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With Manchesters in the East

Chapter 10 ON THE SUEZ CANAL

Word Count: 1384    |    Released on: 06/12/2017

A semicircular outpost line, which covered these works and the Brigade camp, was occupied nightly, but there was no real dange

lling sandhills, skilfully laid out by Captain A.H. Tinker, was known for a week or two as Ardwick, and then abandoned. Another, very ably commanded by Captain C. Norbury, was the far more fascinating blockhouse known as Gurkha Post, noted for its bathing, fishing and agreeable remoteness from staff officers. It was delightful to ride out from Shallufa camp along a track called "the pil

otamia or India. "Who are you?" was the invariable cry from the banks. Our war-worn men received usually the answering taunt: "Garris

the School and Headquarters of the Royal Flying Corps threw a flood of light on that bril

Sports, football, concerts, buried-treasure hunts, competitions "for the singing championship of Asia" and other sounding honours, and much bathing helped us to recover health and j

cceeded to their place on English camping grounds. Those who came from another battalion had been specially fortunate in their training, and in having the inspiring influence i

and a relic of the conquest of Guadaloupe by the 63rd Regiment in 1759. No less inspiring was the revival of the Sentry on the 1st March 1917. Of its staff of

hese men-W. Jones, Mort, Woods, Stanton, Fielding, Lyth, Bracken, Houghton, Dermody, Parkinson, Barber-were the salt of the Regiment. During the long years when Territorial service had been irksome and unfashionable, they made it succeed. With a few old hands like

eut. N.H.P. Whitley, Lieut. J.

R.V. Rylands,

25th marched into Suez New Camp to undergo training. The move was welcome,

text-books of 1916 taught that close order drill and punctilious discipline, tempered by

wed by a march past in blinding dust. Days of this type, however, even if they mean rising at four in the morning and include Brigade bathes in the warm, blue Gulf of Suez, followed by break

ters for the possession of "Tower 16," a solitary landmark on the caravan track to Cairo, after the manner of the pre-War era. The Sentry blossomed as the first English paper of the country. Two thousand copies used to be sold at Suez alone. Ou

lion. Colonel Canning went on leave to England, and his dist

screen of detached infantry posts-where the existing defence scheme had not progressed with sufficient speed. A more combative strategy was obviously contemplated, no doubt provoked by the recent action at Katia. In the late afte

way of Kubri and Shallufa was an ordeal even for our seasoned troops in the blazing heat of an African summer. At 3 A.M. on the 27th May the Battalion set out from their chilly bivouac by the Y.M.C.A. hut at Shallufa along a road made by the Egyptian Labour Corps

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