CHAPTER IX

THE DESERT

I know more about the desert in Egypt than any other part of it, for it
was on the desert we trained. There were sham fights galore, but it
was mostly squad and company drill, until if some devil had scooped out
our brain-boxes and filled them with sawdust we could have carried out
the orders just as well. In fact, one fellow must have gone mad with
the monotony of it and perpetrated the rhyme, to the tune of "The Red,
White, and Blue":


"At the halt, on the left, form platoons,
At the halt, on the left, form platoons,
If the odd numbers don't mark time two paces,
How the hell can the boys form platoons?"


I don't know whether the author was ever found, but I know plenty that
were laid out for singing it. We began to have a sinking feeling that
we would not be in the real scrap at all, for a good part of our time
was taken up in forming "_hollow square_," a formation that is famous
in the British army as having been only once broken, but is only of
value against savages, and "furphies" (unfounded rumors) spread that we
were going into Darkest Africa or the Soudan. However, we also
practised echelon for artillery formation, that is, breaking a company