The map showed a path from Akir through Mansura towards Junction Station, from which the so-called Turkish road ran south.  In the gathering gloom my driver picked up wheel tracks through an olive orchard and, crossing a nullah, found the marks of a Ford car’s wheels on the other side.  The rain fell heavily and soon obliterated all signs of a car’s progress, and with darkness coming on there was a prospect of a shivering night with a wet skin in the open.  An Australian doctor going up to his regiment at grips with the Turk told me that he had no doubt we were on the right road, for he had been given a line through Mansura, which must be the farmhouse ahead of us.  These Australians have a keen nose for country and you have a sense of security in following them.  The doctor’s horse was slipping in the mud, but my car made even worse going.  It skidded to right and left, and only by the skill and coolness of my driver was I saved a ducking in a narrow wadi now full of storm water.  After much low-gear work we pulled up a slight rise and saw ahead of us one or two little fires.  Under the lee of a dilapidated wall some Scottish infantry were brewing tea and making the most of a slight shelter.  It was Mansura, and if we bore to the right and kept the track beaten down by lorries across a field we might, by the favour of fortune, reach Junction Station during the night.  The Scots had arranged a bivouac in that field before it became sodden.  They knew how bad it had got, and a native instinct to be hospitable prompted an invitation to share the fire for the night.  However, London was waiting for news and I decided to press on.  The road could not be worse than the sea of mud in which I was floundering, and it might be better.  We turned right-handed and after a struggle came up against three lorry drivers hopelessly marooned.  They had turned in.  Up a greasy bank we came to a stop and slid back.  We tried again and failed.  I relieved the car of my weight and made an effort to push it from behind, but my feet held fast in the mud and the car cannoned into me when it skidded downhill.  ’Better give it up till the morning,’ said an M.T. driver whose sleep was disturbed by the running of our engine.  ’Can’t?  Who’ve you got there?  Eh?  Oh, very well.  Here, Jim, give them a hand or we’ll have no sleep to-night’—­or words to that effect.  Three of the lorry men and the engine got us on the move, and before they took mud back with them to the dry interiors of the lorries they hoped, they said, that we would reach G.H.Q., but declared that it was hopeless to try.

Before getting much farther a light, waved ahead of us, told of some one held up.  I walked on and found General Butler, the chief of the Army Veterinary Service with the Force, unable to move an inch.  The efforts of two drivers failed to locate the trouble, and everything removable was taken off the General’s car and put into ours, and with the heavier load we started off again for Junction Station.  This was