What do you want here? Turkish and British child soldiers on the Suez Canal. After crossing the Sinai Peninsula during January, 1915, a Turkish army of approximately 12,000 soldiers reached the Suez Canal on February 2, and tried to cross after nightfall, but were driven back. On the 3rd, the British crossed the canal, and struck the Turkish left flank, driving them back. By February 10, the Turks had evacuated the Peninsula.
Was willst Du hier?What do you want here?Suez-KanalReverse:A.R. & C.i.B. No. 718/4
"March 4 [1918] Posted to 25th R.W.F. to-day. Moved across to Yeomanry Base Camp. Another day of arid sunshine and utter blankness. This place is the absolute visible expression of time wasted at the war. The sand and the huts and the tents and the faces, all are meaningless. Just a crowd of people killing time. Time wasted in waste places. I wish I could see some meaning in it all. But it is soul-less. And it seems an intolerable burden—to everyone, as to me. People go 'up the line' almost gladly—for it means there's some purpose in life. People who remain here scheme to 'get leave'. And, having got it, go aimlessly off to Cairo, Port Said, or Ismailia, to spend their money on eating and drinking and being bored, and looking for lust."
Excerpt from the diary of Siegfried Sassoon, a British poet, author, Second Lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers (R.W.F.), and recipient of the Military Cross for gallantry in action. During February, 1918 Sassoon traveled from Limerick, Ireland to Southhampton, England, across the English Channel to Cherbourg, France, continuing across France through Lyon by train to and across Italy's Adriatic coast, following it south to Taranto before crossing the Mediterranean Sea to Alexandria, Egypt. Egypt was the base of operations for British operations in Palestine. Sassoon had been wounded in April, 1917, and by mid-June had concluded that the war begun 'as a war of defence and liberation, [had] become a war of aggression and conquest.' In October he was at Craiglockhart, a psychiatric facility in Scotland, and under the care of W. H. R. Rivers. There he met the poet Wilfred Owen and edited some of his poems, a relationship at the heart of Regeneration, the first book of Pat Barker's WWI trilogy of the same name.
Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918 by Siegfried Sassoon, page 219, copyright © George Sassoon, 1983; Introduction and Notes Rupert Hart-Davis, 1983, publisher: Faber and Faber, publication date: 1983
1918-03-04, 1918, March, Egypt, Cairo
