With Joyce we laid our triple plan to support Allenby’s first stroke. In our center the Arab regulars, under Jaafar, would occupy the line a march north of Maan. Joyce with our armoured cars would slip down to Mudowwara, and destroy the railway⁠—permanently this time, for now we were ready to cut off Medina. In the north, Merzuk, with myself, would join Allenby when he fell back to Salt about March the thirtieth. Such a date gave me leisure: and I settled to go to Shobek, with Zeid and Nasir.

It was springtime: very pleasant after the biting winter, whose excesses seemed dreamlike, in the new freshness and strength of nature: for there was strength in this hilltop season, when a chill sharpness at sundown corrected the languid noons.