We halted again at De Aar, where we remained till Christmas.  The weather grew hotter and hotter.  The whirling dust, the stony plains, the glaring heat, the evening coolness, the glowing sunsets, the bare rocky hills, how it all recalled the Sudan!  Train after train lumbered by with stores and guns and ammunition for the front, the whole of this enormous traffic being run on a single line of rails.  Amongst the most troublesome items to deal with were the mules.  Sometimes a mule would suddenly produce a violent uproar in a waggon by beginning to kick, his hoof against every mule and every mule’s hoof against him.  Even if these beasties were taken out of the waggon to be watered their behaviour was unseemly.  A soldier would with infinite patience marshal the mules in line with himself, their halters all tied together.  The march would then begin, but within half a dozen yards the mules in the centre would press forward till the whole thing looked like a Pyrrhic phalanx.  The wearied soldier would then smite the aggressive animals, and, after a few more strides, the centre mules would hang back while the wings would close in, and then, as confusion became worse confounded, some of the restless brutes would commence to roll, and the group finally resembled a sort of mulish “scrum” with the soldier on his back as football.

There were, of course, various camp services on Christmas Day:  most of my comrades on the train went to the little Episcopal Church in De Aar.  The Church of England community in this out-of-the-way village numbers some fifty all told.  Nevertheless these churchmen had contrived to build a pretty little church and their services were very hearty.  Officers, men, and two Red Cross sisters formed the bulk of the congregation and we listened to a delightful sermonette written and delivered in excellent style by the good Vicar, an old Corpus man at Oxford.  We sang the old familiar hymns, “While shepherds watched” and “Hark, the Herald Angels sing,” which took our thoughts away to distant homes and services in England, 7,000 miles away.  At the close of the service came that hymn of prayer, “O God of peace, give peace again;” and as we walked back to the train a sergeant said to me:  “If there is a God who will listen to prayer, my prayer for peace went straight to Him”.  I think he spoke for all of us.  Most people who love war for war’s sake are not soldiers.

Our Christmas dinner was a most gorgeous affair.  We were determined to do everything in the best possible style, and everybody helped.  We first rigged up a trestle table beside the train and stretched a tarpaulin above it to shelter us from the fierce heat.  Three of our number were then despatched to secure all the green stuff they could for decorative purposes, and as the good people of De Aar were quite ready to give us some of their scanty flowers and allow us to dismember their shrubs, our envoys returned with armfuls of material.  The outside of the train