Egypt and Palestine: Henry Crookshank Page 1

Crookshank's letter to his mother December 1917:

'... we have been very busy on road work and I shall have the job of recruiting local labour which gives me great fun... Recruiting local labour was a great effort, I and a mounted orderly with rifles, belts, revolvers and everything we could wear to make us look important went to all the villages in the locality and demanded the local Sheikh. We explained what we wanted, men, women or children and they all promised they would send some. Next day about 70 arrived of all kinds of children of about 7 up looking more or less starved.
We payed [sic] them alright which was a most troublesome performance. However, they were all very bucked with the silver and now our numbers have gone up to 150 and I hope we will have 200 in a few more days. The women are the best workers, but they can only do one thing, that is, carry stone on their heads. The children collect stone in baskets, the men lift it on to the women's heads and dump it on the road and the women do nearly all the carrying'.