the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry in 1914. He served for a year in India, and then went in charge of a machine-gun section to Aden, and his recollections of campaigning there are in 'Arabia,' written just before he left Aden for Palestine:
An aching glare, a heat that kills,
Skies hard and pitiless overhead,
And, overmastering lesser ills,
Sad bugles keening comrades dead:
Fever and dust and smiting sun,
In sooth a land of little ease:
Yet, now my service here is done,
I think on other things than these.
Dawn on the desert's short-lived dew,
Blue shadows on the silver sand,
Grey shimmering mists that still renew
The magic of the hinterland:
Sunsets ablaze with crimson fire,
Pale moons like plates of beaten gold,
Soft nights that fevered limbs desire,
And stars whereto our stars are cold:
Sharp, rattling fights at peep of day,
Machine-guns searching scrub and plain,
Red lances questing for the prey,
And kites quick stooping to the slain:
Swift shifting stroke and counter-stroke,
Advance unhurrying and sure,
Until the stubborn foeman broke—
These are the memories that endure....
