The utter tranquillity of the place made one wonder if the grim business upon which we were engaged was indeed real, for here there was none of the dust and bustle of the previous day. The clear freshness of the morning made us feel glad to be alive, and there was, moreover, no disillusionment in the shape of dirty mud houses, nor anything to spoil our enjoyment. It was just Nature at her very best, and in her spring dress she is very pleasant indeed in Palestine.
As I have said, it was probably by contrast with the desert that this lovely country appealed so strongly to us. Even the morning pipe had a different flavour. For a few brief hours we could forget that our ultimate mission was to kill as many Turks as possible and could plod along on our horses as though all Time were our own, wanting nothing to our infinite content. An agreeable aroma hangs over the memory of that day though it was absolutely uneventful in itself. We arrived at our destination in a state of peace with all the world, which is a most inappropriate condition to be in for a soldier--even amateurs like ourselves. However, it was only temporary. At Belah we learnt something of the order of battle in so far as it affected ourselves. While the infantry were making a frontal attack on the positions defending Gaza, we--that is, the mounted divisions--were to strike out east and north with the double object of holding up Turkish reinforcements from Beersheba and Hereira (S.E. of Gaza), Huj (E. of Gaza), and cutting off the retreat of the main body should the town be taken. What to do should the attack fail we were not informed. Presumably we were to trust to what Mr. Kipling aptly calls "the standing-luck of the British Army" to pull us through.
Be that as it may, there was--to anticipate a little--something badly wrong with the information respecting the forces opposed to us. According to this we had to beat only the meagre remains of the division that had been so severely mauled in the recent fighting on the desert, together with a few thousand infantry and cavalry from the places mentioned above. The impression most of us received was that the whole affair would be a "cake-walk." We were to take Gaza _en passant_, as it were, and reach Jerusalem by Whitsuntide.