Reveille at 4:30 this morning, then digging a signalling pit from five till eight. I didn't get a bathe in till this evening, and the water was almost too warm by then to be really nice.
Orders came in this evening that the mobile column has got to turn out at some unearthly hour tomorrow morning. We've got to get to Kilo 48, which is about eight miles from here near Bir El Rabah. It will be a very hard job for the horses as the going is awful, very damp sand in some places and wet salt marshes in others where it is ten to one we shall go through the top crust and get hopelessly bogged. But still, we hope for the best. I've got to be battery guide tomorrow for the first eight miles or so out, as I know the country pretty well now. Hope is running high that we may be going on a strafing expedition as an unofficial report came though from Port Said last night that we had landed troops at Jaffa, which is just above El Arish. Anyhow I believe we are to bivouac for the first night somewhere near Katia, and the general himself doesn't know yet whether we shall be going on further the next day. The mobile column of the 155th Brigade at Romani is also going out, so it looks as though there may be something up.
An Anzac mounted division and the Bikaner Camel Corps are going out before dawn tomorrow to screen our advance. We are only taking three guns out tomorrow; Badcock is staying here with the other one to support the infantry if things go badly with us and the place is attacked.
Buckley of the Essex Battery came up from Kantara tonight to see the positions line.
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