The heat in June was terrific, and a temperature of 120 degrees in the shade—the difficulty being to find the shade!—was normal, and on one or two occasions a midnight temperature of 105 degrees was registered. During this hot period the scouts and signallers of the 125th Brigade, while taking part in a training scheme, were sent out to the Ataka Hills, some seven or eight miles from camp, two parties operating as opposing forces. Movement among the hills proved more arduous than had been anticipated, and the men suffered much from the blazing sun—the rays being refracted by the rocks—and also from want of water. The greater part of them got back to camp with considerable difficulty. A Yeomanry patrol and an aeroplane were sent out on June 16, and parties of Arabs two days later, to look for the missing, and the bodies of two men who had died from heat and exhaustion were brought in. After this no training was permitted between the hours of 8.30 a.m. and 6 p.m. For the remaining ten hours of the day the average man could do little except lie, lightly clad, envying the Russians in the Caucasian snows, and dreaming of the invention or discovery of an ice-cold drink that could be produced in unlimited quantities even in a desert, and would remain unaffected by the temperature. But— “Who can hold a fire in his hand, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus?” Khamsin winds made life almost unbearable, and bathing was the one resource, for even bridge became too strenuous a game, though nap was played occasionally by the energetic ones. [Sidenote: _El Ferdan_] On June 19 the Division was ordered north to take over from the 11th Division the El Ferdan Section, the central section of the Canal zone, midway between Ismailia and Kantara. The move was completed by the end of the month. The 7th and 8th Lancashire Fusiliers took over the defences at Ballah, a station on the Canal, and the 5th and 6th Lancashire Fusiliers at Ballybunnion, a desert post about six miles to the east. The 6th and 8th Manchesters and the 126th Brigade were stationed at El Ferdan and Abu Uruk, about five miles north-east of El Ferdan. The artillery was split up among the posts, the 210th Brigade at Ballah and the 211th at El Ferdan, and during this period the howitzer batteries were rearmed with 4·5 Q.F. howitzers. The 1st Field Company, R.E., was at Ballah and Ballybunnion; the 2nd Field Company at Abu Uruk, and the recently arrived 3rd Field Company at Ferdan, where were also the 2nd and 3rd Field Ambulances. The Division was now occupying the ground where, according to tradition, the Israelites crossed the Red Sea. The 5th and 7th Manchesters went as far north as Kantara, where they were attached to the 52nd Division, and the friendship with the Lowland Scots, begun and cemented in Gallipoli, was here revived. They also took over posts from the 11th Manchesters, the first of the “Kitchener” battalions of their own regiment.