From the railhead at Deir el Belah to the mouth of the wadi Ghuzze, and from that point along the line of the wadi to various places behind the line held by us, we had a total length of 21 kilometres of light railway.
I was asked by General Headquarters to send a cablegram to London announcing the fact that railhead was at El Arish, the town having been captured a fortnight previously after a fine night march.
But he did not know, and he should have known, being an Intelligence officer, that the Turks were so far aware of where our railhead was that they were frequently bombing it from the air.
From railhead to the spot where Father Abraham and his people fed their flocks the country was bare and the earth's crust had yielded all its strength under the influence of the summer sun.
At Rafa there was a big store of ammunition, and at Shellal large quantities not only of supplies but of railway material were piled up in readiness for pushing out railhead immediately the advance began.
A considerable number of XXth Corps troops would then return to the neighbourhood of railhead and release the greater part of its transport for the infantry of XXIst Corps moving up the Maritime Plain.
Rations were a bit thin at this time, with the railhead so far behind us and so large a force to be fed, but the situation was greatly eased by the fact that we could now employ wheeled transport with little difficulty.
The salved material so collected is loaded on to horse wagons and driven to the roadside, where loads are transferred to lorries, thence taken to railhead dumps, piled up, and sorted.
The Column Supply Officer arrives in his car and "takes over the train" from the Railhead Supply Officer.
Our time for loading at railhead was usually about midnight, and at about this hour on the night of the 17th the weather changed, and the heavens began to pour forth rain and continued to do so throughout the night.
One of the excitements of railhead is the passing through of convoys of German prisoners en route to internment camps.
Towards the end of September our railheadwas "moved up," this time to Doullens.
On opening a tin a certain Railhead Supply Officer was surprised to find it to apparently contain only beans, the pork being conspicuous by its absence.
Echelon draws rations from the supply train at railhead on Monday and delivers them to the troops on Tuesday.
They then proceed to the regulating station, which is to all intents and purposes the terminus of the lines of communication, and from there they are dispatched to the railhead of the Division for which the supplies are intended.
This had the effect of making the future railheadat Ludd.
Well-constructed narrow gauge lines were laid down between Ludd and Jaffa, and between railhead and various distributing centres close behind the front line.
He was driven back with considerable losses, and although Dobell had failed to take Gaza he had reached the Wady Ghuzze and secured the means of bringing his railheadright up to the front of battle.
The Turkish railhead was on their doorstep, as it were; ours was then twenty miles away at Rafa.
On our left flank they fought with most bitter determination to save their railhead for long enough to get their guns and stores away, and having succeeded in doing this retired farther up the coast and prepared to fight again.
Meanwhile at railhead transport was rapidly arranged to carry the water, most of which had already been brought a hundred and thirty miles on the train, to the nullah.
Belah had now usurped the position of Rafa as railhead and the station had been greatly enlarged by the addition of numerous sidings for the reception of the heavy trains daily arriving from Kantara.
A fortnight later the railway had grown longer, and asRailhead advanced, so the British Brigade moved southwards and finally camped at Abu Dis.
Canteen stores were plentiful, as we were near the railhead at Sheik Nuran, but they soon became less in quantity as the ration trains were then being employed for war material for the coming advance.
From this point the line was pushed forward through Rafa, and when the Battalion arrived in Egypt the railhead was at Belah a few miles south of Gaza; where there were large dumps and also two extensive stationary hospitals.
Leaving Beit Rima the Battalion trekked to the Jaffa area via Ibn Harith, Amwas, near Latrun, to Surafend, near Ludd, which had then become the British railhead for the western flank of the British line in Palestine.
So he mounted and rode off through a gray, murky drizzle, to the railhead about eight miles away.
Take your horse as far as the railhead and get a train for B----, where the Tank Headquarters are.
The camp at Railhead sprang to life after an unaccustomed rest, and the line began again to grow rapidly.
The second wing--since the need was urgent and the steamers few--were jolted across the desert from Railhead on camels, an experience for which neither their training nor their clothes had prepared them.
Each engine must first of all haul enough water to carry it to Railhead and back, besides a reserve against accidents.
As Wady Halfa became more remote and Abu Hamed grew near, an element of danger, the more appalling since it was peculiar, was added to the strange conditions under which the inhabitants of Railhead lived.
Every week the line grew, Railhead moved forward, and the strain upon the pack animals diminished.
Lollie reached his station only to be told his Division had moved, that to find them he must go back by train thirty kilometres, change, and proceed to anotherrailhead and inquire there.
At railhead he is no longer responsible for his stuff when the lorries arrive and take up their positions end on with the trucks.
We woke at the railhead for Béthune this morning, and cleared there and at the next place, mostly wounded and some Indians.
Field Ambulance for duty," so hell became heaven, and here I am at railhead waiting for a motor ambulance to take me and my baggage to No.
Some Tommies on a truck at Railhead brought him up for us; they adore his little mother and two brothers.
We are wondering what the nextrailhead will be, and when.
During the summer months those who wished could reckon up the times of arrival and departure of trains at the German railhead at Achiet, for the smoke from the engines could be distinctly observed.
As a result the railhead could not proceed beyond Caudry for some time, and it was necessary to convey supplies over a considerable distance by road.
At El Maadan an important railhead was being constructed for the storage of water, which was kept in large and small canvas tanks.
When the railhead reached the outpost line it was necessary to move the enemy by force and to this end engagements were fought at Bir el Abd, and at El Mazar, both of which resulted in the Turk withdrawing upon El Arish.
The station was railhead for this finished lower line of eighty miles, and in it were the engines and rolling-stock which had been steadily withdrawn before our advance.
The Samarra fighting, theserailhead battles, was the last organized campaign which the Turk fought.
I have now selected two campaigns, those for railhead and for Tekrit, and made a straightforward narrative.
Wounded at Sheikh Saad in January, 1916, he had returned in time for the three railhead battles.
That master of rearguard warfare had meant to stand here, to save railhead and all its rolling-stock.
The Germans attempted several counterattacks, aided by their Seventeenth Division, which had been hurried to support, but these were futile, and finally the German railhead was moved from Péronne to Chaulnes.
Ras-el-Ain, the present railheadof the Bagdad railway, is seventy miles south.
Daba, railhead of the Mariut railway, to El Gara and return, without a stop.
Meanwhile the General, finding the rough camp at railhead little to his taste, had shifted his quarters to Antonio de Mello's residence about five miles below.
It had become the custom for the peons to strike work and crowd about railhead on these occasions.
He had further instructed that the train should stop at a place about twenty miles from railhead to load up sleepers, which were cut from the forest for use on the railway.
The General had now two locomotives and thirty wagons, including those that were permanently at railhead for construction purposes.
Forty miles of the railway had already been completed, and was in use for the carriage of asphalt, this being conveyed to railhead from the mines on mules.
I suggested to the Brigade-Major that I should withdraw the battalion to Ytres, the railheadat which we had detrained when we had first arrived in this troublesome neighbourhood.
The enemy had begun to shell the railhead at Bapaume with a long-range gun, and our particular lorries with rations on board had been blown into matchboard and scraps of metal.
The weather was fine, the route was familiar, the going was good; in spite of multifarious mechanical troubles we made Roisel on the 29th and entrained on the 30th for the railhead at Beaumetz, a few miles from our old quarters at Wailly.
I motored down to the neighbourhood of Albert, and at dusk my car was feeling its way through a bank of fog along the road from Bray to the great railhead at Le Plateau, at the edge of the old Somme battlefield.
My tanks detrained at midnight without incident, and we were clear of the railhead in an hour.
We had received orders to entrain within the week at Fins, a railhead about three miles south of Metz-en-Couture, and we had been preparing our tanks for the journey.
At last we came at dusk to the railhead at Poulainville, discreetly hidden under the trees at the side of the main road.
A halt was therefore necessary until the railhead could be brought nearer, and to give the Army an opportunity of pulling itself together, which was especially required by the cavalry.
In the gap between the railhead and Mafeking, a Boer commando, said to have been detached from Mafeking by Cronje, was at Sekwani on the N.
Railhead was at Aubigny-au-Bac, and supply lorries were unable to proceed any farther than the Honnelle River owing to the destruction of the bridges.
At this date railhead was at Aubigny-au-Bac, the scene of that great exploit of the 2nd London Regt.
Our Railheadhad only reached Deir Sineid, a few miles north of Gaza, and about thirty-five miles south of the battle front.
As the day for the advance drew near, all the troops told off for battle surplus were sent back to Railhead and formed into a divisional camp.
Points of interest were the half-buried and utterly filthy village of Khargeh, the Persian Temple near Railhead in a very fair state of preservation, and the Roman Fort near Meherique.
The length of line then completed to the railhead at Samaria was 80 miles, passing through slightly undulating country the whole way.
After a rest of two days at Mosul, we started off on June 1 for the 200 miles to the railhead at Ras-el-Ain.
A railway journey of a few hours brought us to Islahie, which was then the railhead for the journey over the Anti-Taurus range.
As we approached the railhead at Ras-el-Ain, signs of activity increased, and there were more dead horses at the roadside, showing that the traffic was heavier.
The divisional salvage squads sorted the materials at the railhead dumps for shipment to the various depots.
From railhead this material, consisting of trench boards, rolls of barbed wire, revetting frames, hurdles and other heavy stuff had to be distributed to companies in the line.
Steam trains ran to daylight railhead in rear of the Green line, and this was connected with the Red line by a night service of petrol-electric trains.
We neared railhead on a market day and many folk in their best were walking along the roads.
The roughest basha ride I made was to a place seven miles fromrailhead in the extreme north-east.
Away at Railhead men, those sinful men who drank and swore slept in rows, stretched face-downwards on the grass or the thrown-up banks of clay.
He told them that atRailhead were many bad pip-ple, who swore, and drank a great deal more than was good for them.
Nevertheless, with Railhead still many miles away, they began to become accustomed to the coming and going of strangers.
Then Railhead had crawled across the land; Howell Gruffydd had found it necessary to warn the young against contamination; and with the building of the "Cambrian" had come Llanyglo's first licence.
All things considered, you might have been pardoned had you supposed that, without John Willie, the work at Railhead must have come to a stop.
Railhead was now to him what the building of the Llanyglo house had formerly been, and the fence-burning, and rugby football, and many another interest of the days when he had been a kid and immature.
