El Arish, the town having been captured a fortnight previously after a fine night march.  That message was never published, and I knew it was a waste of time to ask the reason.  I happened to be in London for a few days in the following August and my duties took me to the War Office.  A Colonel in the Intelligence Branch heard I was there and sent for me to tell me I had sent home information of value to the enemy.  I reminded him there was a G.H.Q. censorship in Egypt which dealt with my cablegrams, and asked the nature of the valuable information which should have been concealed.  ’You sent a telegram that the railway had reached El Arish when the Turks did not know it was beyond Bir el Abd.’  Abd is fifty miles nearer the Suez Canal than El Arish.  What did this officer care about a request made by G.H.Q. to transmit information to the British public?  He knew better than G.H.Q. what the British public should know, and he was certain the enemy thought we were hauling supplies through those fifty miles of sand to our troops at El Arish, an absolutely physical impossibility, for there were not enough camels in the East to do it.  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.  I had been in these bombing raids and knew how accurately the German airmen dropped their eggs, and had this Intelligence officer taken the trouble to inquire he would have found that between thirty and forty casualties were inflicted by one bomb at El Arish itself when railhead was being constructed.  This critic imagined that the Turk knew only what the English papers told him.  If the Turks’ knowledge had been confined to what the War Office Intelligence Branch gave him credit for he would have been in a parlous state.  While this ruling of the authorities at home prevailed it was impossible for me to give the names of officers or to mention divisions or units which were doing exceptionally meritorious work.  Unfortunately the bureaucratic interdict continued till within a few days of the end of the campaign, when I was told that, ’having frequently referred to the work of the Australians, which was deserved,’ the mention of British and Indian units would be welcomed.  We had to wait until within a month of the end of the world war before the War Office would unbend and realise the value of the best kind of propaganda.  No wonder our American friends consider us the worst national advertisers in the world.

The officer who was mainly responsible for the success of the Auja crossing was Major-General J. Hill, D.S.O., A.D.C., commanding the 52nd Division.  His plan was agreed to by General Bulfin, although the Corps Commander had doubts about the possibility of its success, and had his own scheme ready to be put into instant operation if General Hill’s failed.  In the state of the weather General Hill’s own brigadiers were not sanguine, and they were the most