assume enormous importance – the writing of them and the receiving of them. Dalton in his diary makes careful note of letters written and received. Some letters reached him literally months after being posted. He was often homesick, and felt particularly down or even irritable when the mail arrived and there was no letter for him. At one stage he remarked in his diary, ‘I don’t think I would feel so fed up as I do, if I could only see the dear folks at home occasionally…’ However, he also reflects that ‘there are fellows out here who have not been home for two years’.27 Although Dalton was extremely busy at times, he also found spare time to write letters, read novels, or kick a football around. He tried to learn foreign languages but gave up Arabic and Russian as too difficult. To get photographs of loved ones or presents from home in the post was a great morale booster. He was delighted when plum pudding arrived and he shared it with his fellow officers. ‘It was simply topping and everybody was pleased.’ On another occasion he received the Christmas edition of Our Boys, the magazine produced by the Christian Brothers for their students – an event significant enough to be mentioned in his diary.
Dalton was diligent in fulfilling his religious duties, and attended 07:30 Mass every Sunday morning. He was still in his teenage years and his boyish exuberance emerges occasionally from entries in his diary – he notes that he cut the nose of the Padre, Father Burns, while they were playing a game of ‘bombing each other’. There were times when he felt very down, and times also when he felt unwell or suffering from fever – possibly due to malaria.
To compensate for the homesickness, there were interesting sights to see. Jerusalem was not too far away, and was one of the places that soldiers stationed in the region liked to visit on leave. An entry in Dalton’s diary indicates that he was particularly intrigued by the sights of the Holy City – he mentions doing a sketch of the Damascus Gate, which he sent to his father.28 (In another entry he mentions sending drawings to his brother Charlie, probably the next best thing to sending photographs of local scenes. Another drawing, a self-portrait of himself in uniform and wearing a sun helmet, survives in his papers in the National Library.)
While Dalton’s battalion was not engaged in combat at this period, there were regular reminders of the war. One day he saw an aerial fight between a German and a British aircraft – apparently the latter brought down the former without too much difficulty. In the latter part of January, Dalton received a grim reminder of the threat posed by German submarines to allied troopships, when 2nd Lieutenant O’Mahony joined the battalion – he was one of the survivors when the troopship Aragon was sunk by a German submarine outside the port of Alexandria on 30 December 1917, causing the deaths of more than 600. Dalton got a first-hand account of this horrific event from O’Mahony.29
There was a social side to a young officer’s life in the hills. Visits were made to other battalions and regiments, and an officer going to Jerusalem or Cairo on leave would often bring back presents or souvenirs for his associates. Dalton notes that Bill Cooke returned from Cairo ‘with a good supply of cigarettes for me’, and Major Graham returned from Jerusalem with souvenirs for his colleagues. ‘Mullins got a lovely book of pressed flowers. Petrie got a lovely little box of polished olive wood.’ Dalton himself received from Graham several postcards ‘which I intend to send home today’. Lt. Colonel John Craske, the veteran battalion commander, seemed to take a paternal interest in the progress of his subordinate officers, and Dalton notes that Craske attended a dinner to celebrate the award to Captain Monaghan of the Military Cross.30 There was one officer whom Dalton disliked, Major King, with whom he had arguments on those two ever-sensitive topics – politics and religion.
On 4 February Dalton undertook a long reconnaissance tour on horseback with Major King and Lieutenant Haile, and their first port of call was to ‘Connaught Hill’ – the headquarters of the 5th Battalion of the Connaught Rangers, which formed part of the 29th Brigade. Dalton and King paid a visit to Lt. Colonel Vincent M.B. Scully, commander of the battalion. Dalton formed the impression that Scully was rather ‘fogged’, that is uncertain, about his duties in the event of a Turkish counter-attack, a contingency which Dalton considered absurd as he believed the Turks did not have the courage to ‘storm our present position’.31 Dalton records how he and the other members of the party rode on, shadowed by a party providing protection, passing through Kurbetha Ibn Hareith and through the Wadi Eyub. This was an area of rocky hills, with stone walls, bridle paths and olive groves. They watered their horses at a well in a place described by Dalton as Job’s Tomb. Because of a threatening storm they galloped towards home until the ground became very difficult, and he considered they were lucky to get back to base before the storm broke. On another reconnaissance tour, covering fifteen miles, Dalton rode the Adjutant’s spirited horse, and observed that the animal ‘had a mouth like iron and covered my hand with welts’.32
Exasperated by the intermittent heavy rain that sometimes penetrated his bivouac, Dalton remarks after once such occurrence that in the next war he will be a ‘conscientious objector’. There seems to have been limited contact between the military and the Arab population. One day Dalton records that he accompanied the Medical Officer (MO) ‘on his rounds of the natives’. On another occasion he encountered an Arab youth who had fled from the Turks, and for whom he felt sympathy. The youth, who spoke English, told how he was educated by the Christian Brothers – probably a reference to the De La Salle Brothers – in Jerusalem. The youth gave a graphic account of how the Turks ‘robbed the people’. Dalton remarks that he felt for the youth because he was only sixteen years of age. He comments: ‘I used think that Irish Catholics were the most oppressed but I have changed my opinion now.’33
After some weeks in Suffa, Dalton was made an Intelligence Officer (IO), in addition to his duties as Assistant Adjutant, but his work as IO seemed to consist largely of filing intelligence summaries from the division. Nevertheless, this experience would doubtless have given him insights into Allenby’s strategy, and contributed to his military education, giving him a lasting appreciation of the value of intelligence in military operations. Some of the reports he received seem to have been of a very general nature, to do with matters like peace conferences and offensives on other fronts.34
Instructing at the Sniper School, El Arish
On 13 February Dalton records that he was informed by Captain Monaghan that Division had recommended him for good work in regard to Intelligence and that he would leave the Battalion on the 14th, the following day, to take up his next position as Instructor in sniping and intelligence duties at the Army Sniping School, El Arish, in the northern Sinai Desert in Egypt. Dalton had been in correspondence with one of the officers running the school, Captain Chalmers of the 3rd Dragoon Guards, apparently giving Chalmers the benefit of his experience as regards tactics. It also emerged that Dalton kept a notebook on scouting. Chalmers had written to Dalton in January thanking him for his information and asking for more, as he considered that the sniping school benefited from every little piece of information from those ‘on the spot’.35
Dalton appears to have been popular with his fellow officers. On the night before his departure, there was a big attendance of officers from the battalion at a rousing send-off dinner in the mess. Dalton recorded that the main dish on the menu was ‘kid’ – a small goat that had been stolen from the 31st Field Ambulance ‘whose mascot it was’. A plentiful supply of whiskey seems to have added further to the merriment. There was a sing-song and there were farewell speeches and toasts, and Dalton was given a rousing cheer.36 Early next morning, Dalton set off on his long journey to El Arish. He was accompanied by two young fellow officers of the Leinsters, Lieutenants Cooke and Haile, who were being transferred from the infantry to the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) at Heliopolis, near Cairo. Dalton may also have been tempted to transfer – he would later reveal that he was of a mind to join the air force. For the first leg of the journey they travelled by road to Latrun, a distance of about twelve miles. A lorry later took them to Ramleigh (Ramallah) where they boarded the night train to Kantara.
After their journey through the Sinai, they arrived at Kantara, situated on the Suez Canal, early next morning. Kantara, formerly a small village
