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Title: Australia in Palestine
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Australia in Palestine" ***
AUSTRALIA IN PALESTINE
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
GENERAL SIR EDMUND H. ALLENBY, G.C.B., G.C.M.G.
]
AUSTRALIA
IN PALESTINE
[Illustration]
SYDNEY
ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD.
89 CASTLEREAGH STREET
1919
_Nineteenth Thousand_
Printed by
W. C. Penfold & Co. Ltd., 183 Pitt Street, Sydney
London Agents: The Oxford University Press
TO THE MEMORY
OF
FALLEN COMRADES
[Illustration]
Editors’ Note
This book owes its publication to the warm interest taken in its
initiation by a Committee comprised of the G.O.C., A.I.F., in Egypt; the
G.O’s.C. Anzac and Australian Mounted Divisions and Brigades, and a
number of other senior A.I.F. officers; and, later, to the generosity of
the many contributors of paintings, sketches, photographs, verse and
prose.
“Australia in Palestine” is in no sense intended as a complete picture
of the Australians’ part in the Great Campaign. It is merely a Soldiers’
Book, produced almost entirely by soldiers in the field under active
service conditions to send to their friends in Australia and abroad. An
edition has also been published for sale to the general public, and any
profits derived from it will go to one of the A.I.F. funds.
Thanks are due to our many contributors, and in particular to Mr. James
McBey, the Official British Artist in Palestine, for his fine portrait
of General Allenby (specially drawn for this book) and other sketches;
to Captain Hodgkinson, British Press Officer, for permission to use many
British official photographs; to Mr. Jeapes, British Official Cinema
Photographer, for the loan of many snapshots; and to Sergeant E. A.
Hodda, A.I.F., who took charge of the business arrangements, and to
whose keen interest and ability our obligation is substantial.
We have also to thank Major N. D. Barton, 7th A.L.H. Regiment, and
Messrs. H. M. Somer and Sydney Ure Smith for the valuable assistance
they have given as Committee of Publication in Australia.
H. S. GULLETT } Editors.
CHAS. BARRETT }
DAVID BARKER, Art Editor.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
Page
Preface (Lieut.-Gen. Sir H. G. Chauvel) xiii.
Fighting for Palestine (H. S. Gullett) 1
Anthem Bells (“Gerardy”) 60
Palestine Poppies (Charles Barrett) 61
Farming in Arcady (H. S. G.) 64
Standing To (Brentomman) 69
A Waler’s Story (E. L. D. Husband) 71
The Horses Stay Behind (“Trooper Bluegum”) 78
One Too Many (“Anon”) 79
The Light That Failed (“Sarg”) 83
A Night March (“Aram”) 87
A Gloomy Outlook (“Aram”) 90
Reconciliation (“Gerardy”) 91
Mail Day (“Wil Cox”) 92
A Day Over The Lines (H. Bowden Fletcher) 94
Mounts and Remounts (“Acrabah”) 99
Concerning Medical Blokes (“Larrie”) 102
The Signal Service (“Ack-Vic-Ack”) 109
Battle Song (“Gerardy”) 114
The Little Bint of Wady Hanein (“Camp Follower”) 115
Algy, Misfit (“Billzac”) 121
Palestine (“Trooper Bluegum”) 123
The Camel Brigade (“Trooper Bluegum”) 125
Resting (“Tralas”) 132
The Mukhtar’s Goats (“2469”) 137
The Batman (W. M. W.) 139
Damascus (H. W. D.) 140
Malaria (“Koolawarra”) 144
Fall Out The 1914 Men (“Bataggi”) 145
Old Horse o’ Mine (T. V. B.) 149
Concerning Machine Guns (“Sarg”) 150
Delivered! (“Gerardy”) 153
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
COLOUR PLATES
Page
General Sir Edmund H. H. Allenby, G.C.B., G.C.M.G. iii.
Jerusalem, from below the Mount of Olives 4
Romani. Mount Royston in the distance 14
Magdhaba, showing the Wady Bed about one mile from Turkish
buildings 26
The Road to Jericho 38
The Dead Sea (Sunrise) 42
Australians on the Road to Jerusalem 30
An Australian Flying Squadron in Palestine 50
Jaffa 54
Australians prior to the fight for Nalin 54
Anzac Ridge, Gaza 56
National Types 70
Evening amongst the Judean Hills 78
A Camp in the Desert 78
Got Him Cold 94
The End of the Scrap 96
Convalescent 106
A Signal Office in the Field 110
Some Souvenir 124
Buying Oranges, Jaffa 138
PHOTOGRAPHS, Etc.
Lieut.-General Sir H. G. Chauvel, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. xv.
Jaffa 4
Map of Ottoman Empire 6–7
A Brief Halt Richly Earned 9
Jerusalem from the Air 9
Damascus from the Air 10
3rd L.H. Camp at Belah 10
In a Village Street 14
Map of Northern Sinai 18–19
Turks marching out of Jerusalem (1914) 23
Gaza 23
The Mount of Temptation 24
All the World Over 24
Turkish Prisoners at Beersheba 29
Street Market, Jerusalem 29
Jericho, showing garden oasis 29
Light Horse crossing Jordan 29
In the Jordan Valley 30
Spring Water, Clear and Cold 30
Map of Palestine 34–35
Ismailia 38
In the Jordan Valley 41
Shopping in Jericho 41
“Baksheesh” 42
A Meal outside the Bivvies 42
Scotties on a Route March 42
Major-Gen. Chaytor receives Arab Chiefs 46
Jerusalem 46
Map of Syria 48–49
Orange Seller, Jaffa 53
In the Shade 53
The Village Well 54
Native Plough and Team 54
Harvest Time 65
Ploughing as of Old 65
Native Stock 65
The Franciscan Monastery 66
Lake of Tiberias 66
Outposts 70
Jordan Valley Dust 70
5th L.H. Brigade entering Nablus 73
Watering Horses, Es Salt 73
Horses Thirsty 74
Light Horsemen in Judean Hills 74
Wady Nimrin 81
Arab Agents 81
German Prisoners in Jericho 81
Meal Time 82
“She’s Boiling” 82
Defences in the Ghoraniyeh Bridgehead 85
The Brickmaker 85
A Typical Arab Village 86
4th L.H. Brigade Watering Horses 86
Roman Fort, Jericho 88
Horses under cover 89
A.L. Horse in Camp 89
2nd L.H. marching through Khan Yunis 89
Turkish Prisoners at Es Salt 97
Jericho 97
Nazareth from the Air 98
“A Light Horse Type” 101
Mounting First Guard in Jericho 107
Halt and Rest 107
Church and Tomb of the Virgin 108
Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem 108
Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem 108
Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem 108
Brig.-General Ryrie inspects the “Bully” 119
Brig.-General Cox on River Jordan 119
A Wallad of Palestine 120
“Tower of the Forty” 123
Mosque of Omar 124
The Midday Halt 126
Brig.-General C. L. Smith, V.C., M.C. 127
Our Water Supply 127
Watering Time, Camel Brigade 129
“Prepare to Mount” 129
Camels bearing Supplies on the Philistine Plain 131
Bedouins Captured at Hassaniya 133
Street Market, Jerusalem 133
Bedouin Village 134
Turkish Prisoners, Nablus 134
Mrs. Chisholm’s Canteen at Kantara 146
Bethlehem 147
Troopers entering Jericho 148
Damascus 148
Finish 154
Preface
“Australia in Palestine” should prove of great interest to the people of
Australia, and especially to those whose lives have been spent outside
the great cities, for it includes a record of the achievements of their
“very own”—the horsemen of Australia, and of the Flying Corps and the
Anzac Section of the Imperial Camel Corps, which were recruited from
them, and co-operated with them in the greatest war yet known to
history.
The Australian Light Horseman—and under this name I include the Field
and Signal Engineers and Medical Services connected with him, who come
from the same stock—is of a type peculiarly his own and has no
counterpart that I know of except in his New Zealand brother. His
fearlessness, initiative and endurance, and his adaptability to almost
any task, are due to the adventurous life he leads in his own country,
where he has been accustomed to long hours in the saddle, day and night,
and to facing danger of all sorts from his earliest youth. Perhaps these
qualities are inherited from his pioneer parents. His invariable good
humour under the most adverse conditions comes from the good-fellowship
and camaraderie which exists in the free and open life of the Australian
Bush. His chivalry comes from the same source, and it is one of his
strongest points. In other words, the life he has been accustomed to
lead has fitted him to become, with training and discipline, second to
no cavalry soldier in the world.
As far as Australia is concerned, the Palestine Campaign may be said to
have commenced with the crossing of the Suez Canal by the Anzac Mounted
Division at Kantara on the 23rd April, 1916, to re-occupy Romani and the
western end of the Katia Oasis Area. The mounted troops of Australia and
New Zealand had already proved their extraordinary adaptability to
circumstances as infantrymen in the hard school of Gallipoli, but it yet
remained for them to show their value as cavalry. The occupation of
Romani was followed by long and trying marches in the Desert of Sinai,
during the hottest summer known in Egypt for many years, after an
elusive enemy who did not appear in any force until July, 1916, when he
advanced on Romani preparatory to his second attack on the Suez Canal.
The disastrous defeat inflicted on the Turkish arms at Romani, and the
pursuit which followed, not only demonstrated the inestimable value of
the horsemen of Australasia as cavalrymen, but opened the way for the
advance to the Eastern Frontier of Egypt which ended the enemy’s menace
to Egypt. The systematic advance of the British Force from Romani to the
Egyptian Border was covered by Australian and New Zealand horsemen,
British Yeomanry and the Imperial Camel Corps, ably assisted by the
reconnaissance of the R.F.C. and Australian Flying Corps. The victories
of Magdhaba and Rafa completely cleared the enemy from Egyptian
territory and opened the way for our advance into Palestine. The
operations which began with the capture of Beersheba and concluded with
the capture of Damascus and Aleppo, and eventually led to the complete
surrender of the Turkish Forces, are dealt with in this volume, and I
will say no more of them than that the brilliant part in those
operations played by the Australian and New Zealand mounted troops has
more than upheld the reputation they established on the battlefield of
Romani.
The splendid record of the 1st Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps
speaks for itself. It was formed in Egypt and has grown with the
campaign to a state of efficiency which places it second to none of the
same arm.
The casualties in action in this campaign have been light compared with
the results achieved. In a very large measure this was due to the dash
of the troops, which saved heavy losses on many occasions; but many
brave fellows have given their lives through diseases contracted in
areas which the exigencies of the service required to be occupied and
fought in.
Before concluding, I would like to say a word for the Medical Services,
which have endured the same hardships as the combatant arms, and always
performed their duties cheerfully and efficiently under the most adverse
conditions.
[Illustration: H.G. Chauvel.]
[Illustration:
LIEUT.-GENERAL SIR H. G. CHAUVEL, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.
]
Fighting for Palestine
Three Years’ Campaigning
If the Turks had not aspired to the capture of the Suez Canal, and the
reconquest of Egypt, they might still have been in quiet possession of
the whole of Palestine. This campaign, so rich in brilliant exploits and
so appealing to the imagination of the people of the world’s three
greatest religions, was the direct result of Turkish aggression.
Prompted by Germany, the Turk had, early in 1915, penetrated Central
Sinai and, moving down the ancient route of the Wady Muksheib, attempted
with a very inadequate force to cross and hold the Canal. He was easily
driven off by a British force, which included a few Australian units.
That was before our attack upon Gallipoli. It was not until the
following year, when the heroic failure on the Peninsula had removed the
menace to the heart of his Empire at Constantinople, that the enemy was
able to attack Egypt with an army that gave him any promise of success.
AROUND ROMANI
Soon after the return of the Australians from Gallipoli, in 1916, at a
time when the future of the Light Horse, which had fought as infantry at
Anzac, was in considerable doubt, the Turk appeared in strength in
northern Sinai. Thirty or forty miles across the desert from Port Said,
there is a widely-scattered area marked here and there by hods, or
little palm groves, which tell of the presence of water at shallow
depth. The Romani area, as it is generally called, has always been of
prime importance to the armies which, since the dawn of history, have
marched east and west across the Sinai Desert between Egypt and Syria
and Persia, and lands even further afield. Napoleon rested there before
that precarious leap at El Arish which nearly cost him his army. Ancient
invaders of Egypt always refreshed their thirsty and desert-worn troops
around Romani before sweeping down upon the rich prize of the Nile
Delta.
In 1916 the Turks began their forward operations by a raid in great
strength, which beat down the resistance of Yeomanry posts at Katia and
Oghratina. At that time, the organization and training of the Anzac
Mounted Division was being completed at Salhia, west of the Canal. The
2nd Brigade, under Brigadier-General Ryrie, was immediately rushed out
to Romani, where it was found that the enemy had temporarily withdrawn
further east.
THE TURKISH ADVANCE
Steps were taken at once by the British Command to make the Romani area
secure. The remainder of the Anzac Mounted Division, commanded by
Major-General Chauvel, went out in support of the 2nd Brigade; British
infantry followed. The railway was pushed vigorously forward. The 1st
and 2nd Light Horse Brigades, with their camp at Romani, were engaged in
ceaseless reconnaissance in force. Taking the task alternately in
24–hour shifts, they kept substantial touch with the enemy, who was all
the while adding to his numbers, bringing up guns over the desert from
El Arish, and pressing steadily onward. By the beginning of August a
line of infantry strong posts extended at a right angle towards the
north from the sea, covering Romani to the east. There we were
invincible; so the Turk, moving swiftly and in strength, to the number
of about 18,000, on the night of 3rd August attempted a great flanking
movement past the south-western flank of the infantry line. His scheme
was to drive in behind the infantry and Romani, cut our railway and
other communications with the Canal, and envelop our entire forward
force. Anticipating this move, however, General Chauvel had that night
placed the 1st Light Horse Brigade, under the temporary command of
Brigadier-General Meredith (General Cox being absent on sick leave in
England), on a line of outposts joining up with the desert end of the
infantry line, and thence swinging towards the Canal at a right angle.
This disposition completely frustrated the enemy, and won us the battle
of Romani.
FIGHTING IN THE DARK
The Turkish vanguard reached the Light Horse posts soon after midnight
and attacked immediately. For hours an extraordinary hand-to-hand fight
was waged in the dark among the sand dunes. The Light Horse line, ten
times outnumbered, was pressed steadily back, but maintained an unbroken
front to the enemy host. Soon after dawn the 2nd Light Horse Brigade,
temporarily commanded by Brigadier-General Royston, a South African
veteran (General Ryrie being absent on leave in England), was galloped
forward in support and, dismounting, carried on the fight while the
Regiments of the 1st Brigade passed through them to the rear for a brief
breathing-space. All that day, the 4th August, the Turks gained ground
on this flank, and at the same time kept our infantry in their posts by
heavy shelling and a demonstration in strength from the east. A small
number of infantry available was put in to support the Light Horse line,
which, by nightfall, had been pushed back so close to the camp that some
units were served with tea by the regimental cooks as they fought. But
the end was now in sight. The New Zealand Mounted Rifle Brigade, and a
Brigade of Yeomanry, both under Brigadier-General Chaytor, supported by
a British infantry force, came swiftly down on the Turkish left flank,
which was high in the air. By nightfall we knew that the battle of
Romani was ours. At dawn next morning there was a slashing general
attack with the bayonet. The enemy’s line broke, his retreat became a
rout, and only the physical impossibility of getting speed out of our
horses, many of which had been without water for nearly fifty hours,
saved the whole Turkish army from destruction. The horses, burdened with
an average load of 240 to 250 lbs., and often up to 280 lbs., laboured
gallantly, but slowly, over the deep, hot sand.
KATIA
[Illustration]
Many thousands of prisoners, several guns, great quantities of munitions
and other material were captured; but it was not until the retreating
Turk had reached the large palm area around Katia, six miles away, and
had been able to re-form his firing line in a reserve position there,
that we were able to collect our scattered Brigades and give him fresh
battle. The fight at Katia was drawn. On our side it was marked by a
stirring charge of the 1st and 2nd Light Horse Brigades and the New
Zealand Mounted Brigade, in an unbroken line across the sands. In the
preceding weeks the horses had frequently been watered in the hod at
Katia, and this, doubtless, contributed to the spirit they displayed in
the charge. The three Brigades, however, which had the support of a
Brigade of Yeomanry, were compelled by heavy fire from the enemy
batteries to dismount and fight on foot. The 3rd Light Horse Brigade,
under Brigadier-General Antill, which had undertaken a wide flanking
movement on the south, was held up by the enemy in Hamisah, where, in a
brilliant little engagement, they smashed the Turk and took 440
prisoners, with a trifling loss on our side. The delay, unfortunately,
kept the 3rd Brigade off the Turkish left flank at Katia, and enabled
him stoutly to resist the frontal assault of the Australians and New
Zealanders. Towards nightfall the engagement was reluctantly broken off.
BIR EL ABD
Touch was maintained with the retreating Turks, and, a few days later,
the same Brigades again engaged them at Bir el Abd, some fifteen miles
further east. Once more a gallant dismounted frontal attack was made by
our forces, but again the 3rd Brigade on the flank was obstructed, and
its enveloping mission frustrated. In the main fight, which was much
hotter than that at Katia, our men pressed in close with the rifle. The
Turk was strongly supported by guns and machine guns in a very
advantageous defensive position, and the Australians and New Zealanders
were unable to reach him with the bayonet. The engagement was marked by
many splendid acts of heroism and self-sacrifice, but it was doomed to
be indecisive. The Turks evacuated the position the following day and
were pursued to the edge of the oasis area, withdrawing with the remnant
of their shattered Romani army to the neighbourhood of El Arish, fifty
miles away.
After the fight at Bir el Abd there was ceaseless heavy reconnaissance
and patrol work for the Light Horse, as the railroad, and with it the
full strength of what was now an established British army of invasion,
moved slowly, though inexorably, across the desert. On 21st December the
Light Horse and Imperial Camel Corps entered El Arish and received a
demonstrative greeting from the Arabs of that old village.
ON THE FLANK
During these Romani operations, fraught with so much significance for
Palestine and Egypt, the extreme right of the British line was entrusted
to Colonel C. L. Smith, V.C., M.C., afterwards Commander of the Camel
Brigade, who had under him a composite force made up of the 11th Light
Horse Regiment, from Queensland, a London Regiment of Yeomanry and four
companies of “Camels,” drawn from Australia, Scotland and Wales—a truly
Imperial lot. A Turkish force, reported to be three thousand strong, was
moving down from Magara in a south-westerly direction, with the
intention of cutting in between Romani and the Canal. This estimate of
enemy strength proved to be exaggerated, but our column had some sharp
little fights against superior odds, and its work was warmly commended
by the Commander-in-Chief. At Awedia the Camel companies went into
action for the first time since their hurried formation; but as most of
the Australians were old Light Horse and infantry veterans from
Gallipoli, they were not strange to fire, and, like the remainder of the
Australians fighting at Romani, they rejoiced in open warfare after the
confined trench work of the Peninsula. A day or two later, the column
fought sharply at Hilu and Baud, each time mauling the enemy severely
and contributing substantially to the general disaster in store for the
Turks.
[Illustration:
JERUSALEM, FROM BELOW THE MOUNT OF OLIVES
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration: Jaffa]
MAGDHABA
On the night of the 22nd December, the Anzac Mounted Division, made up
of the 1st and 3rd Light Horse Brigades, commanded by Generals Cox and
Royston, the New Zealand Brigade (General Chaytor), and the Imperial
Camel Brigade (General Smith, V.C.) which included a majority of
Australians, moved upon the Turkish post at Magdhaba, twenty-three miles
away up the Wady El Arish. Again marching all night, they came at dawn
within striking distance of the garrison settlement. Deploying swiftly,
they soon had Magdhaba surrounded, and, galloping in as close as the
Turkish fire, which came in strength from a number of well-concealed
entrenched positions, permitted, dismounted and pressed forward in troop
rushes with the bayonet.
The chief trouble for the Anzac Mounted Division at Magdhaba was the
supply of water for the horses. If the Turks could not be smothered by
nightfall, a withdrawal was imperative, for it was impossible to
contemplate another day’s fighting with the horses still thirsty. In a
country like this, where all the chargers are brought from far overseas,
horseflesh must not be lightly thrown away. The struggle for Magdhaba
was, therefore, as at Rafa a fortnight later, a struggle against time, a
gamble against daylight. The Division, with the Imperial Camel Corps,
fighting still under the able command of Major-General Chauvel, scored
just on the call of time. As the day was closing vital Turkish strong
posts fell almost simultaneously to our assaulting units on three sides
of the settlement. In a wild rush the encircling troops overwhelmed the
Turks, and met—with an extraordinary mingling of units coming in from
every point—in the centre of the ring of battle. The survivors of the
Turkish garrison, some 1250 officers and men, were made prisoners. Our
total casualties were fewer than 150. Darkness fell swiftly, and, in the
early hours of the night, there was an amazing scene as the prisoners
were collected, and officers and men sought their units and searched for
their led horses. Before midnight the Division was re-formed and, with
the exception of a few squadrons left to clear the battle-ground and
escort the wounded, our victorious little force was riding—for the
second night in succession—back to water and rest at El Arish. As they
tracked along in the darkness there were whole squadrons with not a man
awake—a strange Christmas Eve!
[Illustration: OUTLINE MAP OF OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND ADJOINING COUNTRIES]
RAFA
Next came Rafa. On the evening of 8th January the Anzac Mounted
Division, made up of the Brigades which had fought a few days before at
Magdhaba, strengthened by the Camel Brigade and a Brigade of Yeomanry,
cleared camp near El Arish and, riding all night, appeared before Rafa
at dawn. The Turks held a strongly entrenched position consisting of
three main systems of redoubts with many outlying rifle-pits on high
ground, culminating in a knoll. On this knoll was a solitary tree,
visible for many miles; and this, roughly speaking, was our objective.
As at Magdhaba, the enemy was rapidly surrounded by Brigades moving at
the trot and the gallop. Then the horses were raced back to places of
safety, and the circle closed in on foot. The ground was more open than
at Magdhaba, and our advance lay up long, bare slopes, swept by enemy
fire. All day the cordon drew closer. Again, until the last moment,
there was uncertainty as to whether the Turk could be smashed before
nightfall. Again our horses were without water. And again victory came
at sundown; this time after a series of long, sustained charges with
fixed bayonets in the face of expert Turkish riflemen and German machine
gunners, shooting at their best over specially prepared zones of fire.
Rafa was a grim, deadly fight, waged up to the moment when our
exhausted, but still excited, troopers jumped down on the Turks in their
trenches.
That spirit of mercy which has distinguished so many Australian fights
was shown here at its best. The Turks, who had shot at our men
mercilessly and effectively until they charged home into the very
trenches, then dropped their rifles and held out their hands—to have
them warmly shaken by Australians! Such incidents, occurring frequently
as they have in this campaign, may not be according to the rules of war,
and the psychology disclosed may be difficult to follow; but the
recollection of them, while it always moves our men who were concerned
to shamefaced laughter, must clearly be a source of lasting
gratification. At Rafa, practically every Turk who survived was made a
prisoner, and we also secured many guns and much war material. Even in
more marked degree than Magdhaba was Rafa placed to our credit at the
eleventh hour, for not only was our force threatened by the lack of
water and the approach of darkness, but heavy enemy reinforcements were
rapidly approaching.
[Illustration:
A BRIEF HALT RICHLY EARNED
]
[Illustration:
JERUSALEM FROM THE AIR
]
[Illustration:
DAMASCUS FROM THE AIR
]
[Illustration:
3rd L.H. CAMP AT BELAH, A FAVOURITE RESTING GROUND BY THE SEA SOUTH OF
GAZA
]
This marked the passing of the desert. On the evening of the night march
which brought us close to Rafa, our troops were still in the waste in
which they had spent nearly a year without a glimpse of civilization or
verdure. Travelling all night through the heavy sand, they came, just
before dawn, on sounder going for their horses, and daylight showed them
a wide, rolling landscape, gay with brilliant winter flowers—the fringe
of Palestine.
DESERT ADVENTURES
No survey, however incomplete, of this fine campaign should fail to
mention the countless little desert expeditions in Western and Central
Sinai, in the early days of the fighting. These had various purposes.
Sometimes they were political, but more than once they led to sharp
fighting. The first time Australians were actually engaged east of the
Canal was when the 9th Light Horse Regiment (chiefly South Australians,
with a few Victorians), by a long night march and clever manœuvre,
swooped down and bagged the Turkish outpost garrison at Jifjafa. Then
there was a fine dash by the 11th Light Horse Regiment to Nekhl, the
British pre-war administrative centre in Sinai. Later, two interesting
expeditions were made up the Wady Muksheib, the ancient and central
route across Sinai by which the Turks came in their feeble attack on the
Canal, early in 1915. The drawback of that route was the shortage of
water, and along the Wady bed some ancient power had excavated huge
cisterns which filled during the rains. These cisterns are still intact.
Once, the Light Horsemen pumped them out, and so closed the route for
that season to the Turks; going out again, they sealed and covered them
so as to make their rediscovery by the enemy very difficult.
Australian units from the Camel Brigade more than once rode across the
desert to Akaba, at the head of the Persian Gulf. In October, 1916, a
force marched thirty-five miles across the sandhills from Bayud to
Maghara, and engaged in a vigorous reconnaissance in the foothills below
the almost inaccessible, high-built Turkish garrison position. As an
instance of the man-power and transport necessary to maintain a force in
action on the desert for even a few days, the details of this little
enterprise are remarkable. The column contained only 1100 rifles, and
the operations covered but a few days; but no fewer than 7000 camels,
2300 horses and (including natives) 5000 men were employed to provide
supplies of food and water for the force.
All these little side-shows necessitated long night marches across
countless desert hillocks. To the untrained eye, one square mile of
country in Sinai is indistinguishable from any other square mile, even
by daylight. At night all movement was by compass and the stars, and the
task of our guides was complicated a hundredfold by the constant change
of route imposed by the steepness of many of the sand dunes. Very early
the Light Horseman displayed that apparently inborn sense of direction
which, almost alone, would have made him famous in this campaign. After
a brief trial, the native guides provided by the Imperial authorities
were found to be too slow and uncertain, while, if the enemy was close,
fear usually reduced them to a state of imbecility. As soon as this was
recognized, the whole of the guiding was done by our own officers, many
of whom developed a certainty of location, whatever the circumstances,
which amounted almost to inspiration.
FIRST GAZA
[Illustration]
Ten weeks after Rafa, on 26th March, came the first battle of Gaza. The
scheme for the capture of this old gateway of Palestine proper was
similar to that which succeeded so decisively at Rafa and Magdhaba. We
were to move by night and envelop and isolate the town, with a view to
its capture before the Turk could bring up reinforcements. But it was a
far bigger enterprise than the two earlier raids. Modern Gaza is a
fairly compact old town, which, before the war, contained 30,000
inhabitants. Most of the houses are of mud and straw, but there are also
many substantial modern residences. The little city is graced by many
mosques and minarets. Standing on a low hill on the inland edge of the
wide belt of sand dunes, which, on this coast, everywhere fringe the
Mediterranean, it is bounded on the north, east and south by an
occasional fine orange grove, wide areas of olives and an intricate
network of huge, sprawling cactus hedges surrounding hundreds of tiny
fields. The Turks were soundly dug in, and well supported by many guns
in commanding positions, while the irregular system of cactus hedges
made an ideal barrier between them and the naked plain over which the
attacking troops had to advance.
Since Rafa a notable change had taken place in our force. The mounted
troops had been reinforced by the arrival of large numbers of Yeomanry
and, for the first time in the campaign, a substantial force of infantry
was available for frontal attack. Marching in the darkness, part of our
army surrounded Gaza, while a strong mounted force took up positions to
the east and north to prevent the intervention of heavy Turkish
reinforcements, which were within easy striking distance. British
infantry attacked from the south and east. On their right flank was a
Brigade of Yeomanry. Next came the New Zealanders, and on the extreme
right, pushing in from the north, with their flank on the sea, was the
2nd Light Horse Brigade, with Brigadier-General Ryrie back in his old
command. Unfortunately, a heavy morning fog prevented the infantry from
getting into grips with the Turk in the earlier part of the day.
AMONG THE CACTUS
The mounted troops, moving faster, galloped first through the scattered
groves of olives and then pressed forward, still on their horses, amidst
the maze of cactus hedges. For our men it was a wonderful day of
detached, individual fighting. Exact conformity was impossible.
Regiments and squadrons, and even troops, fought wild little
hole-and-corner combats of their own. There was much excited
steeplechasing over the cactus. At times, our men and the Turks fought
each other from either side of a hedge a few paces in width, the enemy
on foot and our troops firing from their horses. Then the Light Horse,
dismounting, hacked their way through the cactus with their bayonets,
and did effective work with the steel. Our machine gunners, advancing in
rushes in front and to a flank of the 2nd Brigade, maintained a clever
and deadly covering barrage.
The fighting was marked by countless fine incidents. One Light Horse
squadron gallantly rushed an important Turkish observation post. The New
Zealanders, assisted by a Light Horse troop, took a number of enemy
guns. Swinging one of these round, and sighting through the open barrel
at point blank range, they demolished with a single shot a stone house
containing a number of troublesome Turkish riflemen. By nightfall, both
the infantry and mounted troops had won into the outskirts of the town,
and captured large numbers of prisoners. But the garrison was still
strong, and heavy Turkish reinforcements were closing in rapidly from
three directions. We had missed by a hairsbreadth. The fight was broken
off and our men, suffering a sense of disappointment scarcely less than
that felt at the evacuation of Gallipoli, were withdrawn.
SECOND GAZA
Three weeks later, on 19th April, the second battle of Gaza was fought
on a long line extending from the sea eastward towards Beersheba. The
Australians fought dismounted out on the right flank, and the day was
the bloodiest our men have known in their Palestine fighting. For many
hours they pressed forward in thin lines, up long, bare slopes, in the
face of heavy and well-directed high explosive, shrapnel, machine gun
and rifle fire. In places they made substantial headway and bent the
Turks back. At one point, since known to fame as “Tank Redoubt,” two
Australian companies of the Camel Brigade, co-operating with the British
infantry on their flank, won temporary possession of a main key in the
enemy line. Many splendid deeds distinguished this day’s hard fighting;
they will rank with the best performances of Australian infantry in the
war, and the exploit of the “Camels” at the Tank Redoubt with the
greatest achievements of British arms in any age. But the Turk, though
badly shaken, stood firm. The simple fact was that, in this
Gaza-Beersheba line, which lent itself admirably to stout defence, we
had encountered enemy forces so superior in number and equipment, that
further advance was, for the time, physically impossible.
BEERSHEBA
Between then and the end of the following October, when the Turkish
position was shattered, significant additions were made to our strength.
We were reinforced by some Divisions of infantry, and many guns of
different calibre, while the Desert Mounted Corps was formed from the
old Desert Column, consisting of the Anzac and Australian Mounted
Divisions, and a Yeomanry Division. During this period, too, General
Allenby arrived from France as Commander-in-Chief. In the great attack
which demolished the enemy’s strong defensive system on this line, the
Turk was out-witted and outfought. By a wide detour, covering several
days and notable for its long, exhausting marches, and the remarkable
performances of the Engineers in the development of water in desert
areas, the Anzac Mounted Division appeared as a bolt from the blue to
the south-east of Beersheba, on the morning of 31st October. Beersheba
marked the end of the Turkish line of defence. Seen from the surrounding
hills, the scattered modern town, with its wide, dusty streets planted
with straggling eucalyptus and pepper trees, is not unlike some western
townships in Australia. It lies in a basin below the southern end of the
Judean Range, and had been strongly fortified by the enemy. The attack
from the south-east, however, was a complete surprise to the Turk.
[Illustration:
ROMANI. MOUNT ROYSTON IN THE DISTANCE
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration:
IN A VILLAGE STREET
]
GALLOPING THE TRENCHES
In the early morning the New Zealanders moved swiftly to the assault of
Tel es Saba, a formidable mound, bristling with machine guns and rifles.
At the same time, the 1st Light Horse Brigade went in to the south on
the New Zealanders’ left, while the 2nd Light Horse Brigade dashed away
on a long gallop under heavy shell-fire, and took up a position to the
north, to cut off the retreat of the Beersheba garrison along the road
leading over the Central Range, through Hebron and Bethlehem, to
Jerusalem. After very heavy fighting on foot, over broken ground, the
New Zealanders, supported by the 1st Light Horse Brigade, scaled and
captured Tel es Saba. The day was well advanced. Beersheba had not
fallen, and it was patent that, if we relied upon a dismounted attack,
the town would certainly resist until nightfall; which would have given
the enemy an opportunity to adjust his forces and perhaps upset our
whole offensive. Four miles away to the south-east, the Australian
Mounted Division was in reserve, and, shortly before sunset,
Brigadier-General Grant received orders to attack the town with the 4th
Light Horse Brigade. Between him and Beersheba lay a definite system of
strongly-held Turkish trenches. As it was recognized that time did not
permit of a dismounted advance, the decision was made to go in mounted,
at a gallop. This hazardous enterprise of galloping infantry into an
entrenched position was entrusted to the 4th Regiment, from Victoria,
and the 12th Regiment, from New South Wales.
A FAMOUS CHARGE
Moving off at a trot, and soon quickening the pace to a gallop, the
regiments swept in a bee-line towards Beersheba. They were soon under
heavy shell and machine gun fire, but this only served to speed the
horsemen. Charging wildly down on the Turks, despite heavy rifle fire,
leading troops of Light Horsemen jumped the advanced trenches at a
gallop, going clean over the Turkish bayonets. Once within the enemy
trench system, part of the force dismounted, and, jumping down with
their bayonets among the startled enemy, soon cleared the position.
Meanwhile the mad gallop of the other squadrons was continued through
enemy resistance into the very heart of the town. The Turks were thrown
into hopeless disorder, and, believing that the handful of Australians
formed but the advance guard of a great cavalry force, put up an
indifferent fight. Upwards of 1100 were captured, but the darkness,
which fell immediately after our horse clattered into the town, enabled
many more to escape. Nine field guns and a large quantity of material
fell into our hands. The Light Horsemen had charged with fixed bayonets,
not that they could make any use of them on horseback, but for the moral
effect upon the enemy. This magnificent enterprise, establishing as it
did that Turkish nerves were not proof against a resolute body of
galloping horse, led to highly important results in the Great Drive
which followed. The Yeomanry, who were equipped with cavalry swords, a
privilege not then enjoyed by any of the Australian Light Horse, routed
greatly superior numbers of Turks in a series of charges which rank with
the greatest performances of British regular cavalry.
UP THE PHILISTINE PLAIN
A few days after Beersheba the Turkish line was broken by the infantry
at Sheria, and again between Gaza and the sea. The mounted men were
turned loose on the heels of the retreating enemy, and the wild stern
chase was continued for nearly fifty miles. The speed of the horsemen
was regulated chiefly by difficulties of transport and water supply; but
all the way the Turk fought clever rear-guard actions, making therein
especially effective use of his strong equipment of machine guns. The
Australians’ work was fast and bold throughout. There were scores of
fights by night and day, which brought credit to the staff work and
Brigade and Regimental fighting. Up till then it was the grandest
cavalry drive in the war, and perhaps it has no equal in any campaign of
the past. When the British forces came to a halt on a line running
roughly from the coast a few miles north of Jaffa eastward to the
mountains, the cessation of the pursuit was due not to enemy resistance,
but to the impossibility, at that time, of extending our lines of
communication any further. During this great cavalry drive, the Desert
Mounted Corps, which embraced all the mounted troops, was under the
command of Lieut.-General Sir H. G. Chauvel, who enjoys the distinction
of being the first Australian to rise to the leadership of a Corps. And,
with the 3rd Light Horse Brigade under General Wilson and the 4th under
General Grant, the four Australian Mounted Brigades were, for the first
time, all under Australian commands.
JERUSALEM AND JERICHO
In the wars of the ancients, cavalry and chariots were always used down
on the Philistine Plain, while the Judean Hills were regarded as
practicable only for infantry. It is the same to-day. The Great Drive on
the Plain finished, the British infantry, with Yeomanry dismounted,
moved eastward through the narrow passes and up the harsh, rocky
hillsides of Judea towards Jerusalem. The Turks stubbornly resisted our
capture of the Holy City, and the fighting, at times, was bitter and
bloody in the extreme. But the gallant little Londoners, to whom fell
the honour of most of this significant advance, won their way steadily
forward. Only one Light Horse Regiment, the Western Australians, played
any immediate part in the operations which, on 9th December, culminated
in the surrender of Jerusalem.
A few weeks later, the 1st Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealanders
marched secretly, at night, from Bethlehem by steep mountain tracks,
and, co-operating with the 60th (London) Infantry Division, after a
sharp fight at Nebi Musa captured Jericho. This exploit was
distinguished, as the Anzacs’ work in the campaign has always been, by
the remarkable work of our guides. A squadron of the 1st Brigade had the
honour of being the first to enter the village; but the winning of the
Jordan Valley, like the capture of Jerusalem, was, in the main, due to
the solid fighting qualities of the men of London. To-day, all through
the Judean Hills, you come upon little wooden crosses which tell of the
spirit and self-sacrifice of our good ally, the fighting Cockney.
AMMAN
A brief pause, and then, the Desert Mounted Corps Bridging Train (B
Troop, Australian Engineers) having thrown the first bridge across the
Jordan, the Anzac Mounted Division, together with the Imperial Camel
Brigade and, once again, the Londoners, made their famous rush for the
Hedjaz Railway, far out across Jordan to the east, where the Plateau of
Moab begins to merge into the sand of the wide Arabian Desert. This
expedition, which, so far as the Colonials were concerned, fell chiefly
upon the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, the New Zealanders and the Camels, was
perhaps the severest we had had since crossing the Canal. Rain fell
almost unceasingly for many days. The mountain tracks were so narrow and
broken that the Brigades, travelling only by night, moved in single
file, leading their horses and camels. The weather was piercingly cold.
Men were wet through for several days and nights in which they knew no
sleep, and were almost ceaselessly engaged in heavy fighting. In these
circumstances, the destruction of some miles of the railway, and the
safe withdrawal of the force, was an especially good performance.
[Illustration: OUTLINE MAP OF NORTHERN SINAI]
ES SALT
A few weeks later practically all the Australian mounted troops, with
the exception of the Camels, again crossed the Jordan, and, cutting in
behind the Turks after some rare mountaineering feats in the darkness,
took possession of Es Salt, a considerable Turkish base. In this
enterprise, the 3rd Light Horse Brigade particularly distinguished
itself, the 8th Regiment of Victorians alone taking prisoners equal to
at least twice their fighting strength. The same Regiment also captured
thirty machine guns and large quantities of other war material.
JORDAN VALLEY
During the spring and summer, which were spent in Jordan Valley, there
were many highly successful little defensive fights. One of these, in
which the Turkish attack fell mainly upon the 2nd Light Horse Regiment
of Queenslanders, left nearly two hundred enemy dead within a few chains
of our barbed wire. At about the same time, the foe assaulted the
Musallabeh knoll, on the other side of the river, held by the 1st
Battalion (Australians) of the Camel Brigade, and got to close quarters,
in which bombs and bayonets, and even stones and hands were freely used
on both sides. The Turks were beaten off with some hundreds of
casualties.
On 12th July, a day on which the shade temperature stood for hours at
120 degrees, a stout attempt was made by a considerable force of German
infantry against the 1st Light Horse Brigade under Brigadier-General
Cox, on this same Musallabeh sector. Our line there was a series of
small strong posts over a long and broken front. The Germans, advancing
in the dark, penetrated between two of the posts, and actually reached
the centre of our advanced position. A feature of this fight was that
every little post, except one which was overwhelmed, successfully
resisted the German attack, although all were surrounded and isolated
for hours. In some, practically every officer and man became a casualty.
The Germans were routed by a brilliant counter-attack of the 1st Light
Horse Regiment (New South Wales), which was in reserve, and the affair
cost the Germans 360 prisoners and about 1,200 casualties. Our losses
were slight. Troops from four States, Tasmania, South Australia,
Queensland and New South Wales, shared in the victory. On the same day,
also in Jordan Valley, a troop of Queenslanders, men from the 5th Light
Horse Regiment, twice left their lines with bombs, and, surprising enemy
forces many times their number, brought in forty-five prisoners, and
they had killed and wounded as many more in the fight. The casualties
suffered by the troop were one officer and two men slightly wounded. Two
cars of No. 1 Australian Light Car Patrol also took part with the
Imperial Service (Indian) Cavalry in a brilliant counter-attack east of
the Jordan.
PREPARING FOR DAMASCUS
The long, distressing summer in Jordan Valley died hard. In September,
when the Anzac Mounted Division was there, the hottest days of the whole
year were endured. The various mounted troops had held the Jordan sector
in turn, those in reserve enjoying brief periods of rest on the bracing
uplands about Solomon’s Pools, a little to the south of Jerusalem. There
the sunny days were cool, and at night men who had known little sleep
down on the Jordan rejoiced in the mountain mists and the unwonted
comfort of their blankets.
In the course of the year there had been another interesting change in
the composition of General Allenby’s army. Many of the Yeomanry and
British infantry had gone to other battle fronts, and in their place
came one hundred thousand Indian horse and foot. Many of our Light
Horsemen had fought beside the Gurkhas and other Indians on the
Peninsula; some of us had seen the Indian cavalry in France in the early
days of the war; but to most of the Australians the Indians were
strangers. To-day, after a few months and a stirring campaign together,
the bond between the two races is a remarkably strong one.
AUSTRALIA’S NEW FRIENDS
The Australian soldier has, for a man of insular breeding, shown an
extraordinary capacity for making friends. He has an easy way with
peoples of all races and colours. In France he is completely at his ease
among the French peasantry; and he saunters through the Arab villages in
Palestine as familiarly and as confidently as he used to walk the
streets of his townships and cities at home. His old enemy the Turkish
ranker is his admired personal friend. But the strong bond which sprang
up so quickly between the Light Horseman and the Indians was perhaps the
strangest of all his new war friendships. They were divided by colour,
the language barrier was absolute, and, most unpromising of all, there
was the barrier of caste, which prevented the devout Indian from sharing
his rations, and so made little acts of camp hospitality impossible. But
the barriers, although they seemed impassable, were miraculously
surmounted. The Indians made no secret of their admiration of the Light
Horseman as a past-master at the game of combined mounted and dismounted
fighting, while the Australian was genuinely appreciative of the
splendid soldierly qualities of the highly-trained regular Indian
cavalry. Moreover, nearly all the Indians rode Australian horses!
Every trooper in Palestine knew that a great campaign would be launched
in the early autumn. General Allenby would, according to the camp-fire
strategists, “hop in” during the brief season between the extreme heat
and the beginning of the heavy rains in November. Further, the C. in C.
would, in all probability, assail the enemy line at the full of the
moon, so that we should have light for the great cavalry night marches
that were anticipated. But it is doubtful whether any soldier in
Palestine, who was not in the official secret, forecasted a scheme so
bold as that General Allenby had resolved upon. Certainly, none dared to
hope for a triumph so dazzlingly swift and complete.
THE WONDERFUL FORTNIGHT
The great campaign opened at dawn on the morning of 19th September,
1918. A fortnight after General Allenby flung his artillery bombardment
at the enemy line, the great Turkish and German force in Western and
Eastern Palestine had been destroyed, and our prisoners numbered 75,000.
Of the 4th, 7th, and 8th Turkish Armies south of Damascus only a few
thousand foot-sore, hunted men escaped. Practically every gun, the great
bulk of the machine guns, nearly all the small-arms, and transport,
every aerodrome and its mechanical equipment and nearly every aeroplane,
an intricate and widespread telephone and telegraph system, large dumps
of munitions and every kind of supplies—all had, in fourteen swift and
dramatic days, been stripped from an enemy who for four years had
resisted our efforts to smash him. It was a military overthrow so sudden
and so absolute that it is perhaps without parallel in the history of
war. And it is still more remarkable because it was achieved at a cost
so trifling.
[Illustration:
TURKS MARCHING OUT OF OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM AT BEGINNING OF WAR, 1914
(_Captured German Photograph_)
]
[Illustration:
GAZA
]
[Illustration:
THE MOUNT OF TEMPTATION
]
[Illustration:
ALL THE WORLD OVER
]
It was a stupendous result, gained by a simple scheme. The strategy was
strikingly bold, but perhaps the most impressive thing about General
Allenby’s triumph was the superb manner in which his plan was carried
through. The campaign went with a bang from the moment the line was
broken until Damascus, more than 150 miles distant, was taken. It
galloped all the way. There was never a moment’s indecision, never a
semblance of fumbling. Here was a British Army at its best, every man
efficient, every man enthusiastic.
The scheme was obviously the conception of a confident leader of horse.
General Allenby is a cavalryman, and he had under his command the most
powerful cavalry force in the war. And he knew the quality of his
mounted men. All of the Australians and New Zealanders and Yeomanry had
been in the sixty-mile drive from Gaza, of the previous year, and most
of them had been in the saddle in Egypt and Palestine for two and a half
years. The dashing Indian cavalry had been with him for many months and
had given many examples of their speed and love of battle. Again and
again in the summer their advanced patrols had galloped down bodies of
Turks, and their terrible use of the lance in those little actions had a
highly useful effect on Turkish nerves. The cavalry was General
Allenby’s special weapon for the campaign, but in addition, he had a
substantial and fit force of veteran infantry. He had, too, a
particularly brilliant lot of airmen, and in his supply services he
possessed a vast organization of railway, motor, camel, horse, mule and
donkey transport, which was efficient and resourceful in the highest
degree, and had already performed miracles.
Altogether the British Army of Palestine was, when the final campaign
opened, as near to perfection as any force ever was. All ranks were
veterans and all were animated by that spirit which every army feels
when confident of victory and happy in its leaders.
A BOLD SCHEME
This was the scheme. We faced the Turks on a fifty-mile line running
from a point on the Mediterranean coast about twelve miles north of
Jaffa south-eastward across the Plain of Sharon, thence eastward over
the Mountains of Samaria at a height of 1500 to 2000 feet, falling to
1000 feet below sea-level where it crossed the Jordan Valley, and
terminating in the foothills of the Mountains of Gilead. The Sharon
Plain sector was some fifteen miles in length, across Samaria fifteen
miles, and the stretch in the Jordan Valley about eighteen. The Turkish
position was a strong one. On Samaria, or the Central Palestine Range,
south of Nablus, the enemy had ideal defensive country, rugged and
broken, yet well served by rail—on the north-west to Haifa, and on the
north-east across the Jordan at Beisan and by way of Damascus to Turkey;
he had also good roads to Haifa and to Damascus by way of Nazareth.
To push the Turk on the mountains by a frontal attack would have meant
at best the gradual withdrawal of his forces. In Jordan Valley the
enemy’s safety lay in the fact that his guns on the foothills of either
side covered the limited ground which was practicable for horse and
transport. And, even if we had galloped up Jordan Valley, it would have
been extremely difficult from there to swing in behind the Turkish
position on the Central Range. General Allenby took the Plain of Sharon
for his great enterprise. Forty miles behind the Turkish position the
Jordan Valley and the Plain of Sharon are joined to the Esdraelon
Plain—the old Plain of Armageddon. In other words, the Jordan and Sharon
and Esdraelon formed a half-circle round the main central Turkish
position on the mountains. All the enemy lines of communication led
across Esdraelon. If we could seize the Plain swiftly, cut the railways
and hold the roads, the Turkish army west of the Jordan was in our
hands. It was a scheme calculated to test the mettle of any army. If we
were to succeed, every branch of the service had to show at its best.
First our airmen had to destroy or drive off the German aeroplanes and
so keep the enemy ignorant of our plans; then the artillery barrage had
to make the way possible for our infantry; in its turn, the infantry
had, in one rush, to drive a gap for our cavalry, and the cavalry,
galloping through the gap, had to cover fifty miles and reach Esdraelon
Plain on the night of the first day. Lastly, the cavalry must hold the
communications they had cut, and to do so, they had to be fed. The
transport necessary for feeding tens of thousands of men and horse had
to travel almost as fast as the cavalry. The scheme had to go through to
time-table or it might not go through at all. If the artillery had
failed to do its work in a swift half-hour’s bombardment, or if the
infantry had faltered, the enemy would have had time to redistribute his
forces, and General Allenby might have been robbed of his victory.
[Illustration:
MAGDHABA, SHOWING THE WADY BED ABOUT ONE MILE FROM TURKISH BUILDINGS
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration]
CAMOUFLAGE
General Allenby took no chances. He followed the sound principle of
fighting under the best possible conditions. By the aid of clever and
greatly successful bluff, the Commander-in-Chief delivered his smashing
blow at an unexpected point of the Turkish line. The enemy was led to
believe that the British offensive would fall on the eastern sector.
While a huge force of cavalry, artillery and infantry was being smuggled
by night marches to the Plain of Sharon on the west, active and amusing
camouflage preparations were being made in the Jordan Valley. For
instance, many dummy camps were brought into existence, and large
numbers of realistic canvas horses were tethered in them. Mules drawing
sledges were driven about in the dust to suggest heavy traffic. Fast’s
Hotel at Jerusalem, then being conducted for officers by the Canteen
Board, was ostentatiously emptied of its inmates, two sentry-boxes were
placed at the entrance, and a whisper was started in the bazaars that
the hotel would be General Allenby’s advanced headquarters during the
coming offensive. Simultaneously, the Arabs east of the Jordan made
realistic sham preparations for an attack on Amman, out on the Hedjaz.
They put down a big base, engaged in bold reconnaissance, and cut the
line between Amman and Damascus. The deception of the enemy was
complete. We know now that he expected and prepared for the blow on the
east, and was stiffening his defences there until a few hours before our
bombardment opened on the west, near the Mediterranean.
The airmen materially assisted in this hoodwinking. During the eight
weeks preceding the offensive, the German air service was practically
driven out of the sky. Fifteen machines were destroyed or forced down
and enemy aerodromes were bombed. So complete was our ascendancy that
not an enemy plane was seen over the threatened sector for eight days
before the offensive began.
Blind as to our movement of troops, and mistaken by fifty miles as to
where his line was to be assailed, the enemy’s plight was further
accentuated by the destruction of his communications on the very evening
of the bombardment. Pulling out at night from their sham camp near
Amman, the Arabs rushed away up north, and cut the railway and telegraph
communications between Deraa and the great Turkish base at Damascus.
This left the enemy on his whole front without supplies for the fight.
Other telegraph lines further west were severed at the same time, and a
bomb from an Australian plane on the night before our advance destroyed
his great forward telephone exchange at Nablus, which dislocated all his
lateral communications. When our guns opened at dawn on 19th September,
the Turks were already in a desperate plight.
THE NIGHT BEFORE
On the night before the bombardment there was an atmosphere of perfect
confidence in our camp close behind the line. Every man was moved by the
prospect of a successful adventure, which would give vast immediate
results and have an incalculable influence on the world war. The
tropical intensity of Jordan Valley, where the Australian Brigades, with
one exception, and some of the British and Indian cavalry had spent the
whole summer, had left its mark. We had suffered much from malaria and
other fevers, which, it was feared, might recur when we moved into the
cooler north. The horses were, if not in poor condition, certainly on
the light side; but these things were forgotten as the critical day
approached. The Australian Mounted Division, commanded by Major-General
Hodgson, and now made up entirely of Light Horse, except for one
dashing, picturesque regiment of French Colonial regulars, had recently
been armed with swords. The period of training in the new arm was very
brief—for many Regiments only a few hours; but the men taking very
keenly to it, soon reached a high standard of efficiency. Every trooper
was excited at the thought of a true cavalry charge. The Anzac Mounted
Division was still in the line in Jordan Valley.
During many nights before the push every road on the coastal sector was
crowded with slow-moving, well-ordered traffic. By day all was normal,
except for significant glimpses of camps in the wide olive groves around
Ludd, and in the orchards and orange groves about Jaffa. But as darkness
fell the whole countryside would become thronged with masses of horse
and foot and guns, and every kind of transport, groping their way
through blinding clouds of dust. The roads were impassable outside the
organized columns; the night was loud with the shouts of drivers
speaking divers languages. A few hours before the great push began this
night traffic culminated in a general move northward, the cavalry moving
up close behind the infantry, and the supplies following the cavalry.
Every road was massed with motor-lorries and horse transport; every
track with endless strings of camels. Each unit in the great army was
pressing up as closely as possible to the starting gate.
[Illustration:
TURKISH PRISONERS AT BEERSHEBA
STREET MARKET, JERUSALEM
Inset—JERICHO
Showing the pretty little Garden Oasis
LIGHT HORSE CROSSING JORDAN
]
[Illustration:
IN THE JORDAN VALLEY
]
[Illustration:
SPRING WATER, CLEAR AND COLD
]
The bombardment opened at dawn, a heavy barrage. For half an hour the
startled Turks were battered in their trenches. Then, abruptly, the
bombardment ceased. “Now the infantry,” said a Brigadier of horse “and
then!...”
THE ADVANCE
Our battalions leaped forward as the gunnery died away, and carried the
Turkish trenches after a brief struggle. They simply overwhelmed the
enemy riflemen, and even the German machine gunners and Austrian
artillerymen, after a wild burst of bad shooting, were forced to flight
or submission. Within half an hour the infantry had made a gap for the
great force of Indian and Yeomanry cavalry waiting near the coast, and
soon afterwards they opened another a few miles inland. The expectant
horsemen jumped off like thoroughbreds from the barrier.
THE GREAT RIDE BEGINS
They rode away in the sunrise, the advanced squadrons trotting out after
the ground scouts, the flank patrols galloping wide; Brigade after
Brigade rode out over the rolling sandhills. The men were eager, the
horses fought for their heads. The swords of the Yeomanry flashed and
Indian lances glinted from each successive skyline. It was like a war
scene of the picture galleries. Quickening the pace, the Regiments raced
on past our guns, most of which were already limbered-up for the
pursuit. The infantry, busy with their prisoners, cheered them as they
passed, and soon they were speeding down on Turks who had fled from the
onslaught of the infantry. But their sport with sword and lance was
brief. In this Sharon sector, the enemy had no forward reserves, no
second-line trenches. The Turkish front here had depended for its safety
on a one trench system. From the crossing of the trenches until they
reached the Esdraelon Plain, late in the night, the cavalry encountered
no resistance. Once or twice they sighted small bodies of the enemy and
made for them at the gallop. But the Turks would not give battle. Before
the campaign was three hours old there began the long series of almost
bloodless surrenders which were to be the most amazing feature of the
sleepless fortnight.
The perfection of our organization was revealed very early. The cavalry
was scarcely clear of the trench system before scores of field guns were
rumbling in their wake. And, pressing on after the artillery by many
tracks, good and bad, went mile after mile of camels and wheeled
transport. Where the cavalry went the supplies must follow; and the
cavalry rode from forty to fifty miles between sunrise and midnight.
With nothing to check them, their pace was controlled only by the
endurance of their horses. The men rode light; they carried only one
blanket, and that as a saddle-cloth. Tent sheets and waterproofs were
forbidden. It was a wild ride against time. But horses were loaded with
three days’ rations, and few carried less than 250lbs.—many of them more
than 280lbs.
ESDRAELON PLAIN
At dawn next morning the Yeomanry were across the Esdraelon Plain and in
Nazareth, where they caught most of the garrison of 3000 and the whole
population still in their beds. They secured the town at the expense of
eighteen casualties. By noon the Esdraelon Plain was in our hands, and
the Turkish Army in Western Palestine left without a line of
communication or retreat, except at Beisan on the north-east corner of
the trap; and the capture of Beisan was already assured. How completely
the enemy was deceived, and how light were his forces on the sector
broken for the cavalry, is shown by the fact that on the first day,
although our horse travelled fully forty miles on a wide front, only 900
prisoners were taken by them. Next day, as the net closed round the
forward enemy forces on the Central Range, and they attempted to retreat
across the Esdraelon Plain, our cavalry took upwards of 12,000.
DOOMED TURKISH ARMY
At the beginning of the second day, we contained the Turkish western
army on the south, west and north. The Anzac Mounted Division, which is
two-thirds Australian and the balance New Zealanders, and a light
infantry force, all under Major-General Sir E. W. C. Chaytor, were moved
up the Jordan Valley on the east of the Turks and so the net was
completed. But the task of the Anzacs was difficult. Before they could
move, the enemy guns dominating the narrow ground on either side of the
river had to be silenced or shifted. This meant that the Turks had to
begin their retreat on the Samarian Range before the Division could race
them for the crossings. Not until the second day did this come about,
and then the Anzacs, riding fast, closed the fords and the Turkish
Western Army was doomed. Forty hours after the fight commenced, as the
second day was closing, the enemy began to stream down the tracks
leading on to the Esdraelon Plain from his forward mountain position. He
had already abandoned guns and transport, a tragedy which he owed mainly
to the appalling havoc wrought with bombs and machine guns by our
airmen.
At dusk on the second day a large force was reported to be heading
towards Jenin, on the northern edge of the Esdraelon Plain. General
Chauvel, who was directing the battle from Megiddo (now Lejjun), the
actual site of ancient Armageddon, at once ordered the 3rd Light Horse
Brigade to move to the attack. An hour later, the Brigade had captured a
mass of prisoners, who subsequently counted out at more than 7000; and
we had the first evidence of the demoralization of the enemy. As the
Brigade approached Jenin, with the 10th Light Horse Regiment (Western
Australians) leading and the 9th (chiefly South Australians) working
round to the rear of the village, the Turks ran out and surrendered in
thousands. We had one officer and one man wounded. The only shots fired
at us came from nine German riflemen, who fought to a finish, although
two of our machine guns were laid on them at a range of sixty yards. The
plan had put our troops into certain positions and the Turks, as at sham
fight, recognizing the checkmate, were surrendering without bloodshed.
Any resistance which followed on the long ride to Damascus came almost
entirely from the Germans.
CUT OFF
An endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to show how the
galloping cavalry cordon was thrown round the main enemy position on the
Samarian Range. Before the close of the second day, our horsemen,
stoutly armed with machine guns and automatic rifles, in addition to
rifle and sword and lance, and further strengthened by many batteries of
horse artillery, held all the roads and railways behind the Turks and
Germans. The enemy was practically cut off from supplies and retreat.
Worse than that, he was already irretrievably smashed by the attack of
the British and Indian infantry on his front. Recoiling from this blow,
and hastening to reach the Esdraelon Plain before the cavalry completed
the net, he was caught by our airmen in narrow mountain passes,
subjected to terrible bombing and harassing machine gun fire, and forced
to abandon most of his guns and transport. At the same time, the 5th
Australian Light Horse Brigade under Brigadier-General Macarthur Onslow,
accompanied by one regiment of French cavalry, was thrown in during the
first day on his right flank, about halfway between the old front line
and the Esdraelon Plain. The Australians, moving very fast, scattered
with their swords a force several thousand strong north of Tul Keram and
took two thousand prisoners. Then, riding all night, they cut the enemy
frontline railway close behind Nablus. A few hours later, the Brigade
captured Nablus itself.
[Illustration: OUTLINE MAP OF PALESTINE]
TERRIBLE AIR WORK
But before this the airmen had commenced their work in the passes. When
our infantry broke the enemy’s line on the Plain of Sharon, many
thousands of Turks, who were on the foothills eastward of the gap our
cavalry had galloped through, had endeavoured to swing round and retreat
to the highlands of Samaria. But the movement was at once detected by
the Australian airmen. The Turks, with their transport, were seen to be
heading for a narrow defile leading up from Tul Keram to Anebta. Using
their wireless, the airmen called up aerodromes where dozens of British
and Australian pilots were awaiting the signal. The doomed column,
extending over upwards of two miles, was deep in the pass when the first
flight arrived with its bombs. Beginning on the leading troops and
vehicles, the airmen, flying low, had, in a few minutes, blocked the
narrow track. Pilot after pilot, flying in perfect order, dropped his
bombs, and then, assisted by the observers, raked the unfortunate Turks
with machine guns. Their ammunition exhausted, the airmen sped back to
their aerodrome for more, and returned again to the slaughter. Some
pilots made four trips on that day. While the airmen attacked the
column, the 5th Light Horse Brigade came up over the hills on either
side of the track, and caught the Turks with their swords as they
attempted to escape. Blocked in front, the battered, distracted
procession closed up and telescoped, and fires broke out among the
massed and broken vehicles.
Still more appalling, because of the greater magnitude of the disaster,
was the fate of a column between Balata and Fermeh on its way down the
range towards Beisan, on the Jordan. Flying over Samaria, you appreciate
the opportunities which this retreating army offered to the airmen. The
stony hills are not so rugged as in Judea, but they are still too steep
to permit masses of troops to move off the narrow roads. These roads
wind along beside the wadies and are flanked nearly all the way by
abrupt hillsides. The Balata column contained the bulk of the enemy’s
forward transport. It stretched, slow-moving and in full view from the
air, over seven or eight miles of the confined track. An Australian
reconnaissance pilot sighted it soon after dawn and, an hour later,
dozens of British and Australian bombers and machine gunners, flying
within a few hundred feet of the ground, were smashing it to splinters.
Again they began at the head, and forced the helpless drivers to pile up
from the rear. For hours the bombing was continued. Here the airmen
worked unaided by any other arm of the service, and they had wrecked or
disabled the whole of the transport before the infantry came up from the
south and took the dazed survivors. The broken material afterwards
collected in the pass included 90 guns, 840 four-wheeled and 76
two-wheeled horse and cattle vehicles, 50 motor-lorries and a large
number of miscellaneous transport, such as water carts and travelling
kitchens. The horror of the scene during the bombardment and afterwards
need not be dwelt upon. As the bombs rained down with pitiless
regularity, scores of lorries and wagons were overturned and dashed to
pieces as they went hurtling down into the rocky beds of the wadies.
Included in the column were large formations of infantry, and these and
the drivers, rushing from the track to escape the bombs, were shot down
by airmen. These air attacks were repeated many times on a similar scale
in the first two days.
FINE STAFF WORK
Rarely have the various services of an army worked in such perfect
accord. The infantry drove the enemy from his front, the Australian and
French cavalry, at the same moment, struck from the flank at his very
heart at Nablus; as he attempted to retreat in good order, the airmen
wrecked him from the skies, and, in a few hours, turned his army into a
shell-shocked rabble, with few guns or munitions, and little food. The
wretched Turks, in their tens of thousands, urged on by officers, came
at last to the outlets into the Esdraelon Plain. When first the cavalry
galloped down upon them, and they surrendered in hordes without the
least attempt at resistance, we were astonished. It was not until we
learned what had happened in the mountains that we understood the tragic
state of their morale.
The air force achieved a notable victory. They had not only inflicted
very heavy losses, but had incalculably lessened the task of both our
infantry and cavalry. They had prevented the Turk from fighting
effective rear-guard actions against the pursuing infantry, and had
hammered him so soundly that he was incapable of any attempt to burst
through our cordon of cavalry. Without this help from the airmen,
General Allenby must still have won a great victory; but it would have
been much short of the sensational one achieved. Progress must have been
much slower, and our casualties heavier by many thousands.
Before the fight was two days old our aeroplanes were using aerodromes
captured from the enemy. At one point on the march to Damascus, when we
were a hundred miles from our starting-place, a number of airmen came up
and established a flying ground abreast of our cavalry advance guard.
Throughout the operations an air-post service was maintained between the
leading troops and General Headquarters. An Australian Brigadier and a
Colonel of the Light Horse, who were in hospital far down the line when
the campaign opened, surprised their troops by alighting from aeroplanes
in their midst, a hundred miles from our starting-point.
GERMANS FIGHT WELL
The few thousand Germans who were with the Turkish 7th and 8th Armies
west of the Jordan met the same fate as their allies; nearly all were
destroyed or captured. But one must give the Germans credit for a stout
resistance. Throughout, they fought resolutely to avert the great
disaster, and if all of them did not continue the struggle to the death,
it must be remembered that they were in a desperate situation. They
handled nearly all of the hundreds of machine guns, which were the most
formidable weapons possessed by the enemy. All the way to Damascus they
fought stout rear-guard actions.
Having the great body of Turks on Samaria safe, and most of them already
accounted for, General Allenby decided to clear Haifa; the operation
demonstrated the relative morale of the Turks and Germans. A flying
reconnaissance of armoured cars and smaller cars of the Light Car Patrol
was pushed into the outskirts of the town. About three miles from the
town our force saw the heads of a party of Turks in a strong redoubt two
hundred yards from the road. The armoured cars halted and swept the
Turkish parapet with their machine guns. The white flag was at once
hoisted, and about eighty Turks came out without firing a shot. Two
miles further on, the British came upon an Austrian battery of light
field guns, supported by German machine gunners. Our little probing
expedition was at once brought to a standstill, and was not sorry to
pull out. Next day the Indians and Yeomanry, supported by horse
artillery, rode into the town, and again the only opposition came from
the Austrians and Germans. “We tried to cover the Turks’ retreat,” said
a captured German officer, “but we expected them to do something, if
only keep their heads. At last we decided they were not worth fighting
for.”
[Illustration:
THE ROAD TO JERICHO
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration:
ISMAILIA
]
EAST OF JORDAN
Before Haifa fell our troops were moving swiftly east of Jordan. A
Division of Indian and Yeomanry cavalry crossed the Jordan about Beisan
and rode eastward. Simultaneously, the Anzac Mounted Division forded and
swam the river further to the south, and moved on Es Salt and Amman. The
Australians and New Zealanders were familiar with the country. This was
their third expedition to the Plateau of Moab and the heights of Gilead.
They knew every goat-walk on the steep mountain side. This time they had
come to stay; the Fourth Turkish Army on the East was to share the fate
of the 7th and 8th Armies on Samaria. The tactics employed on both sides
of the river were broadly similar. General Allenby depended for success
upon the speed and stamina of his horses. Before the operations
commenced, the Turk held a defensive position which was roughly an
extension of his line west of the Jordan. He was strong in the foothills
of Gilead; on the mountain he had his base at Es Salt, and at Amman he
had a substantial force guarding a vital series of tunnels and viaducts
on his Hedjaz railway. Beyond the railway the Eastern Palestine Range
flattens out on the wide desert, which extends right across to the
Euphrates. On the fringe of the desert was the Army of the Sherif of
Mecca, a picturesque, galloping, thrusting, well-armed force. The Arabs
harassed the Turk by day and night, repeatedly dashing in and cutting
his railway and telegraph communications with Damascus. When attacked,
they would fade away into the wide desert and leave the slow-footed Turk
in the air. While the Anzacs marched upon Es Salt and Amman, the Arabs
made a detour in the desert, appeared on the flank of the enemy north of
Deraa, and cut the railway where the Hedjaz line junctions with the line
which supplied the Turks west of the Jordan.
THE RACE FOR DAMASCUS
Meanwhile the Indian and Yeomanry Division had crossed Eastern Palestine
and reached Deraa, where it joined hands with the Arab army. Then the
Arabs, the Indians and the Yeomanry sped on towards Damascus. There was
still a chance of escape for some 20,000 Turks, who had moved northwards
of Deraa before the arrival of our forces. These struggled gamely
towards Damascus, hoping either to make a stand at that great base or to
escape by rail to the north. But General Chauvel still had in hand the
Australian Mounted Division and a strong force of Indians and Yeomanry,
which had returned to the Jordan after the capture of Haifa. With the
Australians leading, he marched from Esdraelon Plain north-east across
Jordan for Damascus. Then ensued one of the grand races of the war. Our
tired horses were called upon for the heaviest work of the lightning
campaign. Marching by Beisan, the 4th Light Horse Brigade, after a stiff
fight—the most expensive cavalry fight in the campaign—took Semakh, and
then, co-operating with the 3rd Brigade, which had come down from
Nazareth, occupied Tiberias. After a day’s partial rest, during which
our men swam and fished in the blue waters of Galilee, the Australian
Division marched swiftly for the Jordan crossing, a few miles south of
Lake Huleh. But the enemy was now seized of our intention, and the
German machine gunners put up a fine resistance. Their stand at Semakh
aimed at preventing us reaching Damascus before the 20,000 Turks, who
were retreating from the direction of Deraa, and to give time for the
removal of as many military stores as possible from the city. South of
Lake Huleh, also, the Germans fought well and delayed us for a few
hours. We then ran through as far as Kunneitra, but, a few miles further
on, were again held up by machine guns and a field battery.
GREAT-HEARTED HORSES
Our horses had covered, with marching and fighting, an average of thirty
and forty miles a day. Thousands of Australian-bred animals must have
covered some 400 miles in twelve days, a very fine performance when it
is remembered that they carried a load exceeding an average of 250lbs.
and had been on short rations. On our ride to Damascus, the excellent
work of the staff was demonstrated again. As the advance guard of the
4th Light Horse Regiment (Victorian), travelling north-east, came within
view of the green and generous plain of Damascus, we saw, some eight
miles away on our right, and moving north-west, a great converging
column of the fugitive Turks from Deraa. Nearly all of these were
captured, the Germans once more fighting well with their machine guns.
But even the Germans had now almost given up hope, and on this last day
before Damascus, and in the two days which followed, they abandoned
their machine guns, and fled at the galloping approach of the
Australians. That evening many thousands of prisoners were captured by
the 3rd and 5th Australian Light Horse Brigades, and the city was
enveloped.
[Illustration:
IN THE JORDAN VALLEY
SHOPPING IN JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
“BAKSHEESH”
]
[Illustration:
A MEAL OUTSIDE THE BIVVIES
]
[Illustration:
THE DEAD SEA (SUNRISE)
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration:
SCOTTIES ON A ROUTE MARCH
]
ABANA GORGE
At dusk, in the Abana Pass, which leads out from Damascus towards
Beirut, another disaster befell the enemy. Here, a column many miles in
length was committed in a deep and narrow and singularly beautiful
gorge. The floor of the gorge is less than a hundred yards across, and
it is crowded with the Abana River—a rushing, mountain torrent,—a
railway and a road. The river banks are overgrown with trees and bushes;
the railway and road cross and re-cross the tumbling stream. On either
side rise the gaunt cliffs of the desert. In this brief survey it is
impossible to describe the fight between the long enemy column and the
handful of dismounted Light Horsemen of the 3rd and 5th Brigades, who
were perched in pockets of the cliffs on either side. The Germans,
working their machine guns from the tops of motor wagons and lorries,
fought to the death. Three hundred and seventy officers and men were
killed, and fell among the dead and dying horses in the wild tumult of
the chaotic column. We had scarcely a man hit. That ended the attempt to
leave Damascus by the west; but the enemy was streaming out by the north
along the road to Aleppo. Their run, however, was brief. Early next
morning the 3rd Light Horse Brigade—the first force to enter
Damascus—was in hot pursuit. The German machine gunners again attempted
a rear-guard, but they could not withstand the charges of the elated
Light Horsemen. Thousands of prisoners and hundreds of machine guns were
taken by the Brigade.
On the morning of 1st October a squadron of the 4th Light Horse Regiment
received orders to patrol into the city. Winding along the crooked lanes
between the irrigated orchards and gardens, it came upon the great
Turkish barracks, swarming with troops. The Turks did not at once
surrender, and the squadron leader, before attacking, awaited the
arrival of the remainder of the Regiment. Then followed a fitting
termination to the wonderful, and practically bloodless, British ride. A
few hundred of the 4th Light Horse took nearly 12,000 prisoners in
Damascus before noon, together with dozens of field pieces and scores of
machine guns. Scarcely a shot was fired. There was no formal surrender;
each body of men laid down its arms as the Australians rode up.
EXULTANT ARABS
The Victorians entered the city and joined up with the exulting Arabs.
These two forces, which had started hundreds of miles apart with two
mountain systems intervening, were mingled together in the midst of the
swirling, madly-excited populace. To the Arab, Damascus was the dazzling
prize, the promised reward. Here he was to proclaim and set up his
government. Riding forth from his tent on the desert, or his little mud
village, he was, in Damascus, the lord of a city of 250,000 souls—the
oldest city in the world, and distinguished by the richness and strange
character and beauty of its surroundings. Fired with pride, his long
robes touched with brilliant patches of silk, he rode the streets on his
sprightly desert horse, caparisoned with richly woven Persian
saddle-bags. His scabbard of gold and silver flashed in the sunlight,
and he fired his rifle freely at the skies. Ameer Feisal, the third son
of the Sherif of Mecca, who was soon to be proclaimed the new ruler,
rode into the city. The Arabs of the city gave an almost fanatical
greeting to the Prince.
THE GALLOP INTO DAMASCUS
Although the Victorians secured the great haul of prisoners, the first
troops to enter Damascus were the Light Horsemen from Western Australia,
who, also, had had the distinction of being the first mounted men to
enter Jerusalem, in December. The Western Australians found their way
into Damascus by accident, and their ride was one of the most dramatic
and picturesque incidents of the campaign.
The 3rd Light Horse Brigade, to which the Western Australians belong,
spent the night in the Abana Gorge, a few miles from Damascus, to the
west along the Beirut Road. Brigadier-General Wilson was under orders to
move at dawn and seize the road leading from the city northward towards
Aleppo. It was hoped that a track would be found around the outskirts of
the town, but this proved impracticable. The Brigade, therefore, with a
troop of scouts leading, and the Western Australians following, came
down the Abana Gorge, clearing a track through the shambles of dead
Turks and Germans and hundreds of camels and horses, heaped on the road
in the fighting of the evening before. It soon became plain to the
officer second in command of the Western Australians, who was riding
ahead with the scouts, that the only way to the Aleppo road lay through
the heart of Damascus. The city had not surrendered, and he did not know
how many of the enemy it contained. But he decided on the bold course,
and pressed on. As the scouts passed the outskirts of the city, riding a
narrow road with the river on one side and a prolonged, mud-built garden
wall on the other, there was a sudden burst of Turkish rifle fire. No
one was hit, and the officer in command, checking the scouts until the
advanced squadron of Western Australians came up, ordered drawn swords,
and dashed on at a gallop. Across the river, two or three hundred yards
away, were thousands of Turks at the barracks. For a moment, the enemy
decision was in the balance. But the sight of the great Australian
horses coming at a gallop (the Turks and natives never ceased to marvel
at the size of our horses), the flashing swords, and the ring of shoes
upon the metal, turned the scale. “The shooting by the Turks,” said one
of our officers, “gave way, in a second, to the clapping of hands by the
citizens.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
MAJOR-GEN. CHAYTOR RECEIVES A DEPUTATION OF ARAB CHIEFS NEAR AMMAN
]
[Illustration:
JERUSALEM
]
The Australians rode hard, scattering the excited people from their
track. The firing increased, but its character had changed. The shots
were now coming from native Arabs, who were expressing their feelings,
in the popular Arab way, by blazing at the heavens. Across the river
ahead, in front of the large new Town Hall, a huge crowd was assembled,
and clattering over a bridge, the cavalry pulled up at the steps of the
building. Instantly, there were hundreds of eager horse-holders, and an
intense demonstration of goodwill. The East was greeting the victors of
the day. Three officers, all carrying their revolvers, entered the
building, and demanded the civil governor. They were at once taken
upstairs to that personage, a trim, little middle-aged Turk, who greeted
them with complete calm and much dignity, and begged to know their
wishes. He was told that a great British force of cavalry was entering
the town, and that he would be held responsible for good order and the
protection of property; the shooting in the streets must instantly
cease. The Governor replied that there was nothing to fear from the
civil population, that the shooting was merely the expression of an
excess of feeling, and that the British wishes would be respected in
every way. He then begged the Australian officers to accept his
hospitality.
A reliable guide was obtained and the party hurried forward. As the
Australians continued their ride through the city they received the
honours traditionally lavished on conquerors. The stalls were emptied of
their incomparable grapes and pomegranates, which were handed up to the
passing horsemen. Crowds hung to their stirrups and ran along with their
hands on the bridle reins. They were smothered with perfumes. Every man
who smoked enjoyed a gift cigar. Dark-eyed women and pretty girls
appeared in every window, some of them the wives, doubtless, of Turkish
soldiers, timidly, and showing no pleasure; others boldly waved their
hands, smiled their welcome, and threw down scents and other favours.
[Illustration: OUTLINE MAP OF SYRIA]
VETERANS
It was a wonderful hour for our young Australian countrymen. But the
long war had made them into reserved men of the world, and the streets
of old Damascus were but a stage in the long path of the war. They rode,
very dusty and unshaved, their big hats battered and drooping, through
the tumultuous populace of the oldest city in the world, with the same
easy, casual bearing, and the same quiet self-confidence that are their
distinctive characteristic on their country tracks at home. They ate
their grapes and smoked their cigars, and missed no pretty eyes at the
windows; but they displayed no excitement or elation. They had become
true soldiers of fortune. And their long-tailed horses, at home now,
like their owners, on any road in any country, saw nothing in the
shouting mob or banging rifles, or the narrow ways and many colours of
the bazaars, to cause them once to start, shy, or even cock an ear. The
3rd Brigade rode out to a series of ugly, but highly successful, actions
with stout rear-guards of German machine gunners. Few men, in any age,
have passed through twenty-four more adventurous and gratifying hours
than they during this first day around Damascus.
BEAUTIFUL DAMASCUS
The district of Damascus is an irrigation settlement on a vast scale,
set in the midst of comparative desert. So rich and close are the
orchards, and so tall the plantations of poplars and other decorative
trees, that, looking over the city from the neighbouring hills, all you
see of the city of 250,000 people are the stately minarets of its many
mosques and the roofs of the larger residences of the rich. Immediately
to the west of the town rises the bare, glaring mountain side, and to
the east and north and south of the green expanse of gardens you ride
out upon the harsh and treeless plain. Damascus owes all its wealth,
even its very existence, to the torrential Abana River, which, surging
down from Anti-Lebanon, bursts from the mountain gorge on to the plain
and, splitting up into several beautiful streams, has made a rural
paradise on the edge of the Arabian wilderness.
[Illustration:
AUSTRALIANS ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM
]
[Illustration:
AN AUSTRALIAN FLYING SQUADRON IN PALESTINE
_Photos, in colour by Capt. Frank Hurley_
]
In Palestine the troops looked in vain for the Promised Land “flowing
with milk and honey.” The Plain of Philistia was fertile, but apart from
the few Jewish and German colonies, and the orange groves about Jaffa,
it was, with all its natural possibilities, a land bare and neglected, a
reproachful ghost of a great life that is gone. But Damascus was a prize
worth the winning. Here, after nearly three years of desert and
exhausted, unfruitful regions, was an area good to look upon, and
teeming with an active people. Few of us were sorry that we had at last
outrun our supplies, or rather, that the huge capture of prisoners had
somewhat strained the wonderful commissariat which had so gallantly kept
at the heels of the galloping cavalry, and that a brief halt was
necessary for the Australian Mounted Division. For a month some of the
Regiments were in camps in the gardens around the city, and man and
horse never accepted rest more gratefully. After thirteen days on bully
and biscuit, it was good to know fresh meat and bread again; the mutton
was of the best, and the bread, if dark and coarse and heavy, was still
a long way ahead of biscuit. We were too late for the famous Damascus
apricots, but there were grapes for the multitude, and pears and apples
and pomegranates, and, also, raisins and other dried fruits and
specialties in Eastern sweetmeats. Best of all, every camp was within
sight and sound of many running waters.
Noisy little streams crossed our path a hundred times a day. Follow one
along, and it suddenly disappeared into an underground passage, to burst
forth like a spring a hundred yards away. In the streets, many of the
gutters are river-fed waterways, and, to reduce the dust, the tired
civic authorities block the drains and cause an effective little flood,
which is extended by boys splashing with their hands. You buy grapes at
the stalls, and carry them a few yards to dip into the waters of a
mountain stream. But Damascus is dirty and insanitary. Without the purge
of the Abana waters, flushing through it and under it, the city would
die of its filth in a single summer. And even with its beautiful streams
it proved a false friend to great numbers of Australians. The Australian
Mounted division suffered more sickness in the Damascus area than
anywhere else in the campaign.
THE ANZACS’ PART
In most of the operations which cleared Sinai and Palestine of the Turk,
the lead was entrusted to the veterans of the Anzac Mounted Division. In
this last and greatest campaign of all, the Division found itself away
from the spectacular side of the enterprise. A trusty mounted Division
was needed for the subsidiary, but highly important, work on Moab and
Gilead, east of Jordan, and the choice fell upon the Anzacs.
The Australians and New Zealanders complained about their luck. But
their task made one strong appeal to them. Twice before they had been
across the Jordan, and twice they had returned leaving not a few of
their men in enemy graves. The two great raids over the river, early in
the year, were brilliantly successful, as raids. Each time our purpose
was achieved. But each time our men broke off the fight strongly against
their inclination, and prayed for the day when they would get orders to
go over and see the job through, and stay. Old Amman, the ancient
Philadelphia, was especially coveted by our men. There, in March, 1918,
we had fought for days over sodden ground in extreme winter weather and
come away, the railway having been well broken, just after the New
Zealanders had won into the town. This time, Australians and New
Zealanders competed, in a sporting way, for first entry, and the 5th
Light Horse Regiment, from Queensland, narrowly gained the honour.
At the outset, the Anzacs, and the small infantry force operating with
them, made up chiefly of the Jewish Battalion, the British West Indians
and troops from India proper, had no chance of breaking out of our
bridgeheads east of the river. Their orders were to keep in very close
and firm touch with the enemy, and to demolish him as soon as he began
to withdraw in consequence of his defeat on Samaria. Also, this Jordan
Valley force was to push northwards up the Valley, and complete the
cordon round the two Turkish armies on Samaria. Both missions were
admirably accomplished. While the New Zealanders and infantry were
advancing up the Valley, the Australians were probing the strongly
entrenched and wired positions along the Moab and Gilead foothills,
across the river. As soon as the Turk moved the two Australian Brigades
pounced upon his rear-guard, and fought him as he climbed the narrow
wady tracks up on to the tableland. Meanwhile, the New Zealanders,
crossing away to the north at Jisr el Darnie, ascended the goat-track
which leads from there to Es Salt, and, for the third time in the
campaign, that old stone-built town was in Australasian hands.
All the way our men had evidence of the success of the British bluff.
The Turks’ defences on the foothills, and higher up, were particularly
strong. Had our main attack gone that way, the fight would have been
very bitter, with the enemy in a strong natural position. But now the
Turks were compelled to abandon their stronghold because of their
disaster in the west, and, also, because the Arabs had broken their
communications to the north, and were joining hands with a British and
Indian cavalry Division right across those communications. As the
Australians passed Shunet Nimrin, they discovered a long-range navy gun
lying on its side, a piece known to them as “Nimrin Nellie” and “Jericho
Jane,” with which the Turk had often made our camps near Jericho dusty
and unpleasant.
[Illustration:
ORANGE SELLER, JAFFA
]
[Illustration:
IN THE SHADE
]
[Illustration:
THE VILLAGE WELL
NATIVE PLOUGH AND TEAM
]
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
JAFFA
]
[Illustration:
AUSTRALIANS PRIOR TO THE FIGHT FOR HEIGHTS OF NALIN
_Photos, in colour by Capt. Frank Hurley_
]
AMMAN CAPTURED
It was not until our men were far across the tableland, and close to
Amman, that the enemy showed fight. There our advance guard came under
machine gun fire; but the Division’s rapid advance on the town was not
stayed. As the scene of the severe March fighting came into view the
Australians appreciated the disaster which had so suddenly fallen upon
the Turkish arms. In March, the only possible approaches to Amman led
through hurricanes of machine gun fire, together with shells from
several field batteries. But now, the broken foe, although he fought
gamely at this particular spot, was quickly out-witted and out-classed
by Light Horse manoeuvre, and soon the Australians, after trifling
casualties, were riding in the streets of the squalid modern village,
and marvelling at the glory of the ancient Roman amphitheatre. Contact
with the Roman in this hour of our triumph did us good. It subdued our
vanity. In these far outposts of the old Roman Empire, on the very edge
of the barbarian desert, the massiveness of the stone-work and the fine
quality of the decorative carving proclaimed to the least imaginative
mind the culture and mighty physical achievements of our great rivals in
the task of Empire building. “The splendour that was Rome” is told far
more convincingly in distant Amman and Baalbek than in the ruins of Rome
itself.
[Illustration]
The Australians took 350 prisoners in Amman, and the New Zealanders
another good bag as the Turks attempted to escape to the north. But the
chief, and by far the most amusing, exploit of the Anzacs’ campaign,
fell to the 2nd Light Horse Brigade under General Ryrie, at Ziza, about
twenty miles to the south. News came through that a large Turkish force,
which had been far to the south on the Hedjaz railway at Maan, was in an
entrenched position at Ziza, and a regiment of Queenslanders rode down
to spy out the land and, if possible, to smash them. The C.O. reported
that he was in touch with 5000 Turks, who wished to capitulate, but they
would not lay down their arms until they were sure that a great force of
hostile Arabs, by whom they were surrounded, would be kept away from
them. So the Colonel of the Queenslanders suggested that the whole
Brigade should hurry down to assure the Turks of their safety. General
Ryrie at once decided to go, and the twenty miles were covered in less
than three hours.
ARABS AND TURKS
The Brigade arrived shortly before dark, and an extraordinary situation
was discovered. The Turks were in a strongly defended position around
the village. They were made up, in the main, of Anatolians, regulars and
the cream of the Ottoman army. Moreover, they were well armed and
capable of a good fight. Our Brigade was not complete and was
outnumbered by about ten to one. The Turkish commander rode out to meet
the Australian Brigadier. “I will surrender,” he said, “if you will
protect us against the Arabs.” “Certainly,” said the Brigadier. “The
Arabs are our allies; if you surrender, you have nothing to fear.” But
the Turkish leader would not be convinced, and he demanded that the
Australian force should be greatly increased before his men gave up
their arms. Otherwise, he would be pleased to fight. General Ryrie was
anxious to complete the surrender and save casualties, and the
Australians and Turks spent the night together in arms around the same
camp fires!
Next morning, the Turks laid down their arms and marched as prisoners to
Amman. The incident was an interesting sidelight on the feeling of the
Turk towards the Arabs, whom he has so long governed. But it is a highly
significant fact that, in the long campaign, the Arabs took 17,000
Turkish prisoners, and the Turks not a single Arab. To the Arab, the
Turk has been an enemy in arms. To the Turk, the Arab has been a rebel,
and deserving of a rebel’s fate.
Ziza practically finished the Anzacs’ brilliant little campaign. In all,
some 11,000 prisoners were taken. The total battle casualties for the
Division did not exceed a few score.
THE TECHNICAL SERVICES
The writer of this sketch has been obliged to keep severely to the work
of the Force as a whole, and has recorded little or nothing of the great
achievements of the many technical services, lacking which the
victorious progress of the Light Horsemen would have been impossible.
The performances of the Australian No. 1 Flying Corps Squadron, the
first Commonwealth Flying Squadron engaged in the war, deserve a volume
to themselves. Recruited chiefly from the Light Horse Regiments, both
pilots and observers excelled in resource and daring, and in their
golden chivalry to their foes, and in their many fine rescues of fallen
comrades far behind the enemy lines, shone the spirit of Saladin and
King Richard. They were the modern Knights of Palestine.
[Illustration:
ANZAC RIDGE, GAZA
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration]
Then there were the Engineers (no attempt is made to place these
services in order of merit—a hopeless task), who found us water at will,
as with a magician’s wand, beneath the blistering sands of Sinai; who
bridged the Jordan under heavy fire for the crossing to Moab, and who,
so often, blew enemy railroads, bridges and viaducts heavenward. Working
over every kind of country from the desert to the mountains, they won
through because of their indomitable spirit, and their boundless gift
for improvization.
THE M.O.
[Illustration]
In the whole war there has not been a campaign which depended so much
for its success upon the native wit of the individual. Conditions
changed with dramatic suddenness from battle to battle. What served
to-day, was useless to-morrow. As an example of this, take the superb
work of our Medical Services. The Medical Officer was, all the way, a
man of many inventions. In the desert the wounded were habitually
carried on sledges made of sheets of galvanized iron, and, later, upon
an improvement of this device; as the campaign progressed, they were
borne on camels; and once, at least, in the mountains east of Jordan,
they were carried lying flat on rough beds made of greatcoats on the
backs of horses; and as the road improved, they were carried in
two-wheeled sand-carts, in ordinary G.S. wagons and every kind of motor.
The Light Horse galloped, and those who would serve them must gallop
too. The almost miraculous rapidity and efficiency with which the
Medical Units would establish their various stations and communications,
at the very heels of a fight, distant perhaps a hundred swiftly-covered
miles from railhead, made them worthy peers of the sparkling horsemen.
And, thanks to the establishment of the mobile operating theatre—a
veritable galloping machine, like the rest of the force—under a gifted
surgeon, it was possible for the most intricate skull and abdominal
operations to be carried out at the edge of the zone of fire. All honour
to our doctors and their devoted staffs! And especially dear in the
memory of Light Horsemen will always be the mounted stretcher-bearers.
No wounded man was beyond their gallant reach.
Of the Light Horseman’s debt to the Nursing Sisters this narrative will
not dare an estimate. As long as memory lasts, every officer and man
will think with deep gratitude of the sustained, self-sacrificing
devotion of these noble Australian women. Fighting in this alien and
uncivilized land, thousands of young Australians for years never spoke
to a British woman, except when in hospital. What the ever-ready
sympathy and helpful friendship of the Sisters meant to them only these
lonely soldiers could tell.
THE A.S.C.
[Illustration]
The supreme masters of improvization were the officers and men who
handled the supplies. Not only the Australians, but the whole of the
Imperial Cavalry—the greatest mounted force in the war under a single
command—led by General Chauvel, depended for their rations upon the
distinguished ability of the Queensland Colonel who was responsible for
the direction of the supply and transport for mounted corps in the
Desert. A cavalry force requires about four times the quantity of
supplies which suffices for infantry, and, on occasions, it travels four
times as fast. During the ride to Damascus, the horsemen, more than
once, covered sixty miles in twenty-four hours; and on the whole
advance, no man or horse went short of a mobile ration. British
railways, captured Turkish railways and rolling-stock, motor-lorries,
four-wheeled G.S. wagons, two-wheeled limbers (their off-side horses
carrying pack-saddles, so that, if the vehicle failed, the load could be
transferred), camels in tens of thousands, countless mules and
donkeys—the interminable, sleepless procession on the roads during
General Chauvel’s final triumph was a fitting culmination to the great
transport record from the Canal onward.
Of our Australian machine gunners and signallers, and of the model
Veterinary Service, which cared for our sick and wounded walers as
promptly and faithfully as the Medical people cared for the men, and of
the British batteries of Horse Artillery, which unfailingly advanced to
extreme limits with their guns and shot so unerringly (never was man so
welcome as a galloping gunner in a sticky dismounted fight)—of all
these, it is enough to say that without them Palestine could not be ours
to-day.
[Illustration]
The fighting ceased for the Australians early in October, with the
capture of Damascus and Amman, though No. 1 Australian Light Car Patrol
(Captain James), accompanying the 5th Cavalry Division, took a prominent
part in the capture of Aleppo, and in the pursuit of the Turko-German
forces north of that city. The final campaign yielded prodigious results
at a trifling cost in battle casualties. Of the 75,000 prisoners made by
General Allenby’s Army, more than 40,000 were taken by the Australian
and Anzac Mounted Divisions. The losses in killed and wounded, in the
two Divisions, were nominal. Unfortunately, however, the Force then
suffered the worst spell of sickness it had known since leaving
Australia. The terrible ordeal of Jordan Valley during the summer took
its suspended toll. Malaria ran like wildfire through the regiments, and
there was also much acute influenza with pneumonia following, sandfly
fever, and other more or less serious diseases peculiar to the Holy
Land. Many brave men, who had survived four years of hard fighting and
extremely rough living, lost their lives by sickness in the moment of
victory.
The Australian Mounted Division was pushing on from Damascus towards the
country north of Aleppo, and the armistice was signed as they reached
Homs, which marked the northern limit attained by the Light Horsemen.
To-day, the force asks only one question: “Who goes Home—and when?”
[Illustration: H. S. Gullett.]
_Palestine, December, 1918._
[Illustration]
Anthem Bells
Heard ye the bells, the chapel bells,
Pealing in Bethlehem?
The vibrant swells, the solemn knells,
On the eve of a requiem?
Saw ye the trees
When the gentle breeze
Caressed the leaves of them?
Heard ye the guns, the distant guns,
That thundered down the vale,
When comrades strode the mountain road
To brave the battle gale?...
O, see the worn, returning men whose march no fire could stem,
And hear their song as they surge along
The road to Bethlehem!
O, hear the hoofs, the iron hoofs,
Falling in Bethlehem,
While sunlight flames on the ruddy roofs
In the hills of Jerusalem!
And if you’ve crossed the wilderness by well and palmy hod,
Pray heed the bells, the heavenly bells,
That call the folk to God.
“GERARDY.”
Palestine Poppies
From the hills to the sea, a scarlet trail of flowers in the spring,
when the little grey larks are singing and all the low country is green
with barley. Wild flowers everywhere, yellow and purple and
butterfly-blue—but the poppy is our choice. It glows on Australian
graves in the plains and down by the sea where the surf croons all day
long; it makes beautiful old battle-grounds, and flakes the wady’s brown
banks with scarlet. The blood-red poppy is Palestine’s flower. At the
wind’s touch petals fall from the slender stems to lie softly in the
grass, as if some rare and lovely bird had shed its plumage there. The
red poppy is our flower of War, and in the tranquil days of Peace will
be our flower of Memory.
Among the sea-dunes white lilies grow, and they, too, will have power to
win us memories of Palestine, unclouded by sorrow; memories of the blue
Mediterranean, serene as a summer sky, or flinging ramparts of foam
alongshore. When we camped at Malala or Marakeb beach, heeding all day
the call of the surf, the land wind bore to us faintly the scent of
blossoms unseen. A colour, then, and a fragrance of flowers are the
gifts we shall take overseas. One will bring memories tinged with
sadness; the other of golden hours.
Palestine is a wild garden in spring. Many plants blossom on through the
summer, fading at last in the season of mists, when dawn comes veiled
like a bride and the earth is pearled with dew. In spring, when the
wattles shower gold on our streams, Palestine poppies are blooming. From
the white sea-dunes to the long blue hills the land is alight with
flowers. And all the larks of the world and all the butterflies seem to
be gathered there. Over every blossom some bird is singing or a
butterfly floating on sunlit wings. A murmur of bees in convolvulus
bells; grasshoppers leaping over the tall grass; wagtails gleaning in
sheltered places; white vultures high in the blue; and kestrels hovering
over the barley, keen-eyed for prey.
Those long rides across the plains, before the Turks were driven back to
the hill country, were wonderful. Our horses breasted a green sea of
barley, and it was hard to urge them on. Often we drew rein to look at
leisure on the earth’s green mantle inwrought with flowers. The plains
and the valleys were beautiful. We rode inland along the blue ways of
Dawn, rode on till noon, then, after rest, took the sunset trail, when
cloud shadows were skimming over the earth. We gazed at the purple
ranges and wondered what lay beyond. Under the stars we slept well.
One ride I remember more vividly than all others. We started at sunrise
from Belah, rode through a village, and came to a place of little hills
whose slopes were bare of trees. Here the Bedouins had pitched their
tents, some on the hills and some in the valleys, singly or in groups.
When we cantered past men came from the tents to look at us, and
children followed after, wailing for backsheesh. The women remained at
their tasks. Dogs barked at our horses’ hoofs till their masters cursed
them, when they slunk back snarling. We travelled on, with Fara on our
left—a great grey bulk against the sky—coming at length to old
pasture-lands that War had restored to Nature. Where dust had lain deep,
and all plant life had perished under the feet of an army, Nature had
won loveliness, healing earth’s wounds with grasses and flowers. It
seemed an idle dream that the red tide of war had surged where poppies
flamed in the sun and the little speedwell’s eyes of blue shone amid the
grass.
Far as our vision ranged the land was bright with flowers—tulips, blue
salvias, scarlet pimpernels, asphodels, white daisies, anemones, and
lilies swaying on tall stems; hollows brimming with sunshine and pink
with cyclamens; acres of red poppies set in emerald; sky-coloured
lupines; a green knoll fringed with “pheasant’s eye”; and away to the
west a long, brown field flaked with white convolvulus flowers.
For a mile we rode along the wady, seeking vainly an easy descent for
the horses. Every cleft was starred with flowers; over the ledges melon
plants trailed, making caves of tiny crevices haunted by lizards and
spiders. Down a steep track we rode carelessly, letting our eyes dwell
on blossoms and giving the horses free rein. We won to the other side
safely, then on again through flower-land, with the white tents of the
Camel Corps gleaming afar at Shellal. A long, glad ride from dawn till
dusk across the plains in spring.
When we carried war to the Judean hills we found wild beauty there;
flowers among the terraced hills and olive trees in the valleys. Pink
hollyhocks grew on the heights along the Jerusalem road. The valleys
were gardens. Gehenna’s goat-tracks, winding among old tombs, were
bordered with scarlet poppies.
Wild flowers are Palestine’s glory. No one has named them all. From Dan
to Beersheba, among the hills of Moab and Judea, on the wide plain of
Esdraelon, on Hermon and Tabor, in Gilead and Bashan; everywhere in
Palestine Spring casts down her kindling buds. We have seen them all in
our long campaign, and out of the shining company have chosen two for
remembrance: the little red poppy (symbol of sleep), and the lily that
grows by the sea.
CHARLES BARRETT.
[Illustration]
Farming in Arcady
Up in fanatical, uncorrupted old Hebron, where, happily, the cheap
tourists are afraid to venture, you see the rude but expert craftsman
making the plough. Seated in his gloomy little recess, hewn out of the
stone of the hillside, he works swiftly with toes and fingers. Seizing a
rough bent branch of an olive tree, he stands it up and grasps the lower
end firmly with his deft and supple toes. The pieces fly. Slashing and
turning, he lops the smaller limbs, hacks it here and prunes it there,
and, in a few minutes, flings it aside complete, except for the steel
tip which plays the part of the share.
For a few shillings the plough is bought by the Bedouin. The selection
of the land for cultivation is equally simple. Over most of the
Palestine we covered, there is little regularity in the tenure of the
small holder. The Sheik of the village has a loose control over a wide
area, for which he pays tribute and taxes in grain to the Turk. The
Bedouin is granted a plot the size of which is according to his capacity
to cultivate and his inclination to work. He is rarely ambitious, and
always lazy. If he has more than one wife, or has children of a working
and a hungry age, he will extend his area. But, like the piece of glass
bottle in Grimm’s fairy tale, he loves best just to lie about and
glitter in the sun. That is better than any exceptional success as a
farmer.
As a cultivator he has complete confidence in Allah. He has never heard
of artificial manures, or of the rotation of crops; he rarely troubles
to irrigate even when water is available. Here, as all over the Eastern
Turkish Empire, there is fertile land for every inhabitant, and to
spare. So the Bedouin roams wide with his plough. He crops here this
year, and next year tries a patch a few miles away, which has been
resting for a season or two under the thin native grasses. His selection
made, he appears at dawn one morning, riding on his mournful ass and
carrying his plough in front of him. Or perhaps he rides one of his
little black oxen and leads the ass; or he may ride either the ass or
the oxen and lead a horse or camel. The point is, that he always rides
and carries the plough, and that his wife, if she is in attendance,
always walks and carries half-a-hundred-weight of something on her head.
It is a significant commentary upon his neighbours that he always brings
his plough home at night.
[Illustration:
HARVEST TIME
]
[Illustration:
PLOUGHING AS OF OLD
]
[Illustration:
NATIVE STOCK
]
[Illustration:
THE FRANCISCAN MONASTERY
]
[Illustration:
LAKE OF TIBERIAS
]
In his team he seldom drives two of a kind. It is a cow and a donkey, or
a scabby, bony ghost of a pony and a camel. You can yoke them as you
please. Palestine is a land that knows no shame, and so the horse does
not rebel at being harnessed with a cow. Lazy as he is, the Bedouin is
always up at dawn. At dusk he goes to his mat to sleep; he cannot read,
and the villages burn no night-lights.
Cleverly holding his simple plough upright with one hand, he pelts clods
at the team or wields a long goad with the other. Up and down he
scratches little gutters a few inches apart, his camel towering
ludicrously above his ass. Usually, he sows his seeds in strips before
the plough. He rarely harrows and never rolls, but sometimes he shows a
sense of the value of fallow by ploughing twice. The rest he leaves to
Allah.
Sometimes, in the spring, he will pluck the wild turnip and radish and
other tares from the growing corn. As a rule he prefers to sit in his
coloured rags in the pleasant sunshine. Or he may go off to Jaffa with
his asses and his women, and traffic in oranges. Then you see him, with
both asses and women brutally overloaded, goading the donkey, or perhaps
astride behind the burden of fruit, as the little long-eared slave
totters along the tracks. The women, like the asses, never protest. The
man is master. It is the way of the East.
The beautiful lilies and poppies vanish as summer comes upon the
rolling, treeless plain. The corn ripens and harvesting begins.
Machinery plays as little part here to-day as it did among the “alien
corn” near Bethlehem long ago, when pretty Ruth worked for Boaz. In
Palestine the world has stood still for a thousand years or more, or
when it moved it moved backward. Much of the barley and wheat is pulled
up, roots and all, but some is cut with sickles. In each village there
is a harvest floor—a patch of clean, hard ground, where each man builds
his little stack and sees about the threshing.
Occasionally you see the flail at work, but it is not popular. To wield
the flail is hard work. So the Bedouin employs his cattle, his wives and
his children. He spreads the loose crop in a little circle about two
feet deep. Donkeys and oxen and ponies are then tied together, from two
to four abreast, and goaded round and round upon the straw. Sometimes
the threshing is done by their hoofs alone; but often a rude wooden
sledge is drawn after them. Time is of no concern. The cattle barely
move; the owner sits with his friends under the shade of an olive tree,
smoking many cigarettes and occasionally dreaming luxuriously over his
hubble-bubble; pleasant breezes blow across from the gleaming
Mediterranean. The season has been generous: Allah is good. Why hurry?
The threshing finished, rough wooden forks are used to remove the
coarsest straw, and then the winnowing begins. Day after day the harvest
is thrown high into the air, and, slowly but surely, the chaff and dross
are separated from the grain by the Mediterranean breezes.
Then the Turk comes—or he did before the war—and takes from thirty to
sixty bushels out of every hundred! That is why the Bedouin is so fond
of glinting in the sunshine, like the piece of glass bottle in the old
fairy tale.
H. S. G.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
“Standing to.”
While the sleep-drunk world behind lies still abed,
And the dawn breath chills the smoking mists before,
Down the lines between in commune of the Dead,
There are eyes, that world of slumber watching o’er;
There are trenches darkly sheening readied steel,
There are orbs aglint, the darkness peering through;
And the shades of Night, the shades of Death scarce veil,
For the millions, to the Day, who’re “Standing to”
“Standing to”—in grim attesting to a Thought,
By the scars that weal Earth’s Face from sea to sea
In the pride to set the need of Life at naught
For the will to live a fancied Destiny;
Waiting, watching, till the hour of dree be gone,
Or muezzin-guns roar forth their hate anew—
O! Well may the world of Slumber slumber on,
For those watchers of the Dawn, who’re “Standing to.”
BRENTOMMAN.
[Illustration:
OUTPOSTS
]
[Illustration:
JORDAN VALLEY DUST
]
[Illustration: DINNER GONG!]
[Illustration]
A WALER’S STORY
Of my early life I remember but little. I have a dim recollection of
golden sunlight, of wide-sweeping plains, of a huge dam down by a
homestead, of tall trees like some I have seen around Jaffa, and others
with golden blossom, and of a long trip in a railway truck to
Homebush—ah! you know the place?—where I was sold.
Since I have been in the Army my comrades have often taunted me with not
knowing on what station I was born, and have called me a town-bred
scrub; but I cannot help that. I will not bore you with details of my
early career at Surry Hills as a “week-end” horse (I was then owned by a
prosperous butcher), nor will I inflict upon you my first impressions of
Army life at Moore Park; but I must say that I was at Broadmeadows,
learning “Sections right,” “Form troop,” and “Walk march,” before they
would put me in a unit.
On the 20th November, 1914, our troop was taken down to a big dock and
put on board what our masters called a transport. (I have heard them
call it a ship, a tub—and other names as occasion demanded). We horses
had a rough time all the way across; and judging by the manner in which
our masters cursed when they came to feed us and perform their stable
duties, or to lead us about the decks for exercise, I think they had a
rough time, too. I remember a remarkable incident on our deck when we
were somewhere in the tropics. (If you know anything about the tropics
and about ships, you will know how we and our masters existed). Ginger,
who never wore anything to speak of except a pair of shorts, shoes, and
a grin, looked after the horses on my off side; he also used to hitch
baskets on to a long rope, which disappeared through the deck above.
“Haul away!” was all he ever said, and the basket disappeared. Later, a
voice would echo from above: “Under below!” and Ginger would stand well
back until it landed again. One day when the rope slipped, the chap up
above forgot to say “Under below,” and the big basket fell down on
Ginger and extinguished him. When he got clear, his conversation with
the chap on top was so unrestrained and vivid that three horses broke
out of their stalls and tried to climb up on deck. I did not mind—I had
often heard the expressions Ginger used.
We reached Alexandria at last and were taken ashore. At first I thought
that a peculiarity existed in the ground of Egypt, for it kept rocking
and swaying under my feet like the movement of the ship; but this
feeling went away in two or three days. We were taken to Gabbari, put
into trucks, and rattled to Ma’adi, a pretty little suburb of Cairo. At
Ma’adi we had plenty of feed, good stables which kept the sun off us
during the day, and very little work while the boys were away at the
Peninsula. Sometimes we went out on route marches and dummy stunts, and
always on Sundays our masters used to take us out on to the desert
behind the camp, to gallop us until we were tired. Those gallops were
great sport. There would be horses all over the desert, some of them
with riders clinging affectionately to their necks, others without
riders, and all of them thoroughly enjoying the fun, and kicking their
heels playfully into the air. We were at Ma’adi right up till February,
1916, and then we were pushed off to Serapeum and dumped in a camp close
to the Canal. After the delights of Ma’adi, Serapeum came as a shock to
me; and in a few days I was feeling very ill on account of the sand I
had swallowed with my food. I could not stand, so I rolled about in
agony. Up till then I had never had a day’s sickness, so this experience
was quite a new one. The farrier-sergeant visited me on the evening of
my collapse, administered a “ball” to me, and told Bill (my boss) that I
would be all right in the morning. A lot he knew about horses! He ought
never to have left that boot factory. He also told Bill to give me a bit
more _berseem_. Bill stopped with me for a while, talking; then a
whistle blew and he cleared out. “Good-night, Baldy” (that is the name I
always got) he said as he departed, “you’ll be O.K. at reveille.” In the
morning I was almost better, and by lunch time, when Bill gave me a big
feed of _berseem_ that he had pinched from somewhere, I was as good as
ever again.
[Illustration:
5th LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE ENTERING NABLUS
]
[Illustration:
WATERING HORSES, ES SALT
]
[Illustration:
HORSES THIRSTY
]
[Illustration:
LIGHT HORSEMEN IN JUDEAN HILLS, JAN., 1918
]
We had been at Serapeum only a few weeks when I was taken up to Salhia,
where I was promoted on the strength (I think that is the term) of a new
Squadron. Bill came with me, so I had no complaints to make—not even
about the _tibbin_. Bill always was a good master, and he was never
tired of looking after me. In heat, in dust, in mud; across the desert,
over the plains, amongst the hills—anywhere at all—Bill always groomed
me and saw that I got my full issue of tucker. We used to have long
talks together; and I really think he understood what I had to say to
him. He was always considerate in the way he loaded my saddle, and
rather than sacrifice my bag of grain, he would dump his own gear. He
could not do enough for me; and, believe me, I could not do enough for
him. Unfortunately, all masters are not like Bill, or (pardon my vanity)
all horses like Baldy.
My first real stunt was from Salhia to Kantara across the desert; and I
think that it will live as long in my memory as that Amman show. We
travelled all night by short stages—Bill would ride for ten minutes,
then walk beside me during the next ten, and then we rested for ten
minutes. I had a fair load on the saddle, but this was Bill’s first
desert stunt, too, and he had not realized exactly how severe desert
stunts can be. After that he always let someone else have the heavy
gear, while he looked after the light stuff. That was in April, 1916.
The long months from then until March, 1917, were one nightmare of bombs
and sand, out of which our stunts—Romani, Bir el Abd, Mazar, Magdhaba,
Rafa, and many minor ones—stood like the milestones I have seen along
the roads at home. At the commencement of things in Sinai tucker was
plentiful, and we waxed fat in the land and thrived on brackish water;
now we no longer get the same amount—or so it seems—but the water is
good. I did not notice the change until yesterday, when I had recourse
to chew through my headrope so that I could visit the feed-heap while
the piquet slept. Yet the change has been very gradual, and it has not
been severe on me. I am still pretty sound in wind and limb, although I
have seen old Bill look sorrowfully at me, and say, “Baldy, ten pounds
of grain without fixings isn’t much to offer a man’s best cobber, is it?
Never mind, old chap, we’re coping very well—very well, you and I.”
Once Bill was away for seven days; and when he came back I noticed that
he was stable-guard for a whole fortnight. I thought it rather good of
Bill to look after the horses for such a long time without a break. I
heard all about it afterwards. Bill and the sergeant—a big, ugly bloke
like a Gyppo—were talking near me, and I overheard Bill’s final remark.
“Yes,” he said, “I’d be a stableman for a month if I could get those
three days in Cairo again.” Ah, Bill! what were you doing? While he was
away in Cairo we had a little stunt to blow up a railway line; and
because I was a good worker, the big Gyppo bloke passed me on for the
occasion. The chap who rode me was a dopey kind of individual, and,
although the stunt was only to occupy thirty hours, he loaded me up with
all sorts of gear, and forgot my lunch-bag. We came home in the night
time in a fog, tried to find Tel el Fara, and circled about all over the
place until I got tired of it, and wanted to make for home and a feed;
but my dopey rider kept with the column, refusing to be guided by me. On
another stunt, I just side-stepped the “Killed in Action” return by a
hair. Jacko sent across a few shells in our direction, and one of them
landed right underneath a horse next to me and sent him West. Two others
were as full of holes as a colander, but we got them home. Strangely,
the horses on my side of the burst were untouched, and merely suffered
from slight shock.
The summer of 1917 was what Bill called a “snifter”—he also called it
other things. Day after day, on those wind-swept, dust-covered plains of
Southern Palestine, we stood in the heat and sweated from sunrise to
sunset; during the night we shivered with the cold, and were wet with
the dew and mist. Then there came rumours of a big stunt. It was good to
hear that a big stunt was at last spoken about, not only because we got
more attention prior to it, but because we would be leaving these
sun-baked plains behind, and doing something towards earning our
_tibbin_. It was on 28th October that Bill loaded my saddle, and rode me
away towards Beersheba with the Squadron. From there onwards to Jaffa we
dodged shells and planes, and existed on a very scanty ration. (Even
Bill complained now and again.) We went without water on more than one
occasion for sixty hours on end; and we had many weary night marches.
Just after we left Beersheba I lost a good pal. She was following the
General’s car, and had a despatch-rider in the saddle; and while doing a
stiff gallop she stumbled, fell, and rolled over—dead. I think her death
was due to lack of water, since she had had none for three days. She was
a dear old thing, and I have yarned away many an hour with her. She died
as I would like to die—a soldier.
Winter caught us at Jaffa, and the rain came down unceasingly day and
night. Here I had a lot of trouble with our labour corps—the mules. They
were a hungry lot of cannibals, and, not being satisfied with a ration
of grain, they used to break away from their lines at night and eat our
rugs. Some of them even gnawed the hair and tail off a sick pal of
mine—he did look a wreck in the morning! Another inconvenience was that
I shivered so much that I always shook the rug off, no matter how
careful Bill was about putting it on. The early part of 1918 was a time
of wind, cold, rain, rocks and mud, and stunts amongst tremendous hills.
We had a most exciting time then, and I often wonder how it was I kept
out of hospital. Later on, when we stopped in the Valley, I tried to
“swing it” a bit, and succeeded in bluffing the sergeant; but the vet
knew too much for me, and so I remained. Fortunately, we moved back to
Bethlehem, where the bracing hill air, and the sight of the olive trees,
made a new horse of me.
Our last big stunt was rather pleasant, as well as most profitable.
(Bill agreed with me in that.) We again went to Amman, and this time
captured all the Jackos in that part of the world; it was quite a
different affair from that first Amman stunt, when I slipped on the
muddy track and almost went overboard into a wady some hundreds of feet
below. After we had collected all the gear which Jacko had left behind,
we turned our heads west, came through Jericho, and passed up into the
hills. We stopped for a day at Jerusalem, and then travelled down to the
coastal plains near Jaffa. We returned to Richon to recuperate, and to
await further developments.
Now our masters are talking of going home, and I hear them whisper in
the lines—“Yes, they’ll remain behind”—“Ah! They’ve done their work
bravely and well”—“I wonder what will happen to them?” Bill is going
home; to-day he came to me and told me so. “Good-bye, Baldy, old
comrade. You’ve been a good pal to me,” he said; and then he was gone.
Here at Richon I would like to stay with Bill, and end my days. Richon,
with its trees, its vines, its orchards, recalls my early life in some
strange way; its fertile fields and pleasant surroundings make the
desert days seem but a bad dream of long ago; and in its shady lanes,
the toilsome hills and the rain, and the dust of the Valley, are
forgotten. But Bill is gone! I must stay behind! Let them shoot me—and
quickly—for I would go to that land of eternal sunlight, there to wait
until Bill calls to me.... Then together we shall gallop for ever over
the plains.
E. L. D. HUSBAND.
[Illustration]
THE HORSES STAY BEHIND
In days to come we’ll wander west and cross the range again;
We’ll hear the bush birds singing in the green trees after rain;
We’ll canter through the Mitchell grass and breast the bracing wind:
But we’ll have other horses. Our chargers stay behind.
Around the fire at night we’ll yarn about old Sinai;
We’ll fight our battles o’er again; and as the days go by
There’ll be old mates to greet us. The bush girls will be kind
Still our thoughts will often wander to the horses left behind.
I don’t think I could stand the thought of my old fancy hack
Just crawling round old Cairo with a ’Gyppo on his back.
Perhaps some English tourist out in Palestine may find
My broken-hearted waler with a wooden plough behind.
No; I think I’d better shoot him and tell a little lie:—
“He floundered in a wombat hole and then lay down to die.”
May be I’ll get court-martialled; but I’m damned if I’m inclined
To go back to Australia and leave my horse behind.
_Trooper Bluegum._
[Illustration:
EVENING AMONGST THE JUDEAN HILLS
]
[Illustration:
A CAMP IN THE DESERT
_Photos, in colour by Capt. Frank Hurley_
]
One Too Many
It was a hell of a night. Thunder enough to wake the “Jacko” dead, and
raining fit to swamp old Solomon’s Pool. I was a good ten miles from
camp, and it was with a dinkum bullocky’s curse that I swung into the
saddle again and turned the pony’s nose for home. For about an hour we
battled along, and then the supply dump at S—— hove in sight. Glad of a
brief respite, I guided him toward it, and for a few minutes we rested
in the shelter of a huge stack of _tibbin_.
The rain had eased off, and for a brief second a sickly-looking moon
gazed down on things earthly. That was what started the trouble.
An Algerian guard was on duty, and, to the initiated, there is no need
to say more than that. You might trick a Tommy or induce a Billjim to
look the other way, but the man who beats an Algerian is going some.
But, as I was saying, it was the moon that caused the trouble. When she
took that peep from behind her cloud bank she gazed fair on to four
shadowy figures, each surmounted by a bag of barley and a felt hat.
Chuckling a little, she dodged behind the clouds again; but it was too
late. The mischief had been done, and in a trice the “shadowy figures”
found themselves surrounded by about a dozen sons of the Sahara and a
like number of business-like bayonets.
The result was a confused babble of voices for ten minutes, and then a
procession to the Supply Officer’s tent. From where I was standing I
could see and hear everything that passed, and everybody seemed to be
trying to talk at once. As the “shadowy figures” could not speak a word
of Arabic, and the Algerians vice versa, the result was laughable. But
with the advent of the Supply Officer things took a different turn. He
had been wakened from a sound sleep, and was arrayed in the pink pyjamas
the girl had sent him, and a desire to be “firm in the matter.” He had
no knowledge of Arabic, and was placing the “shadowy figures” under
guard pending the arrival of an interpreter in the morning.
That would have been serious for the said “shadowy figures,” so I
decided to see whether I could help them at all. I had borrowed a
cobber’s flash civvy raincoat in the morning, and that and the Jacko
pony I rode must have made the S.O. think I was an officer. Anyhow, he
greeted me very decently; and when I told him I could yabber Arabic
pretty fluently, he was more than delighted at my arrival.
Well, for a good ten minutes I did the interpreter stunt, and then I got
him to dismiss the guard.
Then I opened the case for the defence. I pictured to him the love of
the Colonial for his horse, the long night rides, and a dozen other
pitiful things, and altogether put up such a beautiful tale that even
old Judge Jeffreys would have had to declare the accused “Not guilty.”
So the S.O. decided to give the “shadowy figures” a stern lecture, take
their names and numbers, and refer the matter to their O.C. next
morning. Forth came the note-book and down went the particulars. I am
pretty hard in the dial, but I was glad he was not looking my way then.
For every one of the four had a number with six figures in it and
belonged to the 19th Light Horse Regiment, 9th Light Horse Brigade.
Luckily, he was a new man out, or the bluff wouldn’t have worked. But it
did, and that was all that mattered then. He gave them the lecture, and
in it repeated often, “I’ve been one too many for you fellows this time,
what!”. Then he let them go, and as they left the tent the last one
winked at me, and in that wink there was a world of mystery.
Five minutes later I was in the saddle again and thinking hard. I was
wondering where the “shadowy figures” had left their horses, and whether
they would bump further trouble on the way home. Then I remembered a
young wady that runs by the side of the dump and turned the pony’s head
toward it. Half-way to it, I met them coming back. But where there had
been four “shadowy figures” there were SIX, and where there should have
been four horses there were ten. And the spare nags were loaded heavily,
too. The chap who gave me the wink told me the rest of the yarn, and
here it is.
Two of them had acted as horse-holders while the other four had carried
out the raiding part of the business. Three times they had returned
without mishap, and it was on the fourth trip that the moon peeped out
and made a mess of things.
It started to rain again then, so we parted; they to their bivvies and I
to a sharp trot home.
Two hours after the sun came up, the chap who was “one too many” rolled
out of bed and prepared his report for the O.C. 19th Light Horse
Regiment, 9th Light Horse Brigade.
“ANON”
[Illustration:
WADY NIMRIN
Along whose banks the A.L.H. had many sharp fights
ARAB AGENTS ARRIVING FROM A TRIP ACROSS THE DEAD SEA
GERMAN PRISONERS IN JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
MEAL TIME
]
[Illustration:
“SHE’S BOILING”
]
“The Light that Failed”
(And some that didn’t)
Among the many examples of ingenuity displayed by Billjim on service,
the manufacture of illuminants, if you will pardon the prolixity, shines
out the most brilliantly. The Sun itself is considered to be a pretty
perfect and economical source of light, but it is not infallible. The
annoying habit it has of dodging off about sundown excludes it from the
category of the perfectly perfect, and Billjim is forced to procure a
substitute to enable him to relieve the tedium of his evenings with the
exhilarating influence of two-up, poker, swapping yarns and other
harmless pursuits.
The issue candle is, of course, the recognized form of illuminant; but
by the time the Greatest, the Sub-Greatest, the Q-Emmer, the
Orderly-Room Ogre and the Sigs get their cut, the stock is usually
depleted to a mere skeleton of its former fat self, and the
insignificant stump that is left to shed its radiance around the humble
bivvies of the rank and file, is, as often as not, irretrievably lost to
sight owing to the shortage of telescopes in the unit’s equipment. Hence
the exercise of Billjim’s ingenuity.
Some devices were truly efficient, others resembled the seeds that fell
on stony ground; while one I know of was positively dangerous. The one
in question was disapproved of from its very inception. The wise ones
shook their heads dubiously, and opined that it was sheer flying in the
face of Providence to use one’s issue of rum for the sacrilegious
purpose of making air-gas for a blooming light. After the explosion
occurred, and the blasphemous one was struck off the strength, they
said, “I told him so,” and everybody was satisfied.
The most popular form is the slush-light, which is simply composed of
any old thing that will hold grease, and any kind of grease that will
fit into it; first, a layer of sand or clay is dumped into the jam,
milk, cigarette or other tin; then a wick made of “3 x 2,” or issue
flannelette, wrapped around a thin pine stick, is stuck upright in the
middle of the sand or clay; and finally the grease is introduced, the
quantity being governed by the amount one has been able to acquire. It
is on record that some chaps have had the effrontery to use dubbin, yes,
“dubbin!” but, of course, this is not official, just common furphy.
Next to the slushie comes the bottle-o; but to employ this it is
necessary to have the above-mentioned rarity, candle. For candle one is
not wholly dependent on the “issue” brand, for it has been known to be
purchaseable at the canteen—when those institutions are in the vicinity.
Supposing the possession of candle to be an established and material
fact, the next necessity is a clear-glass bottle; old lime-juice bottles
are excellent, and they can be found outside any officers’ mess, or the
messes of troopers who “did a trot.” The bottom of the bottle is knocked
out by insistent but vigorous tapping with the marlin-spike of a
jack-knife till a hole is broken through, and then the rest is chipped
off in small instalments till the end is quite out. The candle is then
pared at the bottom end to fit the slope of the bottle neck, and a deep
groove gouged in it, the candle, to admit air. Apply a match to the
candle, drop it into the inverted bottle, and there is your light. If it
is not very windy, of course, all that is necessary is to drop some
melted grease on someone else’s tin hat, and stick the candle in it;
simple, isn’t it?
There are a few of the lesser Edisons who eliminate disturbance by wind
by curling a legging around the candle; but only a very narrow chink of
light exudes from its gaping edges, and the odour of singeing leather is
not pleasant.
One of the finest ideas was a combination of the slushie and the
bottle-o. A squat chutney-bottle that fitted snugly into a toffee tin,
was found, and the quality and steadiness of the light generated made
drawn filament look painfully experimental. Some wire _tibbin_ bands
secure the “globe” to the body, at the same time forming a handle.
The designs, elaborations and embellishments of the original idea are
practically numberless; they range from the primitive cremation of a
religious aunt’s epistles and incriminating love effusions up to the
princely slushie-cum-bottle-o; and they radiate in all classes of
bivvies, and shed their glory on the tangle of the newly erected as
brightly as on the white-stoned splendour of the resident.
With these remarks, and any necessary apologies to the Dinkum Military
Scribe, I shall leave them to shine on the just and the unjust, like
their mighty lord, the Sun.
“SARG.”
[Illustration:
DEFENCES IN THE GHORANIYEH BRIDGEHEAD
]
[Illustration:
THE BRICKMAKER
]
[Illustration:
A TYPICAL ARAB VILLAGE
]
[Illustration:
4th LIGHT HORSE BRIGADE WATERING HORSES AT THE JORDAN
]
A Night March
At twilight, when the air is cool, we prepare for our second consecutive
night march. Overcoats and mufflers are put on, saddles are inspected to
see that all is secure. Later it will be too dark, and we too tired to
attend to such matters.
After a short wait we move off. Two to three hours steady plodding
through the darkness, with the effects of fatigue scarcely noticeable.
Then, suddenly, an utter weariness assails us, numbing limbs, distorting
vision, and rendering minds a prey to tantalizing and disturbing
thoughts—thoughts that mock and taunt; thoughts of feather beds and
roaring fires; thoughts that accentuate our weariness and awake us to
the realization of the cold.
We ride, with drooping eyelids, a swaying body, and a precarious seat,
surrendered to the inevitable.
The column halts, and simultaneously we fall forward on our horses’
necks, hoping to ease our aching limbs. Hoping against hope to hear the
order to dismount. A jerk, our horses move forward again, and
disappointedly we resign ourselves to the further delusions of minds
tortured from want of sleep.
Visions become distorted, we visualize the objects of our thoughts. A
thought of water, and the road becomes a flowing stream. Thoughts of
horses and trees, and in the darkness arises a village—a village that
remains ever in the distance, and endures only so long as our thoughts
are of villages. The horse ahead moves strangely; it appears to be
dancing, and has taken unto itself the shape of a beast of prehistoric
ages. By an effort of will we shake off this state of semi-somnolence,
and, for a time, see things in their normal shapes again.
At last, the order to dismount. Tumbling off we throw ourselves down at
our horses’ feet, indifferent to our position and its possibilities.
With heads pillowed on arms, water-bottles or haversacks, we endeavour
to win a few minutes respite. Follows sleep and blissful
unconsciousness, until friendly hands awake us, and wearily we rise to a
repetition of the last hour. On moving off some walk and lead their
horses, stepping out briskly in an endeavour to dispel the
ever-increasing drowsiness. It succeeds whilst walking, but a reaction
sets in on regaining the saddle, leaving the walker in worse plight than
ever.
With nerves on edge, we curse the numerous and apparently purposeless
halts, become uncomplimentary about our leaders, revile horses for
jogging and stumbling, warn companions of the damage they are likely to
do if they persist in being careless with their rifles. Cheerful and
good-tempered soldiers are few at 03.00.
And so on until we hail with relief the approach of dawn, which dispels
the hallucinations of darkness.
“ARAM.”
[Illustration:
ROMAN FORT, JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
HORSES UNDER COVER
A. L. HORSE IN CAMP
2nd A. L. H. MARCHING THROUGH KHAN YUNIS
]
A Gloomy Outlook
Amidst the universal joy—booming of guns, ringing of church bells,
cheering, and the screeching of ships’ sirens—I am gloomy and ill at
ease. I cannot share in the thanksgiving and tumultuous welcome of
Peace; my mind is dark with foreboding, oppressed by thoughts of three
things that have made so many happy lives miserable during the Great
War.
With the knowledge that huge stocks of dubbin, bully and biscuits are on
hand, how can a chap be joyful? They must be disposed of—not cast into
the incinerator—and thoughts of the woe that they will cause make me
sorrowful.
The war has ended, and with it the need for dubbin. Stacks of the
beastly stuff must be disposed of before we are demobilized. There is no
market for it, and nobody would take it as a gift. Offer it to a Light
Horseman or a driver, and you would see stars not of the firmament. But
I’m sure that The Heads won’t let it be wasted. It’ll be read out in
orders soon, that all saddlery and harness must be anointed with dubbin
once daily and twice on Sundays. There’s a good time coming!
Bully and biscuits are even dearer than dubbin to the granite hearts of
Q.M.’s, but they’ll have to issue them now by the ton. Rapid consumption
is the only way to get rid of the pyramids of B and B left on hand
through Fritz throwing in the towel sooner than the Supply Office
anticipated.
Army biscuits are beyond the capacity of Gyppos and Bedouin; if we
strewed them broadcast over Palestine, they would lie there untouched,
and ruin all agricultural prospects: even a stump-proof plough would
crumple up if it struck an army biscuit. We can’t dump our stocks in the
sea: think what would happen in a collision between a liner and an A.
B.! No; we’ve got to eat the lot, empty every tin of bully and biscuits,
and take the consequences like heroes.
“ARAM.”
[Illustration:
_FROM GENERAL CHAYTORS HDQTS._
_After the Battle of BIR EL ABD_
]
[Illustration:
_THE FIELD OF BATTLE
FOR
RICHON LE ZION_
_Morning 15th Nov_
]
[Illustration:
_THE BATTLE of BEERSHEBA_
_Drawn for Anzac M^{td} Div Hd Qts KHASHIM ZANA_
]
[Illustration]
Reconciliation
Full many a time we’ve known the call to arms,
The sudden storm ... the aching aftermath,
When spent companions slumbered ’neath the palms,
And wooden crosses marked the wake of wrath.
Full often have we saddled up and sped
Over the sand, sweeping along at large,
Braving the fitful hurricanes of lead,
Galloping down resistance in the charge.
Mute sorrow and great hardship have been ours,
Long journeyings and escapades in force—
But have we not beheld the poppy-flowers
Nodding in red confusion on our course?
Yea, we have crossed the woeful waste of sand,
Left sorrow far behind; and we have heard
The skylarks carolling in the Holy Land,
Where flower and tree commune with bee and bird.
“GERARDY.”
[Illustration]
Mail Day
“The mail’s in!” The glad tidings are tossed from lip to lip and shouted
down the lines, outstripping, and for the time suppressing, the current
furphies, “Furlough to Australia,” “Peace Negotiations,” “A big Stunt,”
and similar creations of the idle imaginative mind.
“There’s a mail in!”—A magic wand has been waved above the troops by an
unseen hand and weariness and even sleep are banished from the war-worn
soldiers. Even the sick are interested, and their eyes light up with an
eager look of expectancy.
“There’s a mail in!” The chronic grouser forgets to grouse, the lead
swinger lays aside the lead and, for the time, his petty pains, and they
join the eager throng around the perspiring orderlies who are struggling
with the jumbled mass of letters, papers and parcels, bringing chaos to
order, sorting mail into squadrons and then into troops, ere it can be
distributed.
What a study are the faces of that watching throng; what a joyous gleam
leaps into the sleep-laden eyes of a tired youngster who has caught a
glimpse of a letter addressed in the well-known hand of the mother who
waits at home.
There is a youth just from school, who has not yet tasted the mad joy of
battle, of a ding-dong mix up, when death shrieks through the air
missing one by inches, by hairbreadths. Here, too, is the war-hardened
warrior, who knew Anzac before the Suvla advance, who has met, fought
and beaten the Turk from Romani to Jericho, the hero of a hundred
fights, of scraps fought out on lonely patrol, that the world knows
naught of, though to the individual they are more fraught with peril
than a big battle.
To soldiers mail day is a day of bliss. Recruit or warrior, their faces
portray the emotions that are surging through their breasts. Their eyes
grow bright with eagerness as they watch the pile of mail assume shape
and order under the deft hands of the postal orderlies.
Men moving out on outpost or patrol shout to their mates, “Get my mail,
Jack,” “Get mine,” and ride off casting longing eyes at that waiting
crowd; with joyful hearts they move out into the night, to outwit the
enemy or return no more. But what care they—for it is mail day!
Before dawn, outpost and patrol return, weary and with sleep-laden eyes.
They off-saddle and picket their horses, and dash into the bivvies for
their mail. Matches are struck surreptitiously, candles are lighted and
hidden by blankets, for lights are forbidden when in touch with the
enemy; and thus are the letters eagerly read. Often Billjim falls asleep
from sheer exhaustion, the last letter still clutched in his hand, and
dreams of his Australian home; the fragrance of gum and wattle blossom
are wafted to him from overseas on the cool night breeze.
Mail day, the most joyous and most tragic in a soldier’s life, brings
messages of love and trust from dear ones, messages of faith and praise
from friends; and at times news that is sorrow-laden.
“WIL COX.”
[Illustration]
A Day Over the Lines
In the language of the Corps, “there was something doing,” for from dawn
till dark machines had been coming and going on the aerodrome almost
without a break; in fact, it was “some day.”
Just as the first grey streaks of dawn crept over the horizon the roar
of a couple of hostile aircraft patrol machines taking off woke an
otherwise peaceful camp. An hour later the orderly officer was bustling
round two more machines, which were to leave on the early morning
reconnaissance of the country behind the actual scene of operations and
along the Turkish lines of communication, to search for any signs of
fresh concentrations or reinforcements being hurried up.
At two hour intervals machines left in couples to patrol above our lines
and prevent any possibility of Boche machines sneaking over, either to
watch the movements of our troops or to bomb them; for, during a stunt,
it was just as important for us to keep the Hun blind as to keep our own
eyes well skinned.
[Illustration]
To me fell the first patrol, and a call from the Orderly Officer at 3.30
a.m. was not received with the utmost courtesy. After hot tea and toast
by candle light, we scrambled into warm leather coats, woollen-lined
boots, gloves and helmets, and climbed aboard. By the time I had
inspected my guns and the usual contents of the cockpit, the engine was
ticking over and we were ready to start. It was still dark enough, as we
took off, for the pilot to need all his lamps alight to see the various
instruments, and, as we climbed, the crisp morning air set our blood
tingling with the joy of living. When above the clouds at about 8000
feet the first rays of the rising sun shot across the sky, and very
shortly the clouds, which until then had been snowy white, were bathed
in a crimson glow that held us spell-bound with its beauty. Primarily,
the crests of those billowy mists were tipped as with a wand of fire
whilst, as we ascended into space and the sun gradually rose above the
horizon, the colour spread over that sea of cloud until it appeared like
a stupendous stream of lava belched forth from some volcano which, after
years of quiescence, had suddenly burst into activity.
[Illustration:
GOT HIM COLD
_By Lieut. O. H. Coulson_
]
[Illustration]
I have seen many sunrises under varying conditions, sunrises at whose
beauty I marvelled, but never before had I witnessed anything that could
come within coo-ee of the riotous blaze of colour that lay spread
beneath us, covering the Holy Land, as it were, with a cloth of gold. It
disappeared from view, however, all too soon, for, as the sun gained in
strength and we in height, the colour slowly faded from fiery brilliance
to a delicate pink until, finally, the clouds once again showed up in
all their glistening purity.
It seemed impossible to realize, whilst nature was all aglow beneath us,
that war was being waged with all its relentless cruelty, that guns were
sending forth their messengers of death and pain, and, above all, that
we, who had been privileged to witness the glory of God’s handiwork,
were scanning the heavens for something in the way of Hun airmen to
kill. To me it seemed a sacrilege that, on such a glorious day, hate
should be animating the hearts of men, and that I should be a willing
agent, eager for an opportunity of sending a fellow-mortal crashing to
earth and death. The Hun, however, evidently deeming discretion the
better part of valour, did not put in an appearance, and when, after
three hours’ cruising up and down the lines, we returned to the
aerodrome, I believe I was pleased that I had not been, by force of
circumstances, compelled to share in sending some creature to meet his
Maker.
So, throughout the day, the work went on, and, as a Hun “bus” was
reported to have bombed our troops in the early morning, every one of
our machines thereafter carried four bombs to drop on any suitable
target that offered itself.
Whilst on afternoon reconnaissance, the observer located a large body of
enemy troops, and, immediately on receipt of his report, a bomb raid was
ordered on which every available machine was to be sent. Luckily, I was
detailed for escort duty, and it was a pleasant experience to watch the
bombing machines assembling overhead, as they arrived from the different
aerodromes, and took up the allotted formation. About 5 p.m. the leader
fired his light and thirty machines, like a flock of great birds, set
off on their journey to play havoc with our old friend, the Turk. After
dropping the bombs, all machines swooped down on the troops and used
their spare machine gun ammunition in shooting them up and generally
giving them a devil of a time.
All good things come to an end, and, finally, we set out for home, which
we reached just as the sun, a ball of fire, was sinking to rest. The
machines, glistening white in the reflected sunlight, resembled a flock
of swans coming home, as, in slow, stately circles, one by one, they
glided to earth. The Mediterranean, as calm and unruffled as a
mill-pond, reflected the glory of the sun until its surface glowed like
a sheet of burnished gold. By the time we, as escort, had seen the last
of our charges land in safety and commenced our own descent, the sun was
well below the skyline, and the narrow ribbon of the pink afterglow that
skirted the horizon was all that remained to remind us of the sun and
its glory.
H. BOWDEN FLETCHER.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
THE END OF THE SCRAP
_By Lieut. O. H. Coulson_
]
[Illustration:
TURKISH PRISONERS AT ES SALT
]
[Illustration:
JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
NAZARETH FROM THE AIR
]
Mounts and Remounts
[Illustration]
On my arrival at the Unit, I considered myself fortunate when the
corporal presented me with a fat, sleek remount, only lately up from the
Base. My suspicions were not aroused until, preparing to mount, I
discovered what an enormous supply of cameras the Troop possessed. All
classes seemed to be represented, from the V.P.K. pip-squeak to the
ponderous P.C. “Jericho Jane” variety. Maintaining a professional
attitude, I mounted.
[Illustration]
In my youthful days I’ve paid two shillings to see a horse perform
evolutions and gyroscope stunts not to be compared with the tricks that
animal unearthed. I had an irresistible tendency from the first to fall
off over the place where, in normal times, his head and neck should have
been. Finally, yielding to impulse, I descended to good Palestine mud
amid the shrieks of an ill-mannered crowd. Some imbecile sauntered up
and said, “By jove, matey, if you could only have stopped up another
five secs. I would have had one of the best snaps in the Unit.” I
wouldn’t trust my reply to a green envelope. The sergeant remarked that
horsemanship didn’t seem to be my forte, so I informed him that my
marching-in papers proclaimed me a flag-wagger, not a Bronco Buster.
[Illustration]
“Right,” said he, “take Maaleesh.”
[Illustration]
I took him, for better or for worse, and went to make his acquaintance.
That horse didn’t belie his name. Maaleeshness fairly radiated from him,
from his huge, out-of-proportion head that an A.S.C. mule might envy, to
his stump of a tail, the missing part of which had provided food for a
hungry moke on the Jaffa stunt. What was left of it provided me with
food for reflection.
He wasn’t a bad horse. As the Troop farrier said, he had no vice in him.
The trouble was, he was as devoid of energy or grey matter as he was of
vice. He progressed at a lumbering shuffle, with his head low down after
the manner of a cow-catcher on a locomotive. He had also acquired a
taste for feed-bags, and was blessed with a very good appetite. Every
time I fed him he disposed of _tibbin_, grain and nose-bag. The day
before we went on the stunt Maaleesh contracted Spanish Influenza, and
on the vet administering that panacea for all equine ailments, a ball,
he barracked and refused to move.
Then I was handed over to the tender mercies of “Lofty.” The lancejack,
who knew a bit about horses, confidently informed me that Lofty was one
of those horses that never carry much condition, and he knew a horse at
Cunnawulla.... I hastily agreed with him, especially the former part of
his statement. We looked at Lofty, who favoured us with an apathetic
stare. If the third generation theory is correct, Lofty’s granddad was a
camel. Going through a neighbouring town I was No. 1 of the section, and
being of a sensitive nature, it hurt me to see the people laugh; but
Lofty appeared indifferent.
The first day out he chewed up two signal flags and all the
straps on my mate’s gear. Half-way through the stunt he
faced the East, struck a prayerful attitude and, with a
don’t-give-a-hang-if-you-shoot-me-I-won’t-move expression in his eyes,
prepared to rest. Our sergeant shot him, whereupon he displayed more
agility than anyone had hitherto thought he possessed, and gambolled off
over a ridge. A sympathetic New Zealander recaptured him, but took
warning from the black looks and wild gesticulations of the mob. Shortly
afterward a report was heard. Lofty’s soul had gone West. Visions of the
photo I intended to send to my best girl, of my illustrious self mounted
on a fiery charger, faded into oblivion; and as I transferred my
trappings to a spare mule, I vaguely wondered, from force of habit, what
characteristic and peculiarities my new mount possessed.
“ACRABAH.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
“A LIGHT HORSE TYPE”
_By W. O. David Barker_
]
Concerning Medical Blokes
The Army Medical Corps is a chain of many links. Let the lay mind which
has condensed its conception of the Corps’ duties into “picking up the
wounded,” reflect upon an interwoven organization of Base Hospitals,
Convalescent Homes and Rest Camps; Auxiliary Hospitals, Isolation
Hospitals and Dermatological Hospitals; Stationary Hospitals (which are
liable to move about) and Casualty Clearing Hospitals—we are working up
the chain from the back to the front—Motor Ambulance Units and Hospital
Trains and Hospital Ships; Divisional Receiving Stations, Field Dental
Units, Field Operating Units and Field Laboratories (these all hear the
firing of the guns); Field Ambulances (which comprise within themselves
Field Hospitals), Dressing Stations and Advanced Dressing Stations
(these get bullets through their tents and shells in their bivvies);
and, end of the chain, the Medical Blokes with the Regiments. They are
the last link; they are the tip of the longest tentacle of the Medical
octopus. Truly, modesty forbids me from adding that they are the
sweetest violet in the bunch.
[Illustration]
The Medical Blokes are detailed from the Ambulance at the rate of an
N.C.O. and one man to each Regiment. Thereafter they become part and
parcel of that Regiment; live with it, move with it, minister to it;
share its trials, troubles, tribulations, triumphs and rum issues.
Nevertheless, in cold, official fact, they still belong to the
Ambulance, being upon its supernumerary strength—“attached for duty and
discipline to the Xth Regiment.” This little complication has its
unsuspected advantages, for it sometimes breeds in the mind of an R.S.M.
a shade of doubt as to exactly how far the Medical Blokes come within
his jurisdiction, and he is constrained to permit them a certain
independence of existence and exemption from routine. They obey
“Reveille;” they approximate their appearance on the horse-lines, to
groom, feed and water, as nearly to the Regimental schedule as the
exigencies of the medical service permit; they generally manage to
scratch an instant to be present at the cook-house at meal times; at the
Quartermaster’s bivvy when he is doling out rations, and at the Orderly
Room on pay-day. Their liabilities discharged, they are left free to
order their time as they please. They are usually to be found lurking in
the medical tent, though they sometimes go to earth in a bivvy pitched
somewhere in its vicinity.
[Illustration]
In addition to the two above-mentioned stalwarts, the Regimental medical
establishment carries a Medical Officer and an offsider, a trooper of
the Regiment, detailed for the job, who, in course of time, is likely to
become so imbued with the spirit of his surroundings that he is not to
be distinguished from genuine Medical Blokes themselves. Nominally he is
intended for water duties; to carry out daily at the area drinking-water
supply the mysterious rite (known to the uninitiated as “chlorinating”
and to the rank and file as “poisoning”) by which the further existence
of cholera and other germs in the water is discouraged. He is the man
responsible for making the water taste as if there were a very dead
camel lying a hundred yards further up the stream whence it was drawn;
while tea made with it always seems to have been cut with an oniony
knife. Yet he deserves a certain amount of pity. If he over-chlorinates,
the whole Brigade will blaspheme him and his activities; if he
under-chlorinates, Medical Officers accuse him of encouraging epidemic;
and the happy medium of chlorination is so deucedly elusive that he
never strikes it!
By way of transport for their chattels the Medical Blokes have a cart,
called Maltese, a square contrivance on two wheels and no springs, drawn
by three horses abreast. You can pick it out on the road at the tail end
of the Regimental transport in company with the water-cart. It is
invariably overloaded with what looks like a lunatic’s purchases at a
bargain auction sale—or somebody’s goods undergoing a back street
removal—baskets, bottles, barrels, boxes, bedding, brushes, blankets,
bivvies, buckets, to say nothing of all the things which begin with
other letters of the alphabet. The driver of the cart is not a Medical
Bloke; he is a Philistine from the transport lines.
[Illustration]
There are cinema-and-picture-nourished imaginations at Home who fancy
war as one unending, crimson, bloody pageant of battle, whereas it is
merely a different sort of humdrum existence from their own, with
occasional violent patches of excitement. Also, they worship the A.M.C.
man as the Red Cross Hero of the Piece, whereas ... never mind. But you
will grant me that, of all the A.M.C. personnel, the Medical Bloke gets
nearest to the heroic rôle. He shares the hazards of a fighting unit; he
is an all-but combatant. When the squadrons go out to fight he sloughs
all his bulky baggage, puts gauze, wool, bandages, iodine and scissors
into his haversack, and follows. Comes at dawn—we have branded dawn for
ever as the battle hour—a moment when a ragged, scattered line of men
begin to walk forward up the gentle slope of a low ridge. This is
attack. The split and scatter of shrapnel, the hiss-bang-crash of H.E.,
and z-z-z-en of flying fragments, make death a chance in the shallow
gully. But the top of the ridge is the edge of open, machine gun-swept
country. It is a hundred yards to the crest—and death for someone. This
Medical Bloke, the wind well up, has shrunk himself into a crevice and
waits for a call. He desires nothing better than to stay there. He
watches the men walking up the slope—such everyday, wise, silly, plain,
good, bad, smart, childish men—just simply walking up the slope. And in
that moment our Medical Bloke realizes that they are better men than he,
because they are walking up that slope of which _he_ is afraid. Are they
better? He is walking, rather slowly, up the slope now. He runs a few
steps and drops behind cover on the crest, and waits for the need that
will call him. Fate grants him a few minutes’ spell, and then puts him
to the test. “Stretcher-bearers!” they cry to the left. The Medical
Bloke can see two men bending over the third, and he faces one of those
decisions which mould character. Quite properly, he may wait until they
carry the man to him, behind cover (there are troopers whose hazardous
duty it is to act as stretcher-bearers), or he may walk out and help. He
walks out as steady as he can; it is quicker and ... well, what peculiar
right has a Medical Bloke to the safety of cover when the men are “out
there”?
[Illustration]
It is little enough can be done in action for the wounded; to cut away
the blood-clotted clothing, to clap a rough dressing of iodine and gauze
on the wound, or a crude splint on a smashed limb; to get the man to
comparative cover, to rig some sort of a shade over him and to give him
water; and then to wait—for the M.O. to come with the skill that soothes
and the hypodermical needle of comfort. But the bitterest game of
patience on earth is played when the tide of battle fails to flow
onward, and the wounded lie all the livelong, sun-tormented day in the
fire-swept zone, and the Medical Blokes can only watch and wait for
nightfall to give safe-conduct to the ambulance carts or the camels,
with great, unwieldy, white cacolets, which come to carry their poor
shattered charges to sanctuary.
[Illustration]
Believe me, romantic reader, that I will now reveal the true _raison
d’être_ of Medical Blokes; the nature of their life-work, their excuse
for existing. It is not, bless you, ministering to the wounded under
fire. It _is_ merely to bandage up septic sores and to distribute a
variety of pills, most commonly known in the proportion of “two of these
and one of those.”
[Illustration]
The daily life of the Medical Bloke hinges on “Sick Parade.” It is the
Daily Event. The M.O. sits enthroned in the Medical Tent. Orderly
corporals present their list of competitors. One by one they enter and
face the Presence. Pulses, tongues, throats, eyes, temperatures are
submitted to scrutiny. The questing stethoscope roams over bared bosoms
and backs. Each man speaks his piece—the most sick say least and the
least sick say most, as a general rule.
“Give him two of these and one of those,” prescribes the M.O., and the
victim, a handful of tablets clutched in his fist, retires. The rewards
to be gained by braving “Sick Parade” run up a scale from “Medicine and
Duty,” through “Light Duty” and “Exempt Duty,” to “Evacuate,” which last
is the coveted prize.
“Go and get your gear together and be ready to go to the Ambulance,”
directs the Medical Bloke, and the patient sees at once visions of the
cushy comfort of a Base Hospital, wherein he may hope to wallow shortly.
He has netted a trip!
Medical Blokes have a restless job. Sickness and accidents call upon
them at any time. Men drop into the Medical Tent at all hours of the day
and night for “a couple of pills for a headache,” or something else.
“Got any liniment?” is the next inquiry, followed by a request for
eye-lotion. In this country a scratch or a graze does not heal in the
course of things—it is just as likely to turn septic. Neglected, it
spreads and develops initiative; it breaks out in fresh places without
waiting for the skin to be knocked off. Hot foments and ointment
dressings are the cure. Bandaged hands are the badge of the Palestine
campaigner. Half the men, half the time, have either boils or septic
sores. They meander into the Medical Tent in pairs, and out of hours, to
get them bandaged. They are met there with scant courtesy—probably they
are the umpteenth interruption to the letter which the Medical Bloke is
trying to write; but I do not think it is often that they turn away
unattended to. The Medical Blokes are just ... your friends, servants
and comrades, the Medical Blokes.
“LARRIE.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
CONVALESCENT
]
[Illustration:
MOUNTING FIRST GUARD IN JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
HALT AND REST
]
[Illustration:
1. CHURCH AND TOMB OF THE VIRGIN
2. JAFFA GATE, JERUSALEM
3. CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE, JERUSALEM
4. CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM
]
The Signal Service
Scattered throughout Egypt and Palestine and Syria, in the community of
war-worn Australians, is a certain section known to the initiated as the
Engineer Signal Service of the Australian Imperial Force in Egypt. To
the casual Light Horseman they are “Sigs”—a vague and most inadequate
designation. Little is known of the Engineer Signaller and his work by
his brother of the Light Horse, whose one idea of signalling begins and
ends with the Regimental signaller, a being who shares with him the
pleasures and hardships of all stunts, but who is on a plane above,
because no piquets and fatigues are his. At home, the popular conception
of signalling is of a soldier standing on the last, lone, bullet-swept
ridge, coolly flag-wagging a message which turns a forlorn hope into a
brilliant victory, and earns for him Oblivion. Signalling, as the Signal
Service know it, is far from being a flag-wagging occupation; they find
themselves part of a well-planned business, which is based on
efficiency, and conducted with that thoroughness for detail only to be
found in an army.
* * * * *
“Sapper Smith, get your horse saddled up right away and report at the
Signal office. You need not worry about your tea—I’ll see it is kept for
you. You are only going to Romani.”
The Squadron horses, after their first stunt on the desert of Sinai in
April, ’16, had been off-saddled and fed at Hill 40, so the order came
as a surprise.
“Right-o! Corporal!”
[Illustration]
The horse was soon saddled, and Smith reported at the Signal office at
five o’clock.
“What’s doing, Mac?”
“Light Horse Brigade, Romani.” The signal-master read out the address as
he handed over the despatch to Smith.
“Where’s Romani, Mac?”
Mac, the signal-master, came outside and pointed across an unbroken
stretch of desert to the east.
“About five miles in that direction, I think,” he replied. “Keep near
the railway line and you’ll be pretty right.”
Smith departed, and rode out into the gathering dusk of the East. He had
never heard of Romani before, nor did he know how many miles he had to
travel across this desert, where the Turk had been but a few hours ago,
to reach the place; so he spurred his horse on over the heavy sand and
covered four miles in quick time.
“We ought to be there before dark.” He spoke to the horse rather than to
himself. “We’ve covered a good four miles now.”
He rode on over the level places, climbed the loose sand of the steep,
razor-backed dunes, and slid down their opposite slopes to the level
again, until another four miles had been crossed; yet he had not reached
Romani. The darkness found him still pushing east over the toilsome,
never-ending sand, with a set of new northern stars for guides.
A desert dog started up at his horse’s feet, yelped away into the night,
and threw the horse into a panic of fear; a stunted bush loomed in the
darkness ahead and took on the shape of a crouching figure, sinister in
the gloom. Here was a dilemma!
[Illustration]
“Shall I let the horse bolt while I try to loosen my rifle? or is it
better to hang on to the horse and chance—ah! It is only a bush. Am I
near Romani yet?”
Eight more weary miles slipped slowly by, the sandhills pressed in on
all sides, and ever the horse stumbled on gamely over loose sand and
steep ridges.
“Yes, it’s a light.”
Smith swayed in the saddle and spoke again.
“Hooray! I’ve arrived,” he said.
Some time after ten o’clock a wearied despatch-rider came out of the
night, handed in a despatch at its Romani address, obtained a receipt
and departed. Next morning Smith reported to the signal-master and
handed him the receipted slip for his despatch.
“How far is it to Romani, Mac?” was all he remarked.
* * * * *
At Ed Dhaberiye, and at Tel Khuweilfeh, in the hills to the north-east
of Bir el Saba, the fight waged hot during the first week of November,
’17. That week is one to be remembered by the cable troop of the
squadron; in it they knew no rest, for they worked night and day on the
communications, and laid miles of cable to and from the Brigades.
[Illustration:
A SIGNAL OFFICE IN THE FIELD
_By T. H. Ivers_
]
[Illustration]
“Corporal Dawk!”
“Here, sir,” responded Dawk from behind one of the cable-wagons where he
had been trying to dispose of a hasty meal.
“Hook in your team and get away to the 2nd Brigade with that line.”
“Very good, sir.”
Dawk turns to the drivers.
“Get your horses in, Charlie; we’ve got another job. Hey! Gunner.”
“What, again?” says Gunner, as he looks at his half-finished meal.
“Come over, Baldy! Back, Ginger!”
The polers are hooked up, and in a short space the wagon moves off to
the Signal office for final instructions. Gunner jumps down from the
body of the wagon, drags the end of the wire into the Signal office, and
then mounts and pulls out over the hill.
The wagon rolls steadily over the rocky hills, reeling out the cable as
it proceeds. Darkness settles down, but this does not deter the cable
detachment.
“Whoa!” roars the lead driver as a wady-bed opens up below him in the
darkness. “Steady with those horses behind—who’s in the pole?”
“What’s the matter?” inquires Dawk, riding up to the leaders.
“Oh, another wady; it looks pretty solid, too.”
Dawk looks ahead, rides off to the right, and after a few minutes calls
out directions to the drivers.
“This way with that wagon; you can get across here.”
Charlie swings his leaders round and heads for the spot where Dawk’s
voice is heard. The wagon jolts over a rock, and lurches toward the wady
so closely that a huge lump of earth detaches itself from the steep bank
and rattles down on to the boulders beneath.
“Get over to the right!” yells Gunner from the back of the wagon. “What
the blazes are you drivers doing? You’ll have the whole box and dice in
the wady in a minute!”
[Illustration]
“Get up, Tiger! Up, Ginger!”
“Come over Baldy! Come over, you——!”
The wagon draws away from the dangerous edge, swings round, and, with
rattling and bumping, descends into the wady-bed in a cloud of dust. The
horses bend their backs to the opposite bank and are urged up by the
drivers, who have risen in the stirrups and are leaning over their
necks. With a last effort the team pulls forward, the wagon jolts over
the top, and then stops.
[Illustration]
Harry, who was thrown from his seat at the back of the cable-wagon as it
bumped the wady-bed, comes limping up the slope. As he climbs into his
seat he makes a remark to Gunner.
“That was a snifter!” he says.
“My oath! a beaut.”
More wady-beds open up, more detours are made, more dizzy descents and
stiff ascents are negotiated, until, at last, the wagon draws in to
Brigade Headquarters. The line is through, and everything is in
readiness for the attack at dawn.
* * * * *
“When you’ve done with that pack-saddle, I want to ‘inergate’ a scheme
with you.”
“Yes, sir?”
“This stunt is going to be a tough one, so I want you to see that all
your pack-sets are in good-going order, and that those pack-saddles are
fitted properly. Where are you putting the aerial load, Hook?”
“Everything is ready now; I’m fixing this saddle for the masts.”
“Right-o! And see that the farrier gets to work on those mules straight
away.”
“Yes, sir. Have you any idea when we move out?”
“I’ve no idea; in about a week, possibly.”
Hook busied himself with the pack-saddle, fixing gadgets here and
knocking bits off there, until he had it to his satisfaction. All the
technical equipment—wireless sets, cable gear, etc.—had to be converted
for use on pack-saddles in this Amman business during March, ’18.
[Illustration]
Six days later the Squadron moved out in the rain, wound its way through
the Judean Hills, travelled over the Jordan Valley, crossed the river,
and passed up into the hills of Moab.
No wagons or wheeled transport of any kind could possibly traverse those
tremendous hills, where the narrow track clung to the steep sides of the
hills and threatened to fall away over precipices into rock-fanged
valleys beneath. The rain poured down, and along the slippery track the
column wended its way, toiling in single file up steep hills and down
into precipitous valleys. The path became a river; water poured over the
rocky sides of the hills and rushed into the valleys below. Everybody
was wet through and greatcoats flapped soggily about weary legs;
dripping horsemen led their horses and stumbled and splashed along the
track; pack-horses and mules struggled and scrambled as their loads
slipped; but the column pushed on and reached a position at Amman after
two days and two nights of rain.
“We cannot use the helios, and the cable is ‘dis’ somewhere back in the
hills. Is the wireless set up yet?”
Rip-p-p-p-p-p. Rip-p-p-p-rip-p-p-p-rip-p-p-p-rip-p-p-p-p-p-p.
The crash of the transmitting sent echoes through the rain-sodden air
and the singing spark sent its message through space, and then whined
away into silence. The engine had “karked”—communication had ceased.
No. A basket crate was brought from one of the packs, a message was
written on a special form, of thin paper, and placed in a small
aluminium tube; a carrier pigeon was taken from the crate, and released
with the small tube containing the message attached to one of its legs.
The bird circled round uncertainly for a few moments and then flew off
in a straight line toward the leaden clouds in the West.
Communication was still maintained.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
These are but three incidents—three of many—which have happened in the
Signal Service. The Service calls for initiative, coolness, and
devotion; all these it has in its ranks. In the desert of Sinai, on the
dusty stretches of Southern Palestine, on the plains of Philistia, in
the hills of Judea—everywhere “east of the Canal”—the Signal Service has
always maintained a high standard which has brought credit to itself,
and to the Australian Imperial Force in Egypt.
“ACK-VIC-ACK.”
[Illustration: THE END]
[Illustration]
Battle Song
Silver and white are the planes aflight, and the guns are manifold,
And hour and hour we gain that power which the Lords of war extolled
When the wrath-fires flared, and the blades were bared, in the first red
tide that flowed.
We’ve quelled the fears of the darkest years, and the vistas of remorse
Grow less and less in the wilderness where the south wind gathers force,
And a golden scope in the sun of hope rolls north of the Anzac Horse.
When shrapnel breaks and the skyline quakes in the tempest loud and
long,
We’ll gallop our files through the shell-torn aisles of a sadly shaken
throng,
And the fire of hell will grandly swell to a martial storm of song.
Swift as the tide then we shall ride for the goal that burns ahead—
When night rolls round we’ll slumber sound where God’s sweet light is
shed,
And the silver eyes of the cloudless skies will watch o’er the valiant
dead.
“GERARDY.”
The Little Bint of Wady Hanein
Throughout the long campaign the fighting was fairly constant, but there
were occasional brief seasons of rest, and the happiest of these were
spent in the neighbourhood of the Jewish orchard settlements. The 1st
Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealanders favoured Richon, where the
wine vaults are said to be the largest in the world; and the Jewish
girls are the prettiest in all Palestine. But the 2nd Brigade was loyal
to modest little Wady Hanein. The three Jewish villages of Richon, Wady
Hanein and Deiran stand about three miles apart in a rough line across
the sandhills. Deiran, where the polyglot lassies were wooed by the
troops associated with Desert Mounted Corps headquarters, is, like
Richon, a large village, almost a town, with considerable social
pretentions. There the Jews hold political meetings, and the girls dress
with an eye on distant Paris. But Wady Hanein is demure—a true little
Arcady set amidst hills and hollows beautiful and fragrant with orange
groves and orchards of almonds. In the early spring the settlement was a
glory of pink and white blossoms, and, later, its lanes were scented
with the breath of the flowering oranges. As I write, the 2nd Brigade is
in Wady Hanein for the last time, having come down from its strenuous
work around Amman, across the Jordan; and the plump round oranges are
coquetting between green and golden.
[Illustration]
It was from Wady Hanein that the Brigade moved out on the long trek
across Judea and Jordan Valley and the Mountains of Moab for the first
attack on Amman, in March, 1918. Nearly every Australian feigns
qualification in his regard for the Jews in Palestine. But as the
Regiments made ready for the road that morning it was pretty to see
Jewish families visiting their favourite officers and men in the
bustling camp, and wishing them God-speed with a sincerity and a touch
of distress quite unmistakable. And all ranks rode to that bitter fight
the stronger and better for those Jewish good wishes.
The 2nd Brigade also chanced to be in the village in December of 1917,
when Jerusalem was captured, and the citizens entertained the Brigadier
and his officers at a feast, a speech-making and a dance. Proceedings
were, for a time, somewhat formal and cold. The Brigadier and his senior
officers sat at a central table in a large hall with the village fathers
and notables. The girls, expectant, their toes tingling for the dance,
sat stiffly in a row down one wall and the matrons along the other—a
very convenient arrangement, because the dashing young Light Horse
subalterns could seek a pretty partner without feeling obliged to ask
for the programme of her elderly chaperon. The young men of the village
stood with the junior officers of the Brigade at one end of the hall.
The eloquence was terrific. The erudite village schoolmaster proposed
the “Health of the King of England,” coupled with the name of the
Brigadier, the British Army, the Australian Army, and the British
universe generally. He spoke fluent and faultless Russian—or so it
seemed to us. (Our linguistic attainments will startle Australians when
we come home. There is not a man amongst us who cannot now say Bread and
Wine and Darling, in all the languages of East and West.) He made happy
reference to great British apostles of freedom, instancing Cromwell,
Lord Byron, and Gladstone. He garbled the names, but we caught his
drift; and, anxious to get in, we cheered tumultuously; and then, in an
unhappy moment, some one on our side released the Brigade interpreter—a
dusky fellow of dubious nationality—who rose eagerly to make the meaning
of the village schoolmaster a little clearer to us. His success was
indifferent, but he brought down the house with references to Lord
Cromwell, Mr. Byron, and Sir Gladstone.
[Illustration]
Then the Brigadier hopped up to respond. He was at his best. He referred
to the joy which we, as Christians, experienced in driving the infidel
from the Holy Land, and then, after an apt allusion to the Crusaders and
King Richard, he became so eloquent and forceful, and slammed the table
so hard, that all the village matrons gave play to their religious and
patriotic feelings in subdued but prolific tears; which, when you
consider that they did not know a word of English, was a unique
testimonial to the eloquence and dominating personality of our versatile
Brigadier. And then came the swelling triumphant peroration in which the
“Old Brig.,” declared that “Palestine had been conquered and Jerusalem
delivered by the help of God, but mainly by the might of the British
Army.” After that we danced, and very gay it was, despite our unanimous
opinion that speaking Russian was an easy task, compared with attempting
correctly to foot a Russian measure with a pretty Jewish maiden. To be
honest, it was a dumb show; but eyes were eloquent.
But we have been a long time coming to the story of the Little Bint. She
was one of many of her unhappy kind in Palestine. In that country, as in
all the East, the rich know no compassion for the poor. If you starve it
is the will of God and no concern of the more fortunate. That
interference with the ways of Allah is the cardinal sin is a
satisfactory article in the creed of the rich in Palestine. So the poor
starve, unsuccoured, about the doors of the wealthy.
The Little Bint of Wady Hanein was first seen slinking around the
outskirts of Brigade headquarters. She was a wretched little Arab of
seven or eight years, clad only in a tattered filthy shirt which came to
her knees; with matted verminous hair, sparkling black eyes and a
pitifully skinny little body. She sneaked round the lines at meal time,
pouncing like a hungry dog on empty bully tins and jam tins, scooping
out the remnants with a deft forefinger and flashing happy smiles as she
put the finger to her mouth. The men were quick to notice, and soon the
Bint had ten times more than she could eat. But she did not thrive. The
vermin on her wretched body, and her unsheltered winter nights, kept her
thin and miserable.
[Illustration]
The grooms and batmen on Brigade conferred on the subject of the Bint
and her future. The ringleader, whom we shall call Pine, a groom whose
Regimental reputation was far from the best, led a deputation,
accompanied by the interpreter and the Bint, up to the Bey, a fat Arab
with a comfortable home and substantial wealth. Pine was forceful and
the interpreter glib and honest. But the sleek Bey was obdurate. “There
are many such,” he said suavely and finally, disowning any
responsibility for the Little Bint, and he was not at all moved at the
nasty reflections which the outspoken Pine cast upon his mother as the
deputation withdrew. The missionaries returned to camp, baffled but not
defeated. “We’ll adopt the little beggar ourselves,” declared Pine, “and
take her on as a blasted mascot.” And they did. The preliminary work was
decided. First the Bint must, as they say in plain army English, be
“deloused” and bathed. Nobody wanted the job. But Pine was determined to
see it through, and with the Brigade Major’s batman he cut the Bint’s
hair, disinfected her and scrubbed her until her dusky colour was in
danger. Other clumsy but Christian fingers cut up shirts and made her
clothes; the remainder contrived a bivvy in which she was to sleep. And
the Little Bint of Wady Hanein waxed fat and happy, and was a touch of
soft femininity and a source of much delight to Brigade headquarters.
Then came marching orders for Amman. You occasionally find Arab boys
travelling with the Light Horse, keen little beggars who act as cooks’
offsiders and batmen’s batmen, and officers smile and sympathetically
shut their eyes to it. But it was clear that the sprightly little
black-eyed Bint could not be taken out over the mountains into the
bitter cold and bloody fighting at Amman. So Pine sought the Padre, and
the Padre went off twelve miles to Jaffa and talked to the Mother
Superior at the convent. Next day the Brigadier lent his car, and
Pine—his leggings gleaming and spurs shining, and amusingly
self-conscious—accompanied the Bint to Jaffa, and handed her over to the
kindly nuns. Perhaps, as he left her, he gave her a big brotherly kiss
and a trooper’s rough benediction; but probably he was too shy. I do not
know.
“CAMP FOLLOWER”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
BRIG.-GENERAL RYRIE INSPECTS THE “BULLY”
]
[Illustration:
BRIG.-GENERAL COX ON RIVER JORDAN
]
[Illustration:
A WALLAD OF PALESTINE
]
Algy, Misfit
“Hullo, old chappa!”
It was Algy, an old camp acquaintance from Australia, whom I hadn’t seen
before over this way. By his greeting, you will probably be able to
imagine Algy; yet, with all his “haw-haw,” when you got to know him, he
was quite the opposite to what was suggested by his manner of speech.
He had the habit of unbosoming himself to everybody regarding his
career, past, present and future, so when I met him, I knew that I would
get the whole story of his army life. And I did.
“How have I been getting on? Top hole. The only thing is that my failure
to rise in the army worries my mater. With my brains, or at least the
brains mater believes I possess, I was expected to rise in big leaps.
But the only rise I’ve made has been from my blankets in the morning,
and then, too, only by the greatest effort. Awful bore, old chappa,
these early reveilles.
[Illustration]
“I try to explain to mater why it is that I am still ‘just merely one of
the men,’ and seek to console her by quoting that well-known pictorial
post card, ‘We can’t all be officers; somebody’s got to do the work.’
You know, the poor old lady believes in me so much that she lives in the
hope of some day seeing me wearing a whole string of ribbons on my bally
chest. No hope. You know, some people have most peculiar ideas regarding
the military. They talk about ribbons as if the military were in the
habit of issuing such things in lieu of something—say as a sort of
consolation when the rations are short. If they did, well, I’d be
wearing all the variegated colours of the bally rainbow.
“I’ve had a most varied career in the army. I was originally in the
infantry—a private. You see, I started right at the bottom of the
ladder, scorning all offers of assistance to get a commission. I was
quite determined to go right up the ladder by my own unaided efforts.
Eh, gad, I was an egotistical ass, that’s what I was. I never for one
moment imagined that the rungs of the ladder leading to stripes and
stars were so wide apart.
“But about the infantry. Goodness, shall I ever forget the beastly
infantry. The unnecessary walking, and the enormous packs one had to
carry, and the really rude sergeant-major, who always roared at me when
on parade because I could not execute the fantastic movements he
insisted upon—really, when I think about it I shudder. I always did my
best, but marching used to make me _so_ exhausted, and I never _could_
succeed in keeping in step with the other fellows.
[Illustration]
“Finding the infantry uncongenial, I concluded that if I HAD to be a
soldier I might as well sit down to the bally job, so I got a transfer
to the mounted. I had never ridden a horse other than that of a
merry-go-round, but I was satisfied that I could master the art. I’ve
got a different idea now. I was quite all right while the animal walked,
but when it trotted, oh, goodness me, I could never harmonize with the
beast.
“Ultimately, I came over here with a unit which did not use horses and
was not required to do much, if any, walking. At least, that is what
they said, though I should have thought at the time how the unit was to
move itself. Maybe, the authorities, when I left, were contemplating
providing privates with motor-cars. I’ve found out, since I’ve been
here, how the unit moves itself. Don’t do any walking? Well, look here,
if there is a piece of accessible ground in Palestine, and not
forgetting Syria, that I haven’t trampled on trudging behind
heavily-laden G.S. wagons and limbers in the course of many and frequent
camp shiftings, I’d like to find it and have it photographed.”
With a “Cheeryo,” Algy was gone.
“BILLZAC.”
[Illustration]
Palestine
[Illustration: Via Dolorosa]
A league-long line of mountains:
Some fertile plains:
Bright, rippling, purling fountains,
After the rains.
Vast valleys, lorn and lonely;
Smiling and green:
Dead cities, telling only
What might have been.
[Illustration: “Tower of the Forty”]
A weary, stricken people,
So long enslaved;
A spire and broken steeple,
By lanes ill-paved:
A thousand superstitions;
A hundred creeds;
The beggars’ vain petitions
That no one heeds.
[Illustration:
MOSQUE OF OMAR
]
A field of poppies blazing:
Orchids new-born:
A wealth of flowers amazing
Fringing the corn:
A line of camels stringing
Across the brae:
The skylark sweetly singing,
To welcome day.
A home of races, mingled
Gentile and Jew:
Women with veilèd faces:
Rogues, not a few.
A Sacred Land, and Holy:
Beersheba to Dan;
Where once a King so lowly
Lived as a man.
A land of milk and honey,
In Moses’ day:
A place of paper money
Since Abdul’s sway:
A prophets’ land and sages’,
By right divine:
The heir of all the Ages,
Poor Palestine!!
“TROOPER BLUEGUM.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
SOME SOUVENIR
(AN AUSTRALIAN TROOPER WITH GERMAN HELMET)
_By James McBey. British Official Artist_
]
The Camel Brigade
There are, maybe, ten thousand Australians who will never see a map of
Egypt or Palestine, never hear of the Great War, never sing or listen to
a Christmas Carol, and, perhaps, never even boil a billy, without
thinking of camels.
Nor is it altogether surprising; for camels played so prominent a part
in their lives in the days of Armageddon. They lived on camels; they
always slept near, and often on camels; and camels carried their tucker,
their water, their clothes, their blankets. The last thing they saw as
they fell asleep at night was a string of long-necked camels silhouetted
against the bare horizon. The first thing they heard after reveille was
the raucous noise of a camel lifting up its voice in the wilderness.
Nothing but camel, day and night, from the Senussi stunt to the
Jerusalem-Jericho-Jordan scrapping.
None of us really liked our camels. Frankly, most of us loathed them.
They were a necessary evil. In a desert campaign they were
indispensable: so they were tolerated. But for many, many months the
Cameleers cursed them without ceasing for the vilest, stupidest,
craziest beasts that ever cumbered the earth.
Then, suddenly—it was about midsummer, 1918—we began to realize some of
the many virtues of the much-maligned camel. We remembered that even on
the scorching sands of Sinai, we were rarely short of water. We reminded
each other that, while Light Horsemen shivered on the freezing Judean
Hills, we snuggled cosily ’neath a bivvy and four blankets. We thought
of all the little extra canteen delicacies we had carried in our
capacious saddle-bags. And we talked about the good times we had at the
camel sports with Horace, and Mange Dressing and Starlight.
The reason for this _volte-face_, this sudden revulsion of feeling in
favour of the camel, lay in the fact that our camels were to be taken
away from us. We were to be transformed into cavalry for that Big Push
which we hoped would result in the smashing of the Turkish Army. And
remembering the comparative luxury of the Cameleer’s life, we tried to
make the _amende honorable_ and say kind things of and to our old
_hooshtas_.
[Illustration:
THE MIDDAY HALT
]
The Australian Camel Corps was formed early in 1916, when the Senussi
became troublesome. Four companies of infantry just back from Gallipoli
formed the nucleus of the corps. They proved a most valuable asset, so
more were demanded. But it was not certain that a sufficient number of
Australians could be provided, so the 2nd Battalion was composed of
English and Scotch Territorials, and the force became known as the
Imperial Camel Corps. Later, a third Battalion was made up of
Australians and New Zealanders, and, at the end of the year, a fourth
Battalion, of Australians.
[Illustration:
BRIG.-GENERAL G L. SMITH, V.C., M.C.
]
[Illustration:
OUR WATER SUPPLY
]
The Camel Corps was handicapped because of the general ignorance
concerning it. The A.I.F. in Sinai knew little of it; Australia knew
less. Often it was confused with and mistaken for the Camel Transport
Corps, a valuable unit, which has done splendid work, but is not a
fighting unit like the I.C.C. The members of the Imperial Camel Corps
had all left their parent Regiments, and so, for a long time, missed
those welcome parcels that the different Comfort Funds so generously
sent to the boys. Later, however, the A.I.F. Comforts took a kindly
interest in the poor Cameleers—and the Cameleers were unfeignedly
grateful.
Coming back to Egypt from the Western Desert, the Cameleers spelled
awhile, then moved over the Canal to Sinai and participated in the
Romani-Bir-el-Abd fighting. Then came the big trek east towards El Arish
with its attendant patrols and skirmishes. When Abdul bolted from El
Arish the Army followed, the Light Horse and the Camel Corps in the van.
[Illustration]
Maghdaba and Rafa followed, two of the most picturesque and decisive
battles of the campaign; and in each the Camel Corps distinguished
itself greatly. Then on to Khan Yunis—where lived Delilah of old—and
then to historic Gaza: the lion in our path. The story of the three
battles of Gaza has already been told. There is no need to recapitulate
here the part played by the Camelry in those engagements, save to
mention that in the second battle the I.C.C. rushed and captured their
objective, suffering about 75 per cent. casualties; while in the third,
and victorious, battle, they held the line at Kouelphi and Ras el Nagb
in face of heavy counter-attacks.
The army had now turned the corner, and, under General Allenby’s
inspiring leadership, the Camel Brigade pushed north with the remainder
of the force until Jerusalem was captured. Then the army settled down in
the stalemate line of trenches stretching from just north of Jaffa to
the Jordan near Jericho; by which time the Cameleers had suffered so
many casualties, and the camels were in such deplorable condition, that
they were sent back to Rafa to recuperate—and hold a sports meeting.
Mention should be made of the Hong Kong-Singapore Indian Mounted
Battery, known to the Camel Corps as “The Bing Boys.” These Indian
soldiers participated in all the fighting in Palestine.
[Illustration:
WATERING TIME, CAMEL BRIGADE
]
[Illustration:
“PREPARE TO MOUNT”
]
In March, 1918, the Camel Corps trekked through Palestine to Richon,
where they sampled the wine of the country. Then, after the rains, they
ploughed their way through mud and slush and wire to Bethlehem. From the
wintry heights of Judea they descended by way of Jericho to the
midsummer of the Jordan Valley and on to Amman. Much has been written
about the adventure, or misadventure, into the hills of Moab. Never will
the Cameleers forget that night journey over slippery goat-tracks to Es
Salt. Never before or since was there ever such a journey. Hour after
hour the cavalcade struggled onward and upward, crawling round ugly
devil’s-elbows on mountain tracks, slipping and floundering in the mud.
Time and again camels would collapse, bogged and helpless, and some
toppled over the precipice. But the Brigade got to Amman and blew up the
Hedjaz Railway.
Back to the Jordan Valley again, the prey of snakes and scorpions and
spiders, mosquitos and flies and Turkish shells—but the mosquitos were
the worst. Scores and scores of men went sick with malaria, which
recurred during subsequent operations. The last big scrap of the I.C.C.
was the defence of Musallabeh, which the Turks attacked with grim
determination. In spite of very heavy casualties, the Cameleers held on
and beat off the enemy. Because of this gallant defence, General Allenby
decreed that henceforth Musallabeh should be called “The Camel’s Hump.”
With Sinai far behind and well-watered country ahead, it was seen that
the Camel Brigade had outlived its usefulness. So, in May, the Cameleers
returned westward towards Jaffa, handed over their camels, and were
mounted on horses and armed with swords for the Big Push.
“TROOPER BLUEGUM.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
PORTION OF CONVOY OF 8,000 CAMELS BEARING SUPPLIES ON THE PHILISTINE
PLAIN
_Australian Official Photograph_
]
RESTING
[Illustration]
There’s a delightful sound about that little word “Rest.” It conjures up
delicious visions of breakfast in bed, scrambled eggs on toast, lying
about in the sun, nice books to read, etc., etc., as the imagination
wills. Now, we didn’t expect all these things, but when we got the word,
“The regiment is going for a rest behind the lines,” everybody’s ears
pricked up, and we were all on the _qui vive_ for the few days
following.
Sure enough, we moved out all right, and camped one moonlight night on a
gently-sloping plateau to the west of the hills, taking up our abode
comfortably in bell tents, six of us to a tent. We’d had a long day, so
soon turned in and slept the sleep of the conscienceless. Behold us next
morning, at that cold, cheerless grey hour which just precedes the dawn,
lying in various picturesque attitudes, with the cold wind playing on
us, as yet untouched by the sun’s compensating warmth. A bugle gave out
its brass-mouthed message, and one of those necessary evils known as
corporals invited us to “turn out and fall in.” Now, it was the witching
hour of 4 a.m., and we didn’t like “turning out” or “falling in,” or any
kindred mysterious movement; but necessity knows no law, so, to the
accompaniment of many an ungracious “Blarst the war,” “What sort of a
rest is this?” we crawled out of bed, dressed, and wended our weary way
to the stables.
[Illustration:
BEDOUINS CAPTURED AT HASSANIYA
]
[Illustration:
STREET MARKET, JERUSALEM
]
[Illustration:
BEDOUIN VILLAGE
]
[Illustration:
TURKISH PRISONERS, NABLUS
]
The next hour or two saw us busy among the horses—removing the
superfluous dirt from their coats, cleaning up the stable lines, and
watering and feeding our jaded mounts. We were then marched to the
Q.M.’s to be issued with an extra blanket. In the usual way of Q.M.’s,
this just allowed us back in time for six o’clock breakfast. During the
meal they broke the news gently to us that there was a mounted parade at
seven, to go through a “little training.” More grumbles, of course, but
the time was too short to allow of any delay for grousing, so we got out
for our “little training.” This delightful exercise consisted of a
gruelling couple of hours in the sun, after which we had to groom and
stable our horses, had a quarter of an hour’s “smoke-o,” and then the
pleasure of lecture for half an hour or so.
Dismissed to our tents, we distributed ourselves behind the covers of
various journals—ranging, according to taste, from “War Cry” to the
“Bulletin.” Hardly was our interest fixed, when there was borne in on
our ears a stentorian cry which resolved itself into the voice of our
two-bar artist yelling “Fall in for water!” and away we went again like
lambs. A struggle with four horses, two on each side of you, and each
couple desiring to go in a different direction, is not calculated to
improve one’s temper; but we got the job done and returned for dinner.
This meal was not the one of our dreams, but we settled down after it as
though we’d lunched at “Shepheards,” and began to think that the “rest”
part of the stunt was at hand. Then the orderly sergeant announced that
there would be a grazing parade at two o’clock. So out we all had to
turn again and spend a couple of hours on the grassy slope a mile or so
away, thinking sad thoughts and uttering strong utterances.
[Illustration]
Back again, stable the horses, we finished just in time for tea, to
which we did ample justice, and allowed ourselves to drift into a better
frame of mind. After tea we at last settled down in our tents, and had
just dealt the cards for a quiet game of poker, when, lo and behold! the
orderly corporal looked in and said, quite pleasantly and off-hand, too,
“There will be an inspection at 9 a.m. to-morrow; all saddlery and gear
to be cleaned and placed outside tents at 8 a.m.” Well, we looked at one
another—we were past words. Slowly the hands were thrown in; more in
sorrow than in anger we cleared the card-blanket away, and the last
scene saw six queerly silent figures listlessly polishing up bits and
stirrup irons and greasing leather gear, with the mutely suffering look
in each face akin to the look of the dog which has just received a kick
in the ribs as the grand finale to a series of ill-usages. So ended a
day of rest. In that tent, that night, men went to bunk murmuring, “If
this is rest, send us back to work.”
“TRALAS.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE MUKHTAR’S GOATS
Said Breezy Bob to Baldy Bill, “I’m giving you the oil;
There’s whips of blinking eatables on this ’ere virgin soil.
So what abart a forage hunt, me bold and noble chief?
It’s time we had some mutton now instead of bully-beef.”
Now, Baldy Bill was leader of an enterprising mess;
His cobbers all would back him up in deeds of wickedness.
So when Old Bob suggested that the gang should have a hunt
For tasty chops and cutlets, they agreed upon the stunt.
It happened that the n’th Light Horse were camping in a grove
Of olives, figs and oranges, the hedges interwove
With prickly pear grown very thick, and on the other side
The grazing land by cattle, sheep and goats was occupied.
An Arab Chief, or Mukhtar, was the owner of the flock,
Named “Abdul el Mahomed,” a monopolist in stock.
Now Baldy Bill and Breezy Bob were socialistic coves
Who spouted on equality amongst the olive groves.
And so in tones of ecstasy the plot was duly laid,
And in the hedge of prickly pear a hole was quickly made.
Then Bob and Baldy sallied forth—a ration bag of oats
Was carried by the doughty pair to snare the Mukhtar’s goats.
They crawled along in silence, seeking shade from tree to tree,
Until they came upon the flock all feeding peacefully.
The Mukhtar, squatting in the shade, engaged in silent thought,
Was dreaming of the prosperous times the “awful war” had brought.
Now, Baldy in the ration bag had made a little spout,
And as they crawled along the grass the oats were trickling out;
But as they neared the Mukhtar’s flock they rose upon their feet,
Salaamed in true Australian style, the pastoralist to greet.
In friendly pidgin-Arabic they talked a little while,
Then bade farewell to Abdul in the dinkum Aussie style;
And as they sauntered back to camp they noticed with a grin,
That Abdul’s goats had found the oats, and all were “wiring in.”
The feeding flock came slowly towards the hedge of prickly pear.
A fine big “billy” led the lot, quite eager for his share,
And as he wandered close enough the prickly pear to feel,
He “got it” quickly in the neck—a blade of polished steel.
Then Bill and Breezy dragged their prize into the Squadron’s lines,
Cut up the mass of quivering flesh in various designs.
With plenty swords available they soon got off the hide;
In less time than it takes to tell the billy-goat was fried.
That night the stew was “counted out” and mutton reigned instead,
And when old Abdul “counted in” his flock he hit his head
In anger, for he came upon the remnants of the oats
That Breezy Bob distributed to snare the Mukhtar’s goats.
Since then the Military Police are looking for a clue;
They never made enquiries about discarded stew,
Or else they might have found the truth; and Bill and Breezy gloat,
To tell the yarn in secrecy about the Mukhtar’s goat.
“2469”
[Illustration:
BUYING ORANGES, JAFFA
_By W. O. David Barker_
]
[Illustration]
The Batman
by W. M. W.
With “stand to Arms” at half past three,
in cold and wet and misery,
Who brings a nice, warm cup of tea?
“My Batman.”
Who knows the movement of all troops
and brings the dinkum with my boots?
Who finds but never, never, loots.
“My Batman.”
The last to sleep, the first to rise,
who sorts the rumor as it flies,
and in a whisper puts me wise.
“My Batman.”
Fount of all wisdom without doubt
who knows just what we are about
but very seldom lets it out.
The General’s Batman.
Damascus
The first charm of Damascus as a whole city lies in the contrast which
those brown sandhills behind it make with the green strip of the Barada
Valley. Journeying from Ludd through the monotony of lank, brown growth
that straggles to the horizon from the road, you give up hope of ever
seeing foliage again, until you pass El Kunneitra. Then you see the
green of Barada; and it is the richer for the hills behind it—browner,
more desolate by far, than any landscape skirting Galilee or the Jordan.
Far up the clay feet of those rocky hills straggles the brown-and-white
suburb of Salahiye, all square-built and flat-topped—from the distance
like bricks inserted in the clay soil. The line of hills is cleft
cleanly by the Pass, the scene of that hideous slaughter by our machine
guns. If you climb into the fringe of Salahiye you see the curious shape
of Damascus—a jagged comet-form, all the angles and serrations of the
brown tail defined with unnatural clearness by the depth of the green
about it. In the amorphous head are a few minarets—like jewels. In Cairo
there are too many minarets as you look from the Bey’s Leap: they
protrude like a porcupine’s quills. In Damascus the city’s flat
brownness is just relieved by them. When we came to Damascus it was
drought-stricken. Soon afterward, it rained torrentially for a day. Then
the sun shone and drew from the city such colour as we never dreamed was
there. Nor had we dreamed that the trees were dusty—so green they seemed
after the southern country. But, washed, they helped to throw up the
wonderful colour of “that great city,” as it is called in Scripture.
It is a relief to be delivered from the sight of the everlasting
cactus-hedge of the southern towns. The cactus does flourish in
Damascus; but so thick is the foliage that it is lost in the mass. You
cannot look down on Nazareth without being obsessed by the ubiquitous
pest. You can look down on Damascus and be unconscious of it. It
straggles about the leafy roads in patches beside the mud walls. That
you can bear, because it does not rise above the all-enclosing foliage.
The smells of Damascus you will remember for ever. Cairo is clean by
comparison: the alleys of Cairo are not foul. The stinks of Damascus are
literally overpowering. There is offal, refuse, foul puddles in every
street of the Bazaars. The Abana is a foul river. “Are not Abana and
Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel”? The
answer is: Certainly not. There is an ill-kemptness about the place that
carries Oriental slackness a bit too far. In the streets that thread the
heart of the city are ruts and holes that break the springs of M.T.
every day. The tramline protrudes eight inches. This gives rise to
deadlocks in traffic that hold up movement for an hour. Incredibly
narrow and tortuous are the highways of the city. The only decent road
is that which skirts the fountained promenade near the Hedjaz Station. I
am sure the Damascans look on this bit of orderliness as a Western
intrusion; just as I am sure that if they found themselves in an English
town guileless of smells they would call it insipid....
In the bazaars there is a baffling complexity of colour, of race, of
wares. The Mousky is less heterogeneous. In the Square, in the street
which is called Strait, in the gold bazaar, grain bazaar, sweets bazaar,
silk bazaar, you have all the various colour of tarbooshed Cairo, and
more. Here the soldiers of the King of the Hedjaz throng; there is
endless variety in their clothes and their flowing head-dress. The
Moslem women, who veil their faces, affect far more variety than the
Mohamedan women of Cairo, with their yashmaks. The French are here. The
Australian hat and plume is everywhere. I never saw so great a number of
Australian soldiers moving at random in any city. There is great
jostling in these narrow streets, more than the normal jostling you get
in any crowd.
The dusty bazaars are in semi-darkness; their streets bear a covered
roof of iron; they must get protection from rain. In Cairo all is open;
for there it rains but rarely. Not only are the bazaar streets in Cairo
without roofs that would stop a shower, but the shops, themselves, full
of treasures. Here the rain comes in a deluge. From some of the street
roofs the enemy had taken the iron for military use. What the state of
these roofless streets will be when the rains come is sad to think. They
will be flooded all winter.
Except that there is greater diversity of peoples—both buyers and
sellers—the bazaars of Damascus are much like those of the Mousky. There
are the same well-defined areas for specific commodities; the same
little cubicles for shops, where vendors squat and “reach for things”;
there is the same voluble haggling—the same conversations carried on in
tones that you would first mistake for quarrelsome; there are the same
crying, peripatetic vendors of _limonade_, quoit-shaped cakes and
toffee; the shoe-blacks are here, but they are ahead of Cairo, with
their gongs to attract the uncleanly-shod. There is a more incessant
stream of laden donkeys through the bazaars here. In Cairo the donkeys
are chiefly for pleasure riding; here they are mercantile, over-laden
with the striped sacks of grain and fabric. There are additions to the
bazaars of Cairo in the goldsmiths’ bazaar, the sweets bazaar. The
goldsmiths work with their blowpipes and tiny forges and tiny tools,
moulding and fashioning. It is curious to see the workshop as part of
the sale-shop. The belts, brooches, rings and trays exposed for sale in
a showcase were made two yards away by that cunning Oriental fashioner
squatting on his haunches. The sweets bazaar tempts you hideously.
Eastern nutted sweets and Turkish-delight and toffees look as well as
they taste. Mere assorted chocolates—such as you get at Groppi’s—are
crude by comparison. There are great serpentine coils of Turkish-delight
lurking in icing-sugar—nut toffee that is all nuts—none of your
miserable paucity of nuts such as one gets in English almond-rock: nuts
form the matrix here.... But enough of that; here, if ever, you are
tempted to generate a liver the size of your hat.
Public baths abound in the heart of the bazaars. Fronting the street is
the final, open, divaned, cooling-off room—an amphitheatre of couches
upholstered with a kind of gay-coloured towelling. A fountain plays in
the midst. The bathed sit swaying in the ecstasy of reaction from the
steam, with closed eyes. No Roman ever bathed more voluptuously. No one
minds your going in nor your penetrating to the bowels of the
establishment. Room after room you pass, with swinging doors; each is
hotter than the last. In the last, and hottest room, the smell of man is
overpowering; you hastily retrace your steps through the series of
chambers and regain the comparative sweetness of the bazaars.
Foul as this city may be, there is beauty in every foot of it. The
beauty of Cairo lies rather in the view you get of “chunks” of it—the
vista of the street, the space of a market-place, the mass of a mosque.
Here the beauty lies in little pieces of wall, looked at minutely, in a
tiny piece of domestic architecture. It is a beauty in colour rather
than in form. Form in Cairo counts for much—in Damascus for almost
nothing. Here there is dilapidation in a degree undreamt of in Cairo.
But dilapidation does not necessarily make for beauty, though some
people think it does. I believe the beauty of colour in Damascus lies in
extreme age—in the mellowing of age. After Cairo, the intense antiquity
of the older city—of every fragment of it—comes to you impressively. You
feel the age of it as you pace every yard of its alleys. Cairo is
comparatively modern, and comparatively garish. There is a fine, if
filthy, harmony in Damascus.
Intimate in the memory of most Light Horsemen will always be certain
features of Damascus. Our men will not forget the Hedjaz Headquarters in
the heart of the city, the German Club, the Local Resources Office, the
filthy Turkish hospital, the English and French hospitals in the suburb,
the littered railway station, the suburban roads, unspeakably rough and
muddy, the afternoon perambulations of blatant under-dressed bints in
gharries, the guards—on the aerodrome, on the Ottoman Bank, on the
captured grain stores, on the captured guns—the plentiful lack of
ordnance and canteen stores, the corpses of dogs and horses in open
spaces, the multitudinous beggars, the exorbitant prices asked for
German razors that cost their vendors nothing, the moderate cost of
silver and brass ware, the Hedjaz recruiting processions, the glut of
matches, the potency of arak, the cunning of the plausible
English-speaking small boys, the puzzling complexity and fluctuation of
the currency, the paucity of mails, the liberty and the usefulness of
Turkish prisoners, the fitful and lawless discharge of firearms about
the city all through the night, the suddenness with which sickness made
its descent upon the apparently immune, the daily receipt and despatch
to time-table of official mails by air, the dancing lights of Salahiye
that burned till dawn....
H. W. D.
[Illustration]
Malaria
You, with your winding, creeping course,
What of the men of our Southern Horse?
Valley of night, with your wingèd pest,
What of our heroes now at rest,
Down by your Dead, salt Sea?
What of the ones we have left behind?
What of these men of our kith and kind,
Nigh where your blood streams hiss?
Better the true and unerring shot!
Better the Death when their blood runs hot—
Than this,
Malaria! Malaria!
You, with your agèd river’s flow,
What of our Riders laid below?
Valley of Death, with your torpid heat,
Look where your swirling hill streams meet,
Down by your Dead, salt Sea!
Look to the ones on your mounded knoll!
Look to the ones of your chosen toll!
Those of your fevered kiss!
Better the blast of the rending shell!
Better the toll of the War God’s knell,
Than this,
Malaria! Malaria!
“KOOLAWARRA.”
Fall Out the 1914 Men
After four years’ service, the remnants of the First and Second
Contingents were assembled preparatory to return to Australia. Such a
prolonged absence from their homes might have led one to expect a wild
emotional outburst; but they received the tidings casually.
[Illustration]
As they fell into line to be farewelled by the Brigadier, they presented
an inspiring sight; shoulder to shoulder, each man a history in himself;
true mates, every one of them: their fellowship cemented by the blood of
fallen comrades. Alert they stood, hardened by the privations and
hardships of long years of campaigning, but—true test of manhood—ready
to face it all over again if their principles were involved.
As they waited for the “Old Man,” as the Brig. is affectionately termed,
visions of the past began to take form before their eyes. Mine saw the
silent, winding streams of human life, being hurried through the streets
of sleeping cities on their way to grim, silent transports. No gay
farewells, no playing of bands, no gathering of gaily-dressed crowds to
wave them farewell on their way to foreign shores. As they strained
their eyes for a last glimpse of their native land, many must have tried
to visualize their return. None realized how or when, and many of the
stout hearts on those sea-sprayed ships who gazed with loving eyes on
their sunny land were saying the last farewell. Their graves are in
strange lands, their deeds imperishable memories.
“Boys”—it was the Old Man speaking—“we come together to say good-bye.”
He outlined his association with the Brigade, and touched briefly on the
outstanding incidents of its career. He humorously alluded to their
“weakness” in a few respects, but he was proud to say that no man had
ever complained of his punishment. Everybody had played the game, and
his life was infinitely richer because of his association with them. He
wished all a bright future, and they were never to forget him if they
were ever in any difficulty.
At the close of the homily, I am afraid, the etiquette of military
discipline was violated in many ways. “Good old Brig., the whitest ever
made,” and such-like remarks were punctuated by cheering and the waving
of hats. A personal handshake with each man and wishes of “good luck”;
and then came the farewells round the camp, when mates of years bade
each other good-bye, and turned away.
Friendship such as this will stand the test of time.
“BATAGGI.”
[Illustration:
MRS. CHISHOLM’S CANTEEN AT KANTARA
]
[Illustration:
BETHLEHEM
]
[Illustration:
TROOPERS ENTERING JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
DAMASCUS
]
“Old Horse o’ Mine”
Hoof-beats, that rang on the crowded street,
Had never beat unto me
All the wealth of the gold in your old black hide,
All the grit of your loyalty;
But deep in the sand of a lonely land,
Out on many a far flung trail,
Your old hoofs spoke of a heart you broke
For me, that _you_ might not fail.
Great eyes, that dusked in the green gums’ wave,
Though I recked not that you were there,
That danced or dulled at the whim mayhap
Of a fancy unaware—
How the mateship grew in the depths of you,
When the waste spread its gauntness wide.
How you parched with me, how you marched with me,
Through that Hell of a thirst denied.
Brave Soul that sprung in the colt of you,
Unguessed in the years far back,
Ere your Fate ran out from a land of streams
To the drought of a sun-blazed track—
For the days since seen, for the pals we’ve been,
When Old Time sees us through—
O! If then there be for the likes o’ me,
A Heav’n—it must hold you, too.
T. V. B.
[Illustration]
Concerning Machine Guns
“Vickers Light Automatic, ·303,” so saith the machine gun handbook.
Further on, it informs the reader that the gun weighs 38 lbs. when the
water jacket is filled. These statements have been the subject of many
bitter outbursts, and not a few have wondered whether they had a pair of
scales at the War Office (this unfortunate institution is, of course,
responsible for everything that goes wrong).
There have been countless instances where a sweating, cursing Billjim,
struggling up a scorching precipice with the said Vickers Light
Automatic, would have betted all his deferred pay that it weighed at
least ten times as much as the handbook implies. Even on such
kindergarten exercises as gun drill, wonder has often been expressed
that “they” had the blooming neck to print such a fib. Still another
proof that the real weight greatly exceeds the official figures. Watch
the hefty No. 2, capable of lifting an 18 pdr., as, after continuous
firing, he gets the order, “Out of action!” In a flash, the pins are
wrenched out, he seizes the smoking gun where the protecting piece of
puttee, numnah pad or sock isn’t, and instantly drops the weapon to the
ground. Isn’t that convincing?
There are other minor details about the machine gun handbook that are
apt to be misleading. It states that there is a No. 1, who is the boss
and only carries the tripod—a flimsy toy of some 48 lbs. of brass and
steel; next, a No. 2, who juggles with a Vickers Light Automatic; also a
No. 3, who has nothing to do but carry a few boxes of ammunition, these
being mere tin cases no bigger than the handbag he used to carry his
pyjamas in, and containing only one belt; then there are a few other
superfluous hangers-on; a No. 4, who aids the No. 3; a No. 5, who aids
him; and so _ad infinitum_ down to that humble creature, the pack
leader, who holds three horses during an action.
Thus far, the handbook is perfect, photographic plates and all. Where
the discrepancy comes in, is that there is no advice regarding a hitch.
It has nothing to say about this: A person is observed toiling along
with the tripod, a box of 250 cartridges hanging on each leg, straddled
across his shoulders; some distance behind him wobbles another sagging
individual, bearing the gun, more belt boxes, a pick and a shovel; while
a third—sometimes—struggles on with still more belt boxes, range-finder,
spare parts wallet, a can of water, steam escape tube, a bag to prevent
dust at the gun’s muzzle, and a few other trifles; and down in some more
or less protected hollow, three or four distracted pack leaders curse
away their last remaining hope of salvation trying to keep untangled the
twenty-odd hungry brutes that crane their necks to nibble at
infinitesimal, dead grass stalks. Let us dismiss the handbook.
The machine gun can be put to many uses. As a seat, it is admirable,
also as a clothes horse for small gear; and as a horse rack, providing
the animal doesn’t pull it over, it stands alone. It has also been known
to remove Turkish folks from their ration strength—but accidents will
happen.
The gunner is at his best when using his gun as anti-aircraft. He
reverses the position of the gun on the tripod in order to get a sharper
angle, and lies down on his back beneath it, pillowing his shoulders on
some soft substance, such as the spare parts box. The No. 2 crouches
alongside to tuck in—at this angle—the reluctant belt; the Taube
approaches at a reasonable altitude, and then ratta-tatta-tatta stutters
the gun.
A heartrending episode occurred in the Jordan Valley one morning. The
guns, at the top of the precipitous cliffs lining the Jordan, were being
snugly tucked away in their little dust-proof positions for the day,
when sinister humming in the sky was heard. Out of the woolly, cumulus
clouds a flock of Taubes dived and began their fell work. In a
twinkling, the guns were violently slammed on the tripods, fresh, full
belts rattled into the feed-blocks, and the gunners flopped into their
positions, grimly inviting the visitors to come a bit closer and “have a
fly.” They did, and answered the prompt leaden stream with their own
guns.
One gun had been firing merrily at the wheeling Taubes for some time
when the prostrate, grim-jawed No. 1 uttered a wild, squealing yell, and
writhed fearfully. “Good God, Percy is hit!” cried young Bobbie, the No.
2, and he turned in alarm to his friend, who was out-writhing any live
wire.
The No. 1 gasped and stuttered in his agony, but managed to ejaculate:
“Hit, be dinged! It’s the bloomin’ hot shells that trickled inside me
shirt. Hop into ’em!”
I give this illustration merely to show the risks attached to machine
gunnery.
The Machine Gun Squadron is regarded as a desirable unit. It has
numerous advantages over the Regiments; notably, there are no duties or
fatigues to speak of, except, perhaps, stables, watering, rations,
cook’s, Q.M.’s, road-making, laying interminable miles of stones in
line, whitewashing same, erecting this, that and the other, cleaning
saddlery, polishing reluctant steel work, an odd guard or two (mostly
odd), and a few other trifles, which the conscientious soldier performs
with assiduity and alacrity.
There is little else about machine guns to learn, they are so perfect
that a machine gunner is now made in six weeks instead of six years.
They have performed some remarkable work during the war, moral effect
being one of their greatest assets—observe the sprightly vigour with
which the officer inspecting outposts bounds away from the front of a
machine gun position, where he has wandered by misadventure, when the
man on guard sings out, “Machine gun here, Sir!”
The boys will be sorry to say good-bye to their vicious, stuttering
pets; and let us hope that, the guns, when they are returned to
Ordnance, will cease to (metaphorically) curl their lips in disdain at
their humble and erratic poor relations, the Hotchkiss rifles of the
Regiments.
“SARG.”
Delivered!
A wounded earth is free again,
The barriers of the East are down;
With many a mound above the slain,
The zones of battle, bare and brown,
Shall feel the tears of wintertide,
(War’s aftermath of sorrowing)
Till Nature heals their scars of pride
And flowers perfume a deathless spring.
“GERARDY.”
[Illustration: FINISH]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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THE CHARM OF SYDNEY. 22 coloured and other illustrations by Sydney Ure
Smith, with appropriate quotations selected by Bertram Stevens. 7½ ×
5½ inches, 1s. 6d.
THE CITY OF RIDDLE-ME-REE: A Fairy Story in Verse. By Zora Cross,
author of “Songs of Love and Life.” With coloured and other
illustrations by Olive Crane, 7½ × 5½ inches. 1s. 6d.
BACKBONE: A BOUNCER FOR THE BLUES. Hints for the prevention of
Jelly-Spine Curvature and Mental Squint—A Straight-up Antidote for
the Blues and a Straight-Ahead Sure Cure for Grouch. New edition, to
which is added “A Message to Garcia.” 1s. 6d.
THE MUD LARKS. By Crosbie Garstin, Lieutenant, 1st King Edward’s
Horse. 1s. 3d.
THE MUD LARKS AGAIN. A New Volume of Humorous Stories by Crosbie
Garstin, 1s. 3d.
EXPLORATIONS IN CIVILIZATION. By Randolph Bedford, coloured cover, 1s.
6d.
BOXALL (G. E.), HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHRANGERS 390 pages, 4s.
6d.
CAMPBELL (Joseph), SIMPLE TESTS FOR MINERALS; or, Every Man his own
Analyst. Fourth edition, pocket size, cloth, round corners, 3s. 6d.
THE FARM GARDEN. By A. E. Cole (“Bouquet”). A Practical Handbook of
Australian Gardening, with about 100 illustrations. Cloth, 3s. 6d.
THE STATE AND FEDERAL CONSTITUTIONS OF AUSTRALIA: With a tabulated
comparison of the Federal Constitutions of the World. By K. R.
Cramp, M.A. Second edition, revised. With portraits and
illustrations, 3s. 6d.
HISTORY OF AUSTRALASIA: From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. By
Arthur W. Jose, with 11 maps and 78 illustrations, 5s. School
edition, complete, 3s. 6d.
LIFE OF CAPTAIN MATTHEW FLINDERS, R.N. By Professor Ernest Scott. Over
500 pages, with 40 folding maps, full-page plates, and manuscripts
in facsimile, 21s.
THE BUTTERFLIES OF AUSTRALIA. By G. A. Waterhouse, B.Sc., F.E.S., and
G. Lyell, F.E.S. With four coloured and 39 other full-page plates,
and numerous figures in the text. 11 × 9 inches, 42s.
ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD., Publishers, Sydney,
London Agents: The Oxford University Press.
And at all Booksellers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
4. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.
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