In the wadi the engineers were incessantly trying to improve the conditions. When the horses had been catered for, they constructed a small dam across a portion of the watering-place and made a bathing-pool where you could stand up to your middle in clear, cold water. As we were not supposed to remove even our putties except for bathing, or washing clothes, the pool was soon working overtime. On a broad, flat ledge jutting out into the wadi the engineers made a place where you could wash your clothes, with gutters and channels for carrying away the soapy water cut in the face of the cliff. When this was done a powerful clothes-washing offensive was begun, for few of us had more than one shirt and that, of course, was on our backs. Of our socks it could be said that the welts were good; the toes and heels had perished of overwork.
One of the few charitable things men ever said about the sun was that it dried your clothes quickly; you could take your shirt off your back, wash it, and in an hour or so put it on again, bone-dry. This was a consideration in a place where, while your shirt was drying, you wore your tunic over the bare skin and prayed that there would not be an alarm turn-out for, at any rate, an hour. When supplies are scarce you cannot afford to lose many articles of kit, nor can you call for an armistice while you wait for your shirt to dry.
Elsewhere I have mentioned, perhaps too frequently, the remarkable speed with which the railway followed the troops. On the fourth day after our arrival, it reached Tel el Fara. This was the branch line running eastwards across our flank from Khan Yunus to Shellal, on the extreme right. Just below the Crusaders' hill the sides of the wadi sloped gently down and it was possible to cross in comparative comfort. Here a group of engineers and E.L.C. were working in a casual, aimless sort of way, apparently building a bridge for the branch line. Turkish aircraft very soon found this party, who, indeed, seemed anxious to advertise their efforts, and bombed it incessantly with considerable success.
Every day joists and beams and stones went up in the air and every day, when the strafe was ended, the E.L.C. put them back again and added a few more. But the Turks were very persevering and literally gave the workers no rest. The bridge made little progress, but nobody worried very much. The men appeared to be content to advance three yards, as it were, and slip back two; there was no hurry over the business. Indeed, it looked like a lapse on the part of the engineers to choose such an unsheltered and unsuitable spot for a bridge; it would almost certainly be swept away by the floods of the rainy season.