The Unseen Enemy

In April 1916, 5th Suffolk were stationed at Geneffe on the banks of the Suez Canal, midway between Ismailia and Suez.
The Battalion were here to continue a defensive line of trenches that stretched along the canal that protected the vital waterway against Turkish attack.
In the day, the men worked to deepen the defences and erect formidable belt of wire defences to keep the enemy out. Such was the heat that the Battalion 'Stood To' at 5.00 am and breakfasted at 5.30am. The they spent from 6.oo until 10.30am in the morning working, before the noonday sun became so intense that it prevented event the hardest of men working. They would then work from 3.00 to 5.00pm and 'Stand To' again at 6.15pm to await a possible attack. One Company would be on duty, whist three others slept.
Despite being able to see over several miles of clear flat, featureless desert, somehow the enemy still managed to infiltrate the Suffolk lines. On one occasion, dressed as natives, the Turks rode through the night upon camels to drop mines into the canal. The incoming barges and lighters what were bringing in supplies of men, and large quantities of stones for both the fortifications and a road into the desert, fell prey to these unseen dangers.
Enemy infiltration was not the only danger the Battalion had to contend with, for as in Gallipoli, disease was beginning to mount again within the Battalion's ranks with many men falling prey to dysentery and enteric fever. The Turk was then not the biggest enemy.

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