prime necessity of desert life which should be free from taint of disease. That used for washing and bathing had also to be safeguarded. Our RAMC bacteriologists had firmly established the fact that the germs of a distressing and incurable ailment called bilhaziosis, largely prevalent among the native population, looked in nearly all natural sources of water in Egypt, not excluding the Nile itself, and mere skin contact with the infected water was quite enough to communicate the disease to British troops. Fortunately, the problem of dealing with water in large quantities so as to render it safe for use was simplified in this case by the fact that mere straining and storing for 48 hours would serve to eliminate the danger. It's needed, however, in addition, constant vigilance to prevent the contraction of the disease by men surreptitiously bathing in the river or any of the canals or the waterholes of the Oasis, all of which were probably swarming with the bilhazia organism. This, indeed, has been a never-present danger to our troops, quartered in any part of Egypt and the Sudan, and has from the first received the closest attention from the medical authorities. In addition to the work of rendering the army water supply free from disease-producing organisms, the duties of camp sanitation and conservancy, the disposal of waste products, have closely occupied the attention of the RAMC sanitary sections on both fronts. These are questions always of prime importance in warfare, which assumes still grover proportions when hostilities are being carried out by European troops in a tropical or subtropical country. The work of our sanitary sections in Egypt generally will, however, receive separate treatment later on in these pages. End of Section 7. Section 8 of With the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt by Sergeant Major R.A.M.C. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7. The Sinai Desert Campaign. The Battle of Romani On the eastern front, after the Katia affair at the close of April 1916, when the Turks made such a determined attempt to forestall us in the possession of that important water-bearing area, April longed lull in hostilities ensued. Some 10 or 12 weeks elapsed before the opposing armies again came to the brunt of battle, and this fact alone is sufficient proof, if proof were needed, of the severe handling on the part of our mounted troops and airmen, which had been dealt out to the retiring foe. The interval, however, was full of activity on both sides. For our part, having once secured the point of vantage for which we had been striving, we had no intention of forcing on a desert campaign during the hot season that had now set in. Clearly our policy was, after thoroughly establishing our new defensive line, to confine ourselves to making preparations for the future, while at the same time carrying out such reconnaissance in force as might attain a useful object and ceaselessly harassing the enemy by air raids. But the Turkish point of view was very different from our own. Though after the Katia engagement the Turk had withdrawn to a respectful distance, it must have been clear to him that he could not hope to make any effectual progress in his avowed project of an attack upon Egypt, unless he could secure a main base much farther westward than his present position at El Arish. And for the collection and maintenance of such a force as would be needed, there was no other possible area but the neighbourhood of Katia with an effective striking distance of the canal. The probability, therefore, was that as soon as he was able to gather together a sufficiently powerful army he would make another advance against our position, and this indeed proved to be the case. Though up to the middle of July no considerable body of the enemy existed in Sinai nearer than Mazar, some forty miles from Katia, it then soon became evident that a move on a large scale was impending. On July the 19th our airmen reported that a large force of the enemy was on the march westward from El Arish. Five days later, carefully reconnoited by our aircraft en route, they had reached and strongly entrenched themselves in a series of positions facing our own line, at distances roughly averaging about fifteen miles. This enemy force, as we eventually ascertained, numbered about eighteen thousand men, and consisted of the Third Turkish Division, with mountain guns, heavy artillery, and special machine gun companies manned chiefly by Germans. There were also large bodies of Camelry, wireless sections, field hospitals, and a supply section with German personnel. The whole force was under the command of a German officer, Colonel Chris von Kressenstein, and was in fine physical condition, and, moreover, admirably equipped in every way. It was nearing the end of July, and the situation was a curious one. Our own troops had been strongly reinforced, and were established on a carefully chosen line, extending from Mermedia on the Seaco southward through Romany to a point just eastward of Katheb-Gannett Hill. Thence a line curved backwards round the southern slope of the hill, after which it turned north-eastward towards Etmeiler. The Turkish line faced ours, running also roughly north and south. Fifteen miles of desert intervened between the two positions. What the enemy intended to do, having now entrenched himself, was not immediately clear. But our own intentions were not long in doubt. So archibald Murray resolved to take the initiative and to attack with the least possible delay. The necessary preparations were at once set on foot. For an advance in force over fifteen miles of desert, camel transport on a complete scale was required. By August the 4th all formations were ready to take the field. But for several days previously the enemy had been drawing in, and it had become evident that he would himself probably assume the initiative. By August the 2nd he had advanced his line considerably, and on the night of August the 3rd 4th commenced an attack on our position. During the three or four days following the battle raged almost without intermission, but resulted in the complete defeat of the enemy, the capture of 4,000 prisoners with many guns, horses and camels, and large quantities of ammunition and stores. Two complete field hospitals, with most of their equipment, also fell into our hands. Our own casualties, owing to the prolonged and determined character of the fighting, were far from light, but the total losses of the enemy in this battle of Romany could not have been short of 9,000, practically half his force. The remainder of Crescent Stein's army beat a rapid retreat, continually harassed, however, by our mounted troops and aeroplanes who inflicted further heavy losses upon it. This pursuit was kept up as far eastward as Salmanar. Subsequent air observation revealed the discomforted enemy still in full retreat through Mazar towards El Arish. The battle of Romany will be an ever memorable one in the history of the R.A.M.C. in Egypt, for it was the first major engagement carried through under entirely desert conditions. In it the new equipment and organization of our ambulances were put to the supreme practical test, and invaluable experience was gained in the work of the collection, treatment, and swift evacuation of wounded in a district wholly devoid of roads or even tracks of any kind. There was the railhead, but beyond and around this, there existed only a pathless wilderness of interminable Sandhill and Scrubby Plain, into which those engaged in the sucker of the wounded had to penetrate, often for distances of many miles. The full dress historian of the war on this front, whoever he may be, will have no lack of excuse for dipping his pen into the purple inkhorn when he comes to describe the achievements of our fighting troops in the battle of Romany. In their way, however, the doings of the men of the R.A.M.C. throughout this engagement are little less worthy of note, though in the major chronicle they are likely to be given but a few scribbled words from the stub of a lead pencil. The truth is, the services of ambulance men in a battle do not lend themselves to the heroic method of description. There is no continuous graphic story to be made of them. In the bulk, they form just a medley of isolated deeds, well and faithfully and methodically done, and it is only as a more or less detached series of pictures that our own pen can deal with them. Some of the medical units were grouped round the railhead at Romany, the rest being established at various stations along our defensive line. It will be of interest to follow the fortunes of one of these units from the time of the cat ear engagement up to and including the battle of Romany. Here are a few extracts from a communication received from a member of its personnel covering the period named. When the Turks made their raid on Katia, our ambulance was at Cantara, working the unnamed casualty clearing station. During the attack on Dua Da we formed an advanced dressing station at Hill 70. One of the cases that passed through our hands there was that of Lord Quennington, only son of Lord St. Audwin, who had been severely wounded when his regiment, the unnamed yeomanry, was surprised and so badly cut up. He died on the way down to our hospital at Cantara, where his body was embalmed by native doctors specially sent from Cairo. By May 10 the engineers had pushed on the desert railway as far as Pelusium. Our ambulance was then ordered to proceed with the brigade to Mayemdi on the north Sinai coast. We went by rail to Pelusium, where all our effects were dumped off. There we spent the night on the open desert without any cover, a heavy sea mist soaking our blankets and our clothes through to the skin. Very early in the morning we moved off with the brigade for a long march northward over the desert. We were only allowed half a bottle of water each, as the supply was scarce. This was one of the worst treks we have ever gone through and we have been through plenty. We marched in our full equipment, water bottle, have a sack, two blankets, great coat, and all personal belongings, as we knew anything left behind would never be seen again. It was a blazing hot day without a breath of air and after four or five hours steady tramp up and down sandhills we lost all sense of our surroundings and toiled on mechanically though our legs could scarcely support us. Many of the infantry had to fall out, exhausted to the last notch, but late in the afternoon we caught sight of the far-off white line of glistening sea, which cheered us somewhat, and an hour or two later we were lying in the cool surf, the finest sensation of our lives. At Mayemdi the ambulance worked under great difficulties. All evacuation of sick to the base had to be carried out by camels, and it was more than a month later before we got the branch railway up from Romany or the light railway along the strip of coastal sandbank from Port Syed. At Mayemdi we had an extraordinary experience. This was a plague of ladybirds, the only time we have ever seen this insect in Egypt. They came over in incredibly vast clouds and for a day or two swarmed over everything, but ultimately disappeared as mysteriously as they came. May the 16th or thereabouts a frightfully hot scorching wind blowing from the south and the number of heat exhaustion cases among the troops very high. July the 14th, just when the blessing of train evacuation was getting into order and the canteens beginning to flourish in Mayemdi, we were relieved by the unnamed ambulance and ordered to Romany. On the way down in the train the tender jumped the rails as we were traversing an embankment, but the usual miracle happened and no one was hurt, nothing worse than a long wait during the night till the breakdown gang arrived. August the 4th, battle of Romany, and second anniversary of the outbreak of the war. The first we knew of the coming fight was the Turkish aeroplane swarming overhead in the early morning and dropping bombs, many of which fell near our camp. The camp was in the early morning and dropping bombs, many of which fell near our camp. The camp was pitched on the top of a sand dune some distance north of the railway siding at Romany. A little later the Turkish artillery opened fire in our direction, their objective being probably some of our own batteries stationed behind the ridge in our rear, but most of the shells fell short and our camp got the benefit of them. When on Gallipoli Peninsula we were always known as the lucky ambulance and now we did not belay our old reputation. The shells fell thickly all round the camp and made holes all over our transport lines, but not a man nor an animal was touched. One shell landed alongside our cookhouse, smothered our breakfast in sand, and drove a hole through the cook's helmet, but without harming him or anyone else. As another instance of our luck one day on the peninsula we were working in conjunction with the unnamed ambulance. Our task was to convey the wounded from the trenches down to a spot known as the sandbags. From here the other ambulance took up the running. On that day they had two or three of their men killed and fourteen or fifteen wounded, but we escaped scot-free, although we were nearer the firing line, sometimes even working in the front line trenches under continuous rifle fire and often with the parapets battering down about our ears. Besides dealing with a large number of wounded at this camp on the sand dune we formed an evacuation post close to the railway siding where the bulk of the wounded were tended. Here it was a case of working night and day, and a large number of operations were successfully carried out. More chloroform was used at this time than ever before in the history of our ambulance. Our mobile section was also fully employed. It was stationed up at Catted Gannett, two miles south-west of Romany, and during the battle it was under continuous rifle fire. The dressing tent was riddled by bullets, but the proverbial luck of the ambulance held good, and not a single casualty occurred among our own men. Our sand carts did splendid work throughout the whole of the fighting at Romany, collecting the wounded from the redoubts along the line. These redoubts were battered unmercifully by shell fire. On one occasion, when the carts were trying to reach a redoubt which had been shelled incessantly for eight hours, they had to halt some distance away, owing to the Turk's left wing swinging round on the position. A communication trench had to be dug, but it was late in the evening before the wounded could be got out. The company defending the redoubt lost altogether about fifty percent of their strength in killed and wounded. Their medical officer was decorated for his work on this occasion. Next day our ambulance convoy moved out to a point south-south-west of Romany, and took over from a captured Turkish ambulance ninety wounded Turks. This Turkish medical unit fell into our hands intact, and, with a little assistance from us, were able to collect and evacuate all their own wounded from the sector. August the fifth. During the hasty retreat of the Turks on this day, we sent out individual sand carts broadcast over the country under fire. The carts returning filled with wounded every time. This work was exceptionally risky owing to the presence of isolated groups of the enemy. Concurrently with the rapid advance of our troops, our mobile section had to push well forward, and at Kilo 47 a main dressing station was formed. Shortly afterwards the remainder of our unit moved up to this camp, and for several weeks we undertook the evacuation of sick and wounded from the whole of our front, many cases coming as far distant as Magibra. On August the 29th a Turkish aeroplane dropped a bomb close alongside of the camp, killing outright two of the camelmen. Our own R.A.M.C. transport men were close by, but never received a scratch. Our good luck again. And here are a few thumbnail sketches of the doings of another ambulance which was in the Romany fight. Our hospital was right in the midst of the area of attack. The main onset lasted for two days, and shells and bombs rained down almost incessantly upon the station. The patient's tents were riddled by shrapnel bullets. The wounded began to come in early on August the 4th. By the evening the hospital was crowded to overflowing. August the 5th, big action at Wellington Ridge, and our ambulance convoy ordered out late in afternoon to help collect and evacuate wounded. We made a camp at Hod Abu Adi once we passed on wounded to another ambulance which had a main station at Etmala. We were working all night, taking the wounded down on camels, every cackalette we possessed being in use. It was a fairly heart-rending business, walking beside the rocking cackalettes with their groaning human burdens. The scene at Etmala fairly beggar description. The station was crowded with wounded and was all in a bustle and harm of activity in the darkness. In the centre were two huge operating tents blazing with light. The whole thing reminded one of a showground as a fair. In the tents the surgeons were continuously operating, a stream of wounded steadily flowing through their hands. One of the tents presented an unique spectacle, something we had never seen before and may never see again. On one side of the tent were our own AMC surgeons busy at their operating tables. The tables on the other side were under the care of Turkish surgeons assisted by Turkish orderlies, treating their own wounded. These were the personnel of one of the enemy ambulances which had fallen into our hands on the previous day. It was splendid to witness the perfect harmony and good fellowship which existed between the members of the British and Turkish medical staffs, only one common thought pervading the minds of all, the saving of life and relief of human suffering. August the 6th, another heavy day in the field for our ambulance men. Our convoy was ordered out to assist at Ogretina where an action had taken place between our mounted troops and the retreating Turks. On reaching Ogretina we found the personnel of the mounted ambulance overwhelmed with work and wholly unable to cope with the large number of wounded that had been brought in. There they were, lying about in the open, waiting their turn, many of them desperately wounded and most of them starving. Our men set to work, first to feed them and then to dress and bandage their wounds. We also erected shelters where they could be protected from the pitiless blazing sun. Altogether this was one of the most arduous jobs our men have ever tackled. And when all had been cared for, our main convoy had to evacuate them back to a main station at Kilo 47, making several journeys over a most difficult country with our whole available transport. It was a day we shall never forget. Many a back came near to breaking that day. The following extract is from an account of the work of still another ambulance during the same action. It illustrates again the great variety of work which the men of the Royal Army Medical Corps may be called upon to tackle in connection with an engagement. At Mayendia we opened up a large hospital, admitting patients from all the regiments quartered in the area, and evacuating by the light railway to No. 31 General Hospital at Port Syed and to 24th Stationery Hospital. On the morning of August the 4th several enemy aircraft appeared and dropped bombs, causing many casualties in the surrounding units. The same day our mobile column was mustered and left to take part in the Battle of Romany, following up close to the infantry. The column ultimately took up its position at the railhead, Kilo 47, and were detailed to attend to sick troops who had fallen out on the march. Parties of stretcher-bearers and also camels with cackalettes were dispatched in all directions to bring in the large number of men who had succumbed to exhaustion owing to the excessive heat, want of water, and the appalling difficulties of the march. Even Sinai Desert seems to have excelled itself that day in the matter of sweltering, almost intolerable heat and stifling dust. Our R.A.M.C. lads were themselves already fairly done up, but they toiled like trojans at the job. In one little hod, or wood of palm trees, no less than one hundred men were discovered, many of whom were unconscious. Others were lying, drinking the dirty brackish water out of stagnant pools. One poor fellow, whom I lit upon, was foaming at the mouth semi-dilirious from thirst. When I knelt down to give him a drink from my water bottle, he fairly tore it out of my hands and poured the water over his face in attempting to get it down his throat. All the men we found seemed to be absolutely ravenous for want of water. We collected and brought in about three hundred altogether that day. The majority, after being treated and detained at the dressing station for the night, were so far recovered on the morrow as to be able to rejoin their units out on the desert, but a good many serious cases among them had to be sent down the line. And the mention of the line brings us to the consideration of one achievement of the R.A.M.C. during this engagement at Romany, which deserves very special notice. This was the improvisation of a hospital train service by which many cases were passed down the line to Cantara during the first ten days from the outbreak of hostilities. A specially appointed ambulance train was in course of construction for use on the Sinai Desert Railroad, but it had not yet arrived, and some means of rapid evacuation of the wounded from Romany to the base on the Suez Canal had now to be hastily organised. No passenger carriages were available. There was nothing but the ordinary goods trucks, either opened or closed, for the conveyance of wounded. The traffic on the line was frightfully congested, owing to the need for bringing up reinforcements and materials of war. Communication over the twenty-five mile stretch of Desert Railroad was intermittent, and often impossible, as the military had the monopoly of the telegraph wires. Moreover, the personnel of the railway, and indeed of all R.A.M.C. units in the zone of action, was already more than fully employed. Nevertheless, a railway gang of medical officers and orderlies was got together by Hook and Crook. Seven closed goods trucks or box fans were commandeered and fitted up to contain eight slung stretches each, the necessary devising and carpentry work being done by the men of one of our sanitary sections. Other empty trucks were temporarily made use of whenever available on the returning trains. A senior medical officer was sent to the railhead at Romany as evacuation control officer. Six others were told off to act as train medical officers, and with them as many R.A.M.C. orderlies as could be collected. Equipment was issued, such as blankets, nursing and medical companions, medical comforts, dressings, bandages, and other emergency material. The R.A.M.C. personnel was divided into three separate train crews, each with its complete working rig out. These crews had to stand by, ready to man a train whenever a number of empty trucks could be secured. Their equipment was loaded in with them and a gun removed at the end of each journey when the wounded were taken off. Closed trucks only could be used during the daytime on account of the heat and distressing glare of the sun. At night open trucks were brought into use, the service being thus materially expedited. But the conveyance of the wounded by these means was attended by innumerable difficulties. The trains, to which the ambulance trucks were attached, were subject to unending delays and sidetrackings to allow the crowded down trains to pass on the single line. The frequent stoppages and shunting operations and the jolts and jars due to loose couplings or hastily laid metals was the cause of appalling discomfort, even downright torture to the patients, many of whom were very seriously injured. The work of the orderlies in charge of the wounded was also greatly hampered owing to the fact that it was impossible to pass from truck to truck except when the train was at a standstill. But in spite of all deterrents the work went ceaselessly on day and night, none thinking of rest or sleep until the last stretcher with the last helpless man was safely delivered at the base. Here again notable work was done. The Romany wounded were all taken to one casualty clearing station, whose staff proved themselves beyond all praise in their devotion to duty. The work, thus suddenly thrown upon them, however, was beyond human possibility, and the assistance of both officers and men of neighbouring medical units was called in and promptly rendered. It should be mentioned here that not only our own wounded but several wounded Turkish prisoners were brought down to Cantara at this time. These latter were dealt with at the Egyptian hospital, which was commanded by an RAMC officer and partly staffed by the corps. End of Section 8. Section 9 of With the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt by Sergeant Major R. A. M. C. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8. L. Arish Magdaba Rafa The decisive rout of the enemy at Romany denoted the final destruction of his hope of affecting the invasion of Egypt from the east. It also marked the inauguration of a new British forward policy in this arena of the war. The greater issue, however, must not concern us here, nor did it nearly concern any in Egypt, high or low, at the time with which we are dealing. The immediate problem in Sir Archibald Murray's path was simple, and as difficult as it was simple. He had to get his army into Palestine, but the way to Palestine lay over some 200 miles of roadless and practically waterless desert, with the way barred by an enemy still powerful and possessed of great resources, despite the thorough trampling he had received. We had shown that we knew how to deal with that enemy when and wherever we should come to further grips with him, but how to get at him, how to deal with the great trackless torrid waste that lay between. There was only one way to convey an army of the magnitude necessary for our purposes across such a wilderness. It was to construct a railroad by which all guns and heavy impedimenta could be carried, and supplies continuously maintained abreast of the advancing troops, and to lay down a pipeline which should tap the only possible source of fresh water in the requisite quantity, the Sweetwater Canal, running parallel with the Suez Canal on its Egyptian side, and so provide the millions of gallons of water which the army would need on its eastward progress. Our Palestine expeditionary force crossed the Sinai Desert literally on a bridge of water and steel. The story of this great exploit of our engineers, in driving a broad gauge railway and pipelines across 200 miles of howling wilderness in record time, and in the teeth of innumerable and unimaginable difficulties, may be given no place in a chronicle exclusively devoted to the medical side of the war. But it concerns us in so far as it affected the work of the RAMC. What constituted an incredibly swift rate of progress for an engineering undertaking of the kind meant but a tortoise-like rate for the advance of an army. Though flying columns of mounted troops were continually deploying for many miles beyond the railhead in quest of a possible enemy, the main body of our force necessarily retarded its pace to that of its only means of supply. The result was that very large numbers of our troops were continuously encamped on the desert for several months, which meant close and unremitting work for the ambulances accompanying them. The climatic conditions, indeed, were all against white troops. The desert is no place for civilized human habitation, and we were there at our peril. The few bedowins that wandered these inhospitable steps and rolling seas of sandhills were just the Lees of humanity drained away from the more generous courses of the world, like their prototypes of the far north, the Eskimo, through lack of all those resistant qualities of race that differentiate a herd from a people. They were there from necessity, the necessity which, if ever it be true that it knows no law, at least very soon manages to create some. The British in North Sinai, however, were out not to make the best of circumstances, but rudely and ruthlessly to annihilate them, with their screaming, reverberating machinery, their endless snake of a water pipe, their bully beef and biscuit, their unpicturesque raiment, their devotion to soap and water, and their musical songs, they were an insult to the timeless immutability of the desert, and all the elements connived to render as uncomfortable as possible the clamorous passage eastward of this ungainly host. Burning summer changed into burning autumn, and autumn into winter, with its days as scorching hot as ever, but with its bitter freezing nights. The thinnest garments were a burden while the sun was up, no heaped blankets or huddling together in the bivvies after nightfall would keep the searching cold at bay. Sometimes the seafox soaked us through and through. One day the wind would drive against our faces like a blast from a furnace-throttle. Darkness would find it volleying over the hills with a touch as a razor-edged icicles. Sandstorms hid the far end of the camp in their solid murk, and filled our eyes and throats, our meat and drink, with grinding grit. It never rains on Sinai Desert. The sky turns inky black, and concentrated Niagara's descend, such as would blanch the cheek of Noah. Hurricanes spring up from nowhere, and are gone as suddenly as they come. But probably the interval has seen our animals stampeded, our sand carts overturned, and our bivvies blown away bodily into the void. All these little contrarinesses of nature may be no more than a bracing tonic to the Bedouin, but they are too memory inspiring for the British soldier. They make him homesick, and homesickness is a predisposing cause, as the doctors say, for all sorts of other ills. The morning sick parades at the medical stations were well too well attended, and our RMC men had as much work to do as even an RMC man could expect or desire. But steadily, remorselessly, the long steel trail drew out over the desert, and at last there came a December morning, when our position was a judge near enough for a sudden, swift, and long-armed blow. It was to be a surprise attack. A good twenty-mile still separated our position from the enemy's stronghold at El Arish, where he had long prepared to resist us. He would deem us still too far off to attempt an infantry action on a big scale, and would not have made ready as yet. The time, therefore, was ripe for our purpose. We had already affected a vast accumulation of supplies at the railhead, water, fuel, food, fodder, munitions, every kind of stores. The troops were ready, ordinaire bouton. The order was given to go. But the very magnitude and thoroughness of our action now lost us the chance, for the time being, of a grand decisive coup. The enemy got wind of our intention, and wisely decided to retire. Our aircraft brought in the news that El Arish was being hastily abandoned. On receipt of these tidings, our mounted troops, cavalry, cavalry, and horse artillery dashed forward, covering the intervening twenty miles of heavy desert country in a single night. The infantry followed, each man carrying two days rations in addition to his fighting gear, the whole force reaching El Arish within eighteen hours of the start. Figurous pursuit of the retreating enemy was at once organised, and our flying column caught up with him at Magdebar, twenty miles southeast of El Arish, in less than four hours, and there inflicted on him a crushing defeat, taking one thousand three hundred and fifty prisoners. Eleven days later came the action at Rafa, thirty miles northeast of El Arish, where another dashing raid by our troops resulted in an even larger hall of prisoners and still more damage inflicted on the foe. The story of the field ambulances during this stirring time, following so long a period of comparative inaction, is not easy to come by, but glimpses that have been obtainable here and there reveal it as one full of the usual dramatic incident recurring risk and hard incessant work. Here is an account jotted down in the brief intervals of duty by a member of one of the medical units chiefly engaged. We arrived at El Arish on the 23rd of December after a very trying march and enormous difficulty in getting our ambulance equipment through the sandhills. Here it became known that our mounted troops had succeeded in catching up at Magdebar, with a big lot of retreating Turks, and had managed to cut them off from the main body of the enemy. On the night of the 24th word came through that large numbers of wounded, both British and Turks, were lying at the ambulance station of the mounted force, and this ambulance needed help. We sent three of our medical officers and forty-five orderlies to assist. We also received a message that a camel convoy of wounded on its way from this battlefield to our base was held up a considerable distance off owing to the exhaustion of the camels. We sent two medical officers, a squad of orderlies, and eighteen sand carts to bring these wounded in. It was no easy matter to find the convoy in the middle of the night amidst a trackless waste of hills, but our men succeeded in coming upon them about two o'clock in the morning. The wounded soldiers were transferred from the camel kakalats to our sand carts, and safely brought to El Arish. At this time we were rendering daily help to the overtaxed men of the mounted ambulance. We had, in addition, to attend to the wounded Turkish prisoners here at the base. Our ambulance convoys also did continuous duty, conveying patience to the railhead twenty miles back on our lines of communication. It is interesting to note that, in one case, that of a wounded British officer was evacuated from Magdebar by aeroplane. After the dash on Rafa, three of the field ambulances in El Arish received orders to turn out every available sand cart in their equipment and to proceed to a place called Sheikh Zouaid, about twenty miles off, for the purpose of collecting wounded from the Rafa action. Between them the three ambulances got together a convoy consisting of over fifty sand carts, and a big detachment of nursing orderlies and medical officers. The convoy set out in the darkness of early morning on the 10th of January, reaching their destination about eleven a.m. At Sheikh Zouaid some six hours were spent in dressing and bandaging, not only our own wounded, but many wounded Turks who had been brought into the station. During this time, numbers of the sand carts were sent out to scar the country eastward for further wounded. Four of these carts narrowly escaping capture by the enemy. It was late in the afternoon before the convoy was fully loaded with the more serious cases and could start on the homeward journey. El Arish was gained at two o'clock on the following morning, exactly twenty-two hours from the time the huge convoy had set out. In this period our R.A.M.C. men had marched twenty miles over soft, deep sand. The most tiring walking in the world had done six hours hard work and had then marched back again without a minute's rest all the time. A performance whose merits need no comment. Such incidents in the daily work of the Medical Corps, however, have been far from uncommon during the campaign. Atel Arish, in the meantime, the hospital sections of the ambulance had been making ready for the Rafa wounded. Here is a brief account of the doings of one of them. After preparing our hospital, so as to accommodate a total of three hundred and fifty patients, the wounded commenced to arrive, and an incessant flow of them continued all night, some arriving on camel cackalettes, and others, stretcher cases mostly, reaching us in the sand carts. In addition to the hospital marquees, three reception tents and three surgical and dressing tents had to be used to cope with the number of admissions. Curiously, the first wounds treated were mainly of a slight nature, but later on many exceptionally serious cases were admitted, several of which required immediate operation. As well as our field hospital work, we also undertook the duties of a casualty clearing station, evacuating the patients to the hospital trains at Railhead for transmission to the stationery hospitals at the base on the canal. Our total admissions of wounded from the Rafa stunt were three hundred and nine. The system we worked upon was to evacuate all the less gravely wounded cases at the earliest opportunity, while the more serious cases, such as thorax or abdominal wounds, were retained in the hospital and treated until fit to stand the journey in the train. In regard to this Rafa engagement, the following extract from an eyewitnesses article published in the Egyptian press at the time, will be of interest. Special mention deserves to be made of the gallantry of the stretcher-bearers. They went out into this absolutely open country, the exposed ground in front of the enemy position over which our troops are charged. They took no notice of the heaviest fire, but Cooley picked up the wounded and bore them away to the ambulance wagons. It is pleasant to be able to add that, in spite of the great distance at which the force was operating, nearly thirty miles, the hospital arrangements were admirable. Our wounded and the Turkish wounded prisoners travelled comfortably to El Arish, and twenty-four hours after the capture of the Rafa position, all were housed under canvas. It is interesting to compare the hospital train service at this stage of the operations with that enforced during the battle of Romani five months earlier. Whereas at the earlier engagement the wounded were conveyed in common ration or munition trucks hastily and imperfectly fitted up for the occasion, and attached to the ordinary trains, to the acute discomfort and often downright torture of the patients, now a thoroughly well-organized and efficient train ambulance system had come into being. Two complete and well-appointed hospital trains were in readiness at the railhead. Each train had its medical officer and special staff of R.A.M.C. orderlies. The carriages were well sprung and properly coupled to ensure smooth and easy running. There were comfortable bed bunks for the lying-down cases, and equally comfortable sitting accommodation for the rest. Each train had its travelling kitchen and staff of cooks, so that not only the usual meals, but special invalid diet, could be prepared en route. There was also a plentiful supply of medical and sick room comforts, not omitting the inevitable tobacco and cigarettes always on hand. In fact, the suffering passengers were as well looked after as in a permanent hospital ward. The service had also been expedited in a remarkable degree. During the Romani engagement the improvised ambulance trucks attached to the ordinary trains were subject to endless stoppages and delays, and commonly took four or five hours to negotiate the distance of about 25 miles to Cantara. Now, in spite of having many more miles of desert railroad, wherein were many steep gradients to traverse, the hospital trains landed their helpless human freight at the base on the canal within five to eight hours. At Cantara a fleet of motor ambulances awaited each train, and the wounded were swiftly conveyed, either to the steamers on the canal, which took them to Port Said, or to the station of the Egyptian state railway on the other side of the water, when Southern equally well-appointed ambulance trains transported them to the base hospitals. The net result of this greatly accelerated and perfected service was that valuable lives were often saved by bringing the seriously wounded betimes within reach of proper surgical aid and appliances. Thanks alone to the energy and resource of a hard-worked medical staff the country was at last doing its best for those who had given their best for their country. In common with all who have tried to do their little utmost, whatever that may have amounted to, to help in this war, the writer of these pages will carry home with him many lasting memories of strange happenings and impressive scenes. But it is doubtful whether any of these will prove to have made so deeper mark in his recollection as his first view of a hospital train in the midst of the Sinai Desert. It was on a drowsy, breathless morning in November, and since daybreak we had been plodding along eastward under a pitiless sun through the interminable waste of hills. With every step the foot sank out of sight in the yielding sand. Every hour the heat grew fiercer and our limbs wearier, and the desert silence and solitude about us more and more like a burden added to the packs we already had to bear. A less eventful enterprise than a long march over certain areas of the Sinai Desert could scarcely be imagined. You see nothing for hours on end but sand and sky. Rarely you come across two or three spindly palm trees round a patch of damp brine or a stretch of rocky ground dotted over with scrub where little lie the lizards bask and leave their tails in your hand if you try to catch them. Or a slinking hyena may cross the path ahead or a vulture mark the blue sky for a moment. But of humanity and for humanity there is nothing. You are in luck's way if you see a string of camels on the skyline or get a view and the fettered reek of a beddow in camp or hear the drone of a warplane somewhere up in Sagittarius or the Pleiades. We toiled on through that internal switchback of Sandy Hill and Dile, the thoughts of some of us going back in sympathy to the Israelites of old who had wandered that same desert and suffered more than we. There was some comfort in that thought. At least nightfall would probably see us at Bear L. Aberde and the end of our journey, but they, poor wretches, had forty years of it. Towards midday we drew out of the hills into an open plain, and there we halted to rest and transfer the burden of our rations from our backs to a more intimate part of our persons. Afterwards we sat and smoked, looked out from under our helmet-brims at the wide-spreading landscape. It was more silent and solitary than ever. But at least it was less unhuman than the blighted terrain we had lately travelled. There below us was our wonderful desert railroad, looking like a pencil line ruled across the plain, and beside it ran a continuous mound of sand, beneath which the equally famous water pipe of our modern miracle workers, the royal engineers, hid its ugly indispensability. Looking on these welcome reminders of the existence of man, the very companionship implied in the sight made us almost glad of the war that made it possible in such a solitude. And as we gazed, there drew into our view something that sobered us and made us ashamed. It seemed the most beautiful thing we had ever solved eyes on. Across the drab deserted valley it sped, a creature, long and slender, and of a delicate, sinuous grace, and all shining white as driven snow. Its pure whiteness marked with crosses of vivid scarlet, and a trail of gray smoke hovering over it as it went. Midway through the valley it slowed down and stopped, poised motionless for an instant. Then, with a note like the clear call of a thrush, even to an engine whistle, distance lends some softening enchantment. It gathered speed again, and soon vanished into the dun-brown haze of the horizon. One of our orderlies took his pipe from his lips. In private life he was a divinity student. Many a time I had seen him scrubbing floors at a military hospital. Said he, There you are, the most wonderful thing the desert has to show today, a smile of love and mercy on the cruel face of war. But that's what the Red Cross really stands for at bottom. The fighting forces, and all that minister to them, they represent violence. War is violence and nothing else. The Red Cross stands for humanity, peace, goodwill between men, everything that the world was made for. That train going to and fro constantly from end to end of the desert will act as a reminder and a warning to all who see it. It will do more good than Pipper's song. Though not many of us had read Browning, we all knew what he meant. End of Section 9. Section 10 of With the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt by Sergeant Major R.A.M.C. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The advance across the Sinai Desert from Romany to El Arish called for a vast amount of work on the part of the Royal Army Medical Corps, as distinct from its field ambulance and hospital duties. Our mobile column had moved continuously ahead of the main body of our troops, and was often encamped many miles from the railhead. Its supplies, including water, being carried to it by means of camels, no wheel transport being possible in that terrain. The difficulty of maintaining an adequate supply of water in this way was enormous, owing to the large number of animals employed. Everything was done, therefore, to discover and develop such natural sources of water as might exist on the route chosen, in order to minimise the problem of transport from the base. With this object in view, water reconnaissance parties were organised and sent forward in advance of the column. These parties consisted of detachments of the Royal Engineers, accompanied by their attached medical officers. They worked under an escort of mounted troops, and were often away from the base for weeks on end, pricking the ground in all likely spots by means of Norton's tubes, and, where water was found, marking the locality for the guidance of the well-sinking parties of infantry who would eventually follow. These water reconnaissance parties were entirely detached, and their task was not unattended by danger. They were frequently attacked by enemy aircraft, and had continual hair-breath escapes. The medical officers accompanying the parties were provided with chemical boxes containing all requisites for testing the quality of the water located. The chief difficulty was to discover water of sufficiently low salinity as to be drinkable by white troops. In many places near the sea coast, though trial-boreings revealed the existence of water in fair quantity, it was often more than four times as salt as sea water. The occupation in force of El-Arish by our troops raised this question of water supply into one of prime and very grave importance. The railhead was at some distance from the town. This intervening stretch of desert proved almost entirely waterless, and our troops were dependent on camel-borne water. Not only during their march dither, but for such time from the commencement of their occupation of the town as must elapse before the local supplies could be sufficiently developed. These required a large supply of potable water daily. It will be understood, therefore, what a strain was thrown on the resources of our camel transport service until the supply from well sunk in the locality could be raised to the requisite point. Luckily fresh water in abundance was obtainable in the vicinity of the Wadi El-Arish, a substratum of impervious clay existing beneath the sand, which latter acted as a natural filter for the surface water. All wells, however, had to be treated by chlorination or other means before they could be used by the troops, and this involved heavy and continuous work on the part of the sanitary sections of our core. Our sanitary men had indeed a busy time during the first weeks of our occupation of El-Arish. The town had been in possession of the Turks for about two years previously, and its condition, from a sanitary point of view, on our arrival was well nigh indescribable. El-Arish lies in the midst of a wide plain of more or less cultivated land, interspersed with woods of date palm. The town covers a considerable area, but far from being the prosperous eastern caravan city as represented by the newspapers at home, it proved on our arrival to be largely of the tumble-down, half-ruinous type, inhabited, or rather haunted, by some 4,000 people, a thoroughly cowed, disheartened, poverty-stricken crew. How much of this was due to the blessings of the Turkish occupation, we had no means of judging and little time to inquire. The Turks, on their departure, had not only carried off with them all men of military age, but had entirely denuded the town of foodstuffs. Those of the people who remained were practically starving, and to feed them was the first duty that confronted us on our entry. Our next was to cleanse the place. The situation which faced our RMC sanitary men in this regard was little less than appalling. El-Arish consisted of a widespreading jumble of houses and mud huts, intersected by a labyrinth of narrow lanes, courtyards, and cul-de-sacs. Human excrement, filth, and garbage of all kinds were heaped in every corner, and met the eye and the nostrils at every turn. Turkish latrine pits, full to the brim, with the accumulation of months, were spread indiscriminately over the whole town area, each adding its stench to the already overburdened air. There was a plague of flies in the place, and little wonder. The people were overrun with vermin. Smallpox was early discovered to be rife among them. Cholera was suspected. We came into the place literally with our lives in our hands. Moreover, the thousands of inhabitants remaining there continued to be found the public ways with their excreta under our very eyes, and thus added every day to the perils and difficulties of the situation. The country immediately surrounding the town was in no better case. All the hods, or plantations of trees, were thickly bestrewed with human feces, and the dumped refuse of ages, while the trenches which had been dug for the defence of the place by the Turkish garrison were little better than open latrines. Well might the officer commanding our R.A.M.C. sanitary section have despaired at sight of the Orgy and Stable, the work of whose cleansing confronted him on his entry into El Arish. But, of course, he did nothing of the kind. He and his men wasted no time in looking at the job. They just took off their coats and went at it. Organisation won the day. Maps of the town and its vicinity were immediately prepared, and the ground divided into sections. Each section was placed under the charge of an R.A.M.C. man as an inspector with a staff of natives hastily recruited in the town to carry out his orders. Steadily, methodically, each street, cross-lane, corner, and blind alley, was cleared of its filth. Old fecal heaps were first treated with disinfectants, and then buried on the spot. Public latrines and public incinerators for the reception and destruction by burning of all refuse were established in various convenient spots, and the compulsory use of them by the El Arish folk enjoined under pain of severe penalties. Then a house-to-house tour was organised, the local Egyptian doctor acting as interpreter, and each house was thoroughly cleansed, sprayed with germicide, its compound scavenged, and all garbage and rubbish consigned to the nearest incinerator. The native school was visited, and plentifully dosed with disinfectants. Afterwards a system of daily scavenging of all public ways in the town was instituted and maintained, a permanent staff of natives under four permanent inspectors being detailed for the purpose. Also, to minimise in some degree the plague of flies, pending their disappearance following the removal of their breeding grounds as above described, a liberal supply of flypapers and tanglefoot was distributed among the inhabitants with very encouraging results. As a final sanitary measure, all moist places and stagnant pools round about the town received a surface film of petroleum for the destruction of mosquito larvae, and the native sources of drinking water were carefully chlorinated, in the same way as was done for our own troops. While all these dispositions were being carried into effect by the sanitary section, our medical staff was vigorously prosecuting its own side of the work. The town was systematically and thoroughly searched for cases of smallpox and other infectious diseases. When found these were removed to an isolation hospital, the buildings where the ailments were identified undergoing drastic fumigation and all clothing etc destroyed. People who had come into contiguity with these cases were also removed and placed under quarantine as contacts. This however, considerable as it was, formed relatively only a small part of the work of the R.A.M.C. medical staff at this critical period. Vaccination of the whole population of L.Arish was decided upon as a precautionary measure, and there can, of course, be no question as to the wisdom or rather the downright necessity of the staff. The puzzle, however, was how to carry out the edict effectively. The people were a mild-visaged, gentle, indolent lot, content so long as they could sit and yarn in the shade, and the millet jar at home was not empty. A bag of millet worth 18 piastras, about three shillings and sixpence, suffices, it is said, to feed a family of twenty for a fortnight. They were thoroughly cowed by the dragooning they had so long undergone from the Turks. They were not likely to offer serious resistance to any ordination of their new conquerors. Moreover, we had found them starving and had fed them and were treating them kindly. It seemed possible that we might induce them to come in for vaccination on some benevolent hypothesis. As a matter of fact, over three thousand were vaccinated by our medical officers out of a roughly computed population of three thousand seven hundred, and there is little reason for doubt that by this prompt measure a severe epidemic was nipped in the bud. It must be remembered that all these early sanitary and humanitarian operations were carried through long before the railway reached El Arish. Everything needed, disaffectants, medical supplies, and the like, had to be brought up on the backs of camels, a tedious and lengthy process. In addition to the labours imposed on our AMC men by the sanitary condition of the town itself, there occurred at this time among our troops a severe outbreak of scabies. Popularly believed to be a kind of skin disease, but actually an irritant and inflammatory condition due to a parasite which burrows into the skin. It became necessary to treat large numbers of our men for this highly contagious infection, but personal treatment could be of little practical avail without the thorough disinfection of all clothing and bedding. The treatment of fabrics on so large a scale as now became necessary could be affected only by means of the thresh high-pressure steam disaffecting machines in common use in the army. But our thresh machines were down at Rowhead and there was no possibility of getting them brought up for some time to come. At this juncture we made an extremely lucky find. This was nothing less than a steam disinfector which had been left behind by the Turks on their evacuation of El-Arish. It was discovered hidden away in an obscure corner and proved to be in good going order. Our sanitary section soon had the machine in action and by its means carried out the sterilization necessary for the whole of the troops. Subsequently this machine proved itself an invaluable addition to our medical resources. All agreed that it accomplished its work better and more quickly than the machines of British make officially supplied to the section. A circumstance which will cause little wonder to engineers acquainted with the machinery market of pre-war times. When it is mentioned that though the suppliers purported to be Turkish and had indeed the red crescent and a Turkish motto glaringly displayed upon it, an inconspicuous tablet revealed the fact that it was made in vain. The evacuation of El-Arish by the enemy and his pursuit and decisive defeat at Rafa at the hands of our troops marked really the close of the Near East Campaign so far as Egypt was concerned. Here therefore our account of the doings of the Royal Army Medical Corps in Egypt in respect of the actual fighting naturally terminates. Rafa was the last stronghold of the Turks in Egyptian territory. Henceforth the war was to be carried into the enemy's own country and how this latter task was accomplished is or soon will be known to all. That, however, is another story, the telling of which must be left to other pens. Our own chronicle must now leave the firing line and turn to less exalted themes. It is a great thing to brave all perils from shot and shell on the battlefield in the mission of saving life and easing pain. But the medical work of an army on active service cannot wholly or even mainly be done in this way. Necessarily, inevitably, a large proportion of what is accomplished must be done, so to say, behind the scenes. Our R.A.M.C. men have their lines to speak in the glare and glory of the footlights, and none can deliver them in their stead. But their major part in the spectacle must be carried through amid the sober obscurity of the flies and wings. It will be our object now, in the pages following, to give some brief account of what has been done in Egypt by the R.A.M.C. in less heroic but equally important spheres. End of section 10