Then we hooked in and marched again, and in the middle of the afternoon found Mamoura--a village of odd smells, naked children, filthy women and pariah dogs--and pitched camp on the choking sand half a mile from the seashore. By this time the horses were nearly dead and the only water was a mile and a half away and full of sand. But they drank it, poor brutes, by the gallon,--and two days after we had our first case of sand colic. The Staff were in marquees on the seashore. Presumably being bored, having nothing earthly to do, they began to exhibit a taste for design and each day the camp was moved, twenty yards this way, fifteen that, twelve and a half the other, until, thank God, the sun became too much for them and they retired to suck cool drinks through straws and think up a new game. By this time the Colonel had refused to play and removed himself, lock, stock and barrel, to the hotel in the village. The Adjutant was praying aloud for the mud of Flanders. The Orderly Officer made himself scarce and the Battery Commanders were telling Indian snake stories at breakfast. The sergeants and the men, half naked and with tongues hanging out, were searching for beer. The days passed relentlessly, scorching hot, the only work, watering the horses four times a day, leaving everybody weak and exhausted. At night a damp breeze sighed across the sand from the sea, soaking everything as though it had rained. The busiest men in the camp were the Vet. and the doctor. Sand colic ran through the Division like a scourge, and dysentery began to reduce the personnel from day to day. The flies bred in their billions, in spite of all the doctor’s efforts, loyally backed up by us. The subalterns’ method of checking flies was to catch salamanders and walk about, holding them within range of guy ropes and tent roofs where flies swarmed, and watch their coiled tongues uncurl like a flash of lightning and then trace the passage of the disgruntled fly down into the salamander’s interior. Battery Commanders waking from a fly-pestered siesta would lay their piastres eagerly on “Archibald” versus “Yussuf.” Even Wendy would have admitted that it was “frightfully fascinating.” Every morning there was a pyjama parade at six o’clock when we all trooped across to the sea and went in as nature made us. Or else we rode the horses with snorts and splashings. The old hairy enjoyed it as much as we did and, once in, it was difficult to get him out again, even with bare heels drumming on his ribs. The infantry, instead of landing at Alexandria, had gone straight to the Dardanelles, and after we had been in camp about a fortnight the two senior brigades of Gunners packed up and disappeared in the night, leaving us grinding our teeth with envy and hoping that they wouldn’t have licked the Turk until we got there too. Five full months and a half we stayed in that camp! One went through two distinct phases.