By eleven o'clock in the morning we had advanced some four or five miles, after which the infantry were temporarily held up. The Camel Corps and the Light Horse made a magnificent attempt to break through between Atawina and Ali Muntar. This was the hottest period of the day; the Turks turned on every gun they could bring into action. As all their "heavies" were mounted on rails they could be swung from one end of the front to the other with the utmost ease. I cannot speak with knowledge of what happened to the Camel Corps, but the Light Horse had a terrible time. Both units had been successful in capturing a line of trenches, which were at once shelled out of existence by the Turkish fire. The casualties here were very heavy. In support of our brigade we galloped about a mile over very broken and dangerous country and eventually came into action astride a road, with a small crest in front and a larger one in rear of our positions.
Turkish aircraft spotted us at once and dropped smoke-bombs. Again we were lucky, for the heavy shells which came over a few seconds later burstbehind us on the large hill. Unfortunately another battery coming up to assist caught most of these shells and had a very bad time. One gun was dismantled by a direct hit and all its crew wounded, but the remainder fought their guns with magnificent coolness. Word came that our brigade and the Camel Corps were being beaten back by the Turks, now advancing steadily and in great force, and a third battery dashed up on our right to help repel them. For five hours the three batteries were firing as fast as the guns could be loaded. The crash of the Turkish shells bursting over our positions, the roar of the explosions as our guns were fired, and the rattle of machine-guns on our left combined to make an appalling din.
For a long time the ranges continued to decrease as the Turks pressed slowly forward, and casualties from the brigade streamed past in increasing numbers, some on stretchers, some walking, and one carried pick-a-back by a huge Australian, towards the field-ambulance away to the rear. Three enemy aeroplanes came over to make things unpleasant, but their aim was bad. One bomb dropped dangerously near the horses, who were standing the racket exceedingly well, and that did little damage. These machines did, however, harass a line of ammunition waggons, which were proceeding to a dump about a mile away, coming down low and turning on their machine-guns in the hope of killing the horses. There are few things more unpleasant than being fired at from an aeroplane: you feel so utterly impotent; and what aggravates the grievance is the fact that you cannot hit back—unless you happen to belong to a battery of "Archies." When you are a mere gravel-crusher or a driver in the artillery you have to grin and abide; and the grin is apt to deteriorate into a grimace. You can become accustomed, if not reconciled, to shell-fire; but I personally never heard the drone of an enemy plane overhead without a prickly sensation down the spine and an urgent desire for a large dug-out forty feet below ground; and there were very few of these in Palestine. At one stage in the journey to the dump a wounded Australian made a spirited, if inadequate attempt to bring down a plane by rapid rifle-fire, aiming at each of the three in turn! But this was the only effort at retaliation and is mentioned for that reason.
We had no "Archies"; and the only British aeroplane I saw on this part of the front, at any rate, was brought down in flames as we were returning from the dump. Good men gone in a hopelessly inferior machine. God forgive us, we cheered, thinking it to be a Taube.
Shortly after our return to the battery the Turkish advance began to waver. They had been sprayed by an incessant hail of shrapnel and high explosive for over three hours, and even their fatalistic courage could not stand the strain. The Light Horse were now holding their own, and soon amonotonous voice from the O.P. chanting over the wire, told that the Turks were retreating. Slowly the range increased—2400—2600—2800—until the enemy had passed out of reach of the guns; then for the first time since early morning we ceased fire.
But elsewhere on the front the situation was almostin statu quo. Though the Welshmen had, as stated, carried Samson's Ridge and had even advanced some miles along the coast, Ali Muntar still remained untaken. All day the Lowland Division had made the most desperate attempts to storm the position, going forward again and again with sublime disregard of their losses. But to no purpose. They were hemmed in by an inferno of fire which came from all directions: an attacking wave was swept away almost before it began its forward move.
It was horrible, useless slaughter. When it was found that no headway could be made in the centre the Lowlanders were ordered to cease their heroic attempts, which they did most unwillingly. As the order to withdraw reached a brigade which had been hammered unmercifully all day with little chance of retaliation, one of the men shook his fist at Ali Muntar and, almost choking with rage, cried out: "Damn ye! We'll hae ye yet!"
In the late afternoon the order to withdraw came to the mounted divisions and, pivoting on the centre, we swung back some five miles in order to come into line with the infantry, who themselves retired a very short distance. It was no question of a sudden,urgent retreat to avoid capture, for the Turks had had far too severe a gruelling to attempt pursuit. It was the reluctant withdrawal of stubborn, angry, and above all, superlatively brave men from positions too strong and well-organised to be taken by the means that had been adopted.
As it afterwards transpired, we had the meagre consolation of knowing that, though Gaza was still intact, we had achieved some small measure of success east and west of the town. The gains on the east were unfortunately neutralised by the deadlock in the centre; those on the west were consolidated and held.
In reporting our second attempt on Gaza the newspapers, no doubt officially inspired, gave us half a dozen lines all to ourselves. One of them described it, I think, as a "minor engagement"; from another we learnt to our surprise that we had been "in touch" with the Turks. As our casualties for the day were officially estimated to be between seven thousand and eight thousand, by far the bulk of which were from the Lowland and Welsh Divisions—who went into action possibly twenty thousand bayonets strong—one may perhaps be excused for thinking that the above descriptions err on the modest side. Secrecy is a very necessary thing in war—we learnt the bitter lesson in South Africa—but it ought not to drive bereaved mothers and sisters and sweethearts to riot and to demand the truth, as they did in Glasgow when, months later, the fateful telegrams announcing that their men had been killed or wounded in this "minor engagement" began to arrive in hundreds.
Camouflaging a Tent with Desert Scrub
Camouflaging a Tent with Desert Scrub(see p.29).
A Camel Convoy
A Camel Convoy.
[To face p. 144.
We used to wonder sometimes whether the people at home knew there was an army at all in Egyptand Palestine; an army, moreover, longing wistfully for the merest crumb from the table of appreciation, just to show that our "bit" was known and recognised. Even the rugged Scotsmen and the independent men from Australia and New Zealand liked a mead of praise, or at least encouragement, once in a while; and when men have spent two years on end—as most of us had—in a desert land, with no one to speak to save their own comrades, nothing to look forward to beyond their daily, deadly monotonous work, they need a little encouragement, if only to save them from melancholia.
The only means of getting to civilisation, of knowing again the decencies of life, was to "go sick" as it is termed, and be sent down the line for a spell in hospital; and no one but a congenital idiot took more liberties with his constitution than his work made necessary; the climate alone was more than sufficient for any ordinary man to tackle.
But what about leave, you say? It worked out on the average to four men per battery per week—per-haps; the proviso being that no "show" was imminent, when all leave was stopped. As a "show" usuallywasimminent, it took about eighteen months, with luck, to work through a battery; and other units in proportion. Leave to England was all but unobtainable. Though your father died sorrowing that his son should be in distant lands, though your wife committed the supreme indiscretion, it was regretted "that owingto lack of transport this application cannot at present be considered." Urgent financial reasons—and they had to be urgent—sometimes provided the coveted ticket. There were men who, despairing of legitimate means, "wangled" leave; I did myself see an application which would have wrung scalding tears from the eyes of a stoat, whose moving theme originated entirely in the fertile brain of one of the man's comrades. The letter was sent home, copied; the copy was sent to Palestine as a genuine tale of woe. The man obtained his leave!
Sometime in 1917 a wag in the House of Commons announced unctuously to a somnolent assembly that all men with eighteen months' service, or over, in the Egyptian Expeditionary Force had been granted, or were in process of being granted, leave to England. He was an optimist; or else he looked on the Veiled Lady through smoked glasses.
The first part of this cheerful statement was ludicrous; the latter part was true, but the process was so lengthy that the war ended leaving it still incomplete! What actually happened at the time stated was that a return was demanded from the various units in the E.E.F. showing the numbers of men with eighteen months' service, or over, in the country; this with a view to granting leave. As practically the whole army sent in its name, with a pleased smile of expectation, the return suffered the fate of most returns: it sank into profound oblivion.
Perhaps this optimistic gentleman, together with the majority in England, had accepted the view of the arm-chair critics, that having reached the Promised Land by easy stages we were continuing the "picnic" begun in Egypt some two years before; and on this account, therefore, we did not mind waiting an indefinite period for leave.
All this is not entirely a digression. There were times—and just after the battle of Gaza was one of those times—when the utter futility of war in general, and this one in particular, pressed heavily upon us. For the most part we worked by the day alone nor took thought for the morrow; but sometimes the desire to see well-loved faces and familiar scenes again took hold and bit deeply. If you were wise you strangled the desire at birth, for if you nursed it the result was very much more than a bad quarter of an hour. By the same token let us continue.
On the night of the battle, after withdrawing about five miles, we took up a position alongside some batteries of sixty pounders, in a saucer-shaped valley, dug the guns in and prepared to hold on till further orders. The following day the Turks counter-attacked unsuccessfully in various places, and without pressing their attacks too closely presently left us in possession of the three ridges we had captured at so great a cost.
The problem now was to maintain the troops in these positions. For obvious reasons the railwaycould not be brought too near the wadi; indeed, it was at this stage, I believe, that the branch line running eastward to our right flank was begun, and despite the constant attentions of enemy aircraft this work was carried on steadily and without pause.
Belah had now usurped the position of Rafa as railhead and the station had been greatly enlarged by the addition of numerous sidings for the reception of the heavy trains daily arriving from Kantara. The few wells in the place had been medically tested and numbered and were now in use, supplemented by those of Khan Yunus and the supply of water sent up by rail. In the wadi itself the engineers had been labouring incessantly since its capture to bore wells for the troops holding it. This was no light task, for with the summer drought drawing nearer every day the wadi was drying up rapidly. Even now, except for a few small "pockets" of water not unlike the hill tarns in the North of England, the bed was for all practical purposes dry. Eventually sufficient wells were sunk to provide a fairly ample supply of water, which not only relieved the Army Service Corps of some of its heavy burden, but released a large quantity of transport for other duties. By far the most pressing of these was to supply the mounted divisions on the right flank with food and water; and of all the amazing feats performed by the engineers and the transport service, either combined or separately, this effort was surely one of the most wonderful.
Our position was near Tel el Jemmi, one of the three high hills, each artificially built in the form of a double cross, that once marked the southern boundary of the land conquered by the early Crusaders. It was too far away from the wadi for us to draw our water there; nor in point of fact was there sufficient for our needs had we been conveniently near. There were at least six thousand horses to be watered daily, in addition to which their forage and the men's rations and drinking water had somehow to be brought, and quickly. About two miles from our position and under the shadow of Tel el Jemmi was a nullah, probably an off-shoot of the wadi, perhaps half a mile long by a couple of hundred yards broad.
To the eye it was as if a large slice had been cut out of the earth's crust, leaving a tapering cavity not unlike the shape of a battleship; fortunately, however, the floor was fairly flat and even. The engineers immediately seized upon the nullah and proceeded to transform it into a gigantic reservoir. Along one side of the nullah was dug a series of large shallow tanks shaped like a swimming-bath, the counterpart, in fact, of the one used for the same purpose at Khan Yunus. These were lined with tarpaulins. Next to the tanks was a long row of canvas water-troughs, handy affairs which can be erected in a few minutes; and finally thetwo were connected by means of hand-pumps, each tank supplying a certain number of troughs. Other parties of engineers were busy making the nullah easy of access and exit, for, except in one place, the sides were too precipitous to allow one even to climb down with safety.
There were, I think, six approaches to the nullah, all of which had to be blasted and cut out of the sides, as sandstone was encountered after the top layer of soil had been removed; and not the least difficult part of the business was to make the inclines safe and convenient for all traffic.
All this, it should be stated, was not the leisurely work of weeks or even days; the main part of it had to be completed in twenty-four hours, to supply the thousands of thirsty horses waiting to be watered.
Meanwhile at railhead transport was rapidly arranged to carry the water, most of which had already been brought a hundred and thirty miles on the train, to the nullah.
Camels only were used, in such numbers that from Belah to Khan Yunus the country was like a vast patch-work quilt of greys and blacks and browns. It seemed as if all the camels in the world were assembled here; sturdy little black Algerians; white long-legged beasts from the Soudan; tough grey "belody" camels from the Delta; tall, wayward Somalis; massive, heavy-limbed Maghrabis—magnificent creatures; a sprinkling of russet-brown Indian camels; and, lest the female element be neglected, a company of flighty "nitties," very full of their own importance. The native drivers were of as many shades as the camels they led, from the pale brown of the town-bred Egyptian to the coal-black Nubian or Donglawi. Twenty-five thousand camels carrying water! The first relays were filing stolidly into the nullah in the early hours of the morning after the battle, as though their business were the most ordinary thing in the world!
They entered the nullah by one of the hastily constructed roads and "barracked" in a long row in front of the big tanks. Then the two twelve-and-a-half-or fifteen-gallon fanatis carried by each camel were unloaded and their precious contents poured into the tanks, after which the empty fanatis were reloaded on to the saddles and the camels passed out of the nullah by another road, and returned to Belah or Khan Yunus for another supply. There was no confusion and hardly any noise but the grunting and snarling of the camels as they "barracked" and got up again, the whole process of unloading and reloading being like a piece of well-oiled machinery. Indeed, so well was the work done that troops coming in to water their horses scarcely noticed it.
Day and night the two long columns—the one with full, the other with empty fanatis—passed in and out of the nullah; and for twelve miles there was no break in the slow-moving chain.
By noon on the day following the battle two thousand horses at a time were able to water comfortably, without congestion and without interfering with the work of the camels. They entered the nullah by a different route, drank their fill and went out again by yet another road.
Needless to say this was not carried on without molestation by the Turks. It was impossible to conceal our presence in the nullah, since even one battery of artillery moving along in watering order raised tremendous clouds of dust visible many miles away, and when several such clouds approaching from different directions were seen converging on the one place, it was obvious that a splendid opportunity had arisen for a little bombing practice; one, moreover, of which the Turks took full advantage. Hardly had we left the comparative shelter of our position than the familiar hum of an enemy plane was heard, and in a few minutes a peculiar swishing sound heralded the rapid approach of some of his detestable ironmongery. Sometimes he would hover overhead and follow the long line till we were almost at the lip of the nullah before releasing his bombs, and this was the very refinement of torture. During the whole of the two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the hope of catching us in the narrow defile.
The extraordinary thing was that though we must have made an excellent target, no one to the best of my recollection was ever hit. Many times bombs dropped on the very edge of the road as horses were passing, but providentially the splinters all went wide. For this immunity we had, in great measure, to thank our own aircraft, who, out-classed though they were for speed, invariably went up to harass the Turk and put him off his aim, in which gallant attempt they nearly always succeeded. Bombs dropped in the nullah itself had no better effect, and if the object of the Turks was to stampede the horses, it failed miserably. Frequently they would transfer their attentions to the camel convoys with even worse results; it required a great deal more than mere bombs to upset the camels, who padded steadily along, eternally chewing and supremely indifferent to the agitated people overhead.
Considering our unprotected positions and the undoubted superiority of their machines over ours, the Turks were not very enterprising. Once or twice they came over the batteries, flying low and sniping—with indifferent success—at the gunners. But that was the limit of their boldness; and when our solitary "Archie" in the valley briskly opened fire on them they turned tail and scuttled abjectly out of range.
Near the nullah a day or two after our arrival a few more anti-aircraft guns came up for the protection of watering parties, which function they performed most successfully, though if British airmen had been operating the Turkish machines I doubt if we should have escaped unscathed. Perhaps the hard-fighting qualities of the British troops led the Turks habitually to over-estimate the numbers and defences opposed to them, for they rarely attacked even a small post save in great force. As a defensive fighter, however, especially behind a machine-gun, the Turk has few equals, and, assisted no doubt by his fatalistic temperament, he will take the severest hammering for days without flinching.
Tel el Jemmi being by far the most considerable hill in the neighbourhood, an observation post was established on the summit from which the whole wide plain of Gaza lay open to the view. Northwards stretched fields turning brown under the hot sun, with here and there a flicker of white in a patch of dark green marking the presence of a native dwelling; westwards was Ali Muntar thrusting its sombre height through fringes of cactus; Gaza tucked away behind, almost hidden in foliage; and beyond, the shining waters of the Mediterranean. To the south numerous black patches indicated the presence of our troops and something of the activity at Belah; but most striking of all to the eye was the endless chain of camels extending to the distant horizon.
What an enormous amount of wasted effort there is during a campaign! Herculean labour to meetthe need of the moment. Troops are thrust into a forward position, and to keep them provided with the necessaries of life transport is organised to the very pitch of perfection. Often the position is occupied for a few days only, when the troops are sent elsewhere and the whole business starts again.
So it happened at Tel el Jemmi. We had thought that we were merely resting there preparatory to taking part in a third attempt on Gaza. But that time was not yet. After the first two days our guns were never fired, and though a brigade went out on a reconnaissance there were no signs of renewed activity by the Turks.
On our left the infantry were now securely entrenched on the captured ridges and were obviously settling down for the summer. There appeared to be no need for the mounted divisionsen masseto remain on the right flank, especially with transport strained to its utmost limits to maintain them there.
The "heavies" were the first to leave the valley, then the anti-aircraft gun rumbled away on its lorry, and finally we were left in sole possession. At dusk on the fifth day after our arrival we too departed; and the engineers were busy striking the canvas water-troughs in the nullah as we passed. All through the night we travelled, and the journey was a repetition of our first retreat from Gaza, except that this was a voluntary retirement. Weseemed to cross the wadi half a dozen times and might, in fact, have done so, for it wound fortuitously across the whole of our front, and we were everlastingly climbing into or out of steep-sided places. The heavy traffic of the last few days had churned up the whole countryside into a powdery dust, which rose in such heavy clouds as to make breathing difficult, and to see even the man immediately in front was next to impossible.
In the early hours of the morning we came to Sheikh Nuran, a position which had been very strongly fortified by the Turks but evacuated without a struggle, like those previously at Rafa, when we attacked Gaza the first time.
I remember little about this camp save that the Turks had left it in an unspeakably filthy condition, causing us to spend days clearing away their refuse.
It soon became evident that we should make no more attempts on Gaza during the summer, and while both sides were preparing for the inevitable finale, a species of trench warfare began. This had little resemblance to the kind that obtained in France, where the rival trenches were frequently within a stone's throw of each other. Here, the nearest point to the Turks was on our left flank, where the trenches were perhaps eight hundred yards apart. Then the line, which for the most part was that taken by the wadi in its meanderings, gradually swung south-eastwards till on the right flank we were at least ten miles away from the enemy; which does not mean that profound peace reigned in this region—on the contrary. The main reason for this wide divergence was the old difficulty of maintaining mounted troops—or indeed, troops of any kind—in a waterless country. Though officially we had crossed the border into Palestine, we were actually a long way from the land of milk and honey; and it may here be stated that the troops saw little milk and less honey even when they did at last reach that delectable spot.
In the coastal sector—we rose to the dignity of "sectors" when trench warfare began—the infantry amused themselves by making a series of night-raids the cumulative effect of which was considerable. They were carried out on a small scale with meticulous regard for detail, as was very necessary if only because the storming parties had rarely less than a thousand yards to cover before they reached their objectives.
Most of these operations were for possession of the sandstone cliffs on the Turkish side of the wadi and the terrain was generally the beach itself, which from Belah to beyond Gaza was rocky and dangerous and in few places more than fifty yards wide. At the mouth of the wadi, which had to be crossed, there were shifting sands extremely difficult to negotiate especially at high tide. After some weeks of successful nibbling, which exasperated the Turks into a vast, useless expenditure of ammunition, the infantry firmly established themselves along the coast to a point just south of Gaza, beyond which it was not expedient to go. Here they proceeded to make homes for themselves by digging holes in the face of the cliffs and lining them with sand-bags.
They became, in fact, cave-dwellers, though they certainly had army rations to eat in place of the raw bear of their troglodytic ancestors; and their caves were not dug here and there according to the indiscriminating taste of the diggers. They werecunningly conceived with a keen eye to defence as well as comfort. So elaborate was the system that it was universally known as the "Labyrinth," and no apter name could have been devised.
Long months afterwards, when "the strife was o'er, the battle done," I rode along this stretch of beach where the cliffs for upwards of a mile were honeycombed with caves of different sizes, all of them made by the hand of man. There were neat steps cut in the sandstone leading from one to the other; narrow ledges along which you crawled, clinging like a fly to the face of the cliff; and outside some of the caves was a kind of sandstone chute which presumably served the same purpose as did the banisters of irresponsible boyhood's days. I cannot imagine what else the occupants could use them for, nor when they had reached the bottom, how they climbed the steep incline again, except on hands and knees.
There were wells, too, sunk in various places about the Labyrinth and adequately protected with sand-bags. Rations were brought up by camels who made the stealthy and perilous journey across the mouth of the wadi nightly from Belah.
Towards the centre the distance between the trenches was too great to allow of much "nibbling" and the activity here was confined mainly to a regular daily "strafe" on the part of the artillery, and listening-patrols, who occasionally came across a party of Turks similarly engaged, whereuponsilent work with the bayonet ensued, until one or other party was wiped out.
The Royal Air Force provided thepièce de résistanceof this period of comparative stagnation. By way of retaliation for a heavy Turkish bombing raid on one of the dumps at Belah, where amongst other things a field-hospital had suffered severely, they collected about thirty machines and flew over to Gaza. Their objective was a large shell-dump, said to be nearly a mile in area, situated near the big mosque. Though the night was pitch dark and landmarks difficult to detect, the raid was a huge success. Many bombs must have hit the dump simultaneously for the roar of the explosion was appalling. The force of it shook the earth for miles round and the sky in the north-west was a vast sheet of red flame. All through the night the racket went on, as first one part of the dump and then another exploded. Seen from our position on the right flank, the blaze of light after each explosion was like the great blast-furnaces of Sheffield as you see them from the night train.
Not for days after did we understand what had actually happened; at the time it was thought to be the beginning of another attack on Gaza, and one man was profoundly convinced that the Day of Judgment had arrived. What the Turks thought about it is not known, but the raid taught them a terrible lesson; and they did not, in fact, send over another bombing expedition till long afterwards.
The mounted troops were disposed in various places along our right flank, some in the wadi, others more or less conveniently near; and they led an existence peculiar to themselves. For our part, after resting for a short time at Sheikh Nuran, we moved eastwards to El Chauth, one of the positions gallantly captured by the Imperial Camel Corps in the first battle of Gaza. The Turkish trenches enclosed a lovely little spinney of fig-trees and almond-trees in full bloom, under which we concealed the guns and beneath whose sheltering branches we slept. Preparations for sleeping in those days were very simple: you dug a hole for the hip-bone with a jack-knife and you were ready. The army authorities had not yet adopted the Turkish idea of bivouac-sheets, two of which, buttoned together and propped up with a couple of poles, made an admirable shelter accommodating two persons. There are many worse things, however, than dropping gently to sleep in the open air with the faint scent from the almond-blossom titillating the nostrils.
El Chauth at first sight appeared to be the kind of spot where every prospect pleases and only man is vile; and as we had not had a really comprehensive wash for some considerable time and were very hairy withal, the adjective was aptly descriptive. Apart from this trifling handicap and the fact that we should have to travel fourteen miles a day for water, the place seemed an ideal one for arest-cure. Considering that we had been incessantly on the move for the past five months the time for a "stand-easy" was about due.
We prepared everything to that desirable end. The cooks built a cunningly-contrived kitchen in a section of one of the old Turkish trenches and firmly announced their intention of cooking for us every kind of delicacy that could be made—out of army beef, onions, and potatoes!—for which pleasant piece of optimism we were duly grateful. Then we heard that an E.F. canteen had set up house about a day's trek to the south-west, whereupon a limber went forth and returned on the third day heavily laden with tins of fruit, biscuits, various meats, and something in bottles that maketh glad the heart of man, especially if he has a Palestine thirst. Most of us had one from Egypt in addition.
After about four days of comparative peace and quietness the blow fell—in fact, two blows. As a trooper in the Yeomanry said, when he found a frog in his boot: "There's allus summat in this dam country." He spoke a great truth. It is unsafe to trust Palestine very far, fair of aspect though she be. The first blow fell, literally, while we were having dinner one evening, when a Turkish aeroplane arrived and dropped bombs first on the horse-lines and then on us. Fortunately his aim was as bad as his taste was deplorable in coming at a time when decent folk were having a meal. Neither men nor horses were hit and we had theironic satisfaction of sheltering from his bombs in the trenches his countrymen had made. Even that failed to keep the dinner warm, however.
The second and heavier blow was that the inhabitants of our little spinney suddenly and unmistakably made their presence felt. Just as at Belah the mosquitoes battened shamelessly upon us and the frogs burst into mighty pæans of welcome, so at El Chauth the scorpions extended the glad hand—if I may venture thus euphemistically to describe the spiked atrocity they wear lengthwise on their backs. Apparently on strike for better conditions of living they decided upon an army blanket as a desirable residence and were quite indifferent as to whether you shared their quarters or not. Often they were already in possession when blankets were unrolled for the night, and if not then, one was usually to be found in the morning nestling coyly in the folds. The moment you touched him with a stick he elevated his poisonous battering-ram, which was as long as himself, and struck and struck again in an ecstasy of rage, until sometimes he actually poisoned himself and died from his own blows!
I believe a few men died after being stung by scorpions, certainly many were temporarily incapacitated with poisoned arms and legs. This pleasing possibility made a careful scrutiny of the blankets very necessary before you settled down to sleep; and on waking in the morning you madeno unnecessary movement until you had first assured yourself that a scorpion was not within striking distance. After a time somebody made the brilliant discovery that every scorpion hates all other scorpions with a deep and abiding hatred. This provided us with a new game. Instead of killing them out of hand we caught the biggest scorpions, made a ring in the sand about a couple of feet in diameter, and matched them in single combat.
They never went outside the ring, however low was the barrier of sand, but would manœuvre round the edge glowering at each other till one found an opening; whereupon he sprang in, tail or battering-ram first, and hammered away vigorously while his opponent tried his utmost to get round to the other's head; then he started rapid fire on his own account. Generally they ended by standing back to back and belabouring each other till one, or both, dropped dead.
Sometimes, instead of putting two scorpions in the ring, by way of variation we used to catch another sworn foe and match him against a scorpion. This was the tarantula, a great hairy spider with a leg-spread covering the palm of the hand, another of the unpleasant inhabitants of El Chauth. Against this creature, however, it was always a shade of odds that the scorpion would win, though there was a surprise occasionally. Talking of odds reminds me that nearly always at these fightssome sportsman would open a little book and announce that he was prepared to lay "evens on the field." Nor was it unprofitable, for the British as a race, and particularly the British soldier, will bet on anything. One man, a sapper, made quite a good thing out of backing a scorpion which he carried about with him in a tobacco-tin. It was a great scrapper, and as it was a very undersized creature, he usually managed to obtain good odds from men who were backing larger and more powerfully developed specimens. What this sapper fed his gladiator on was a mystery; but it won many fights.
With the exception of almost daily visits from Turkish aircraft, whose aim did not improve, and a few false alarms, the days passed in uneventful monotony. Towards the end of May, however, a big raid was organised on one of the Turkish lines of communication. If you look at the map you will see, south-south-east of Beersheba, a spot called El Auja, and south of that another one called Maan. This latter is on the main line of the Hedjaz railway from Medina to Damascus and beyond, to which the Turks had clung with limpet-like tenacity in spite of their retreat in the west.
Presumably their chief reason for holding on so long was to impress the Mahommedan followers of the Cherif of Mecca. This dignitary had come in on our side on account of the revolting cruelties practised by the Turks on the inhabitants ofMecca, Medina, and other parts of his kingdom. There seems little reason to doubt that these atrocities were committed at the direct instigation of that arch-villain Enver Pasha himself. Such treatment from those who were supposed to be protectors of his religion stung the Cherif of Mecca to open revolt.
About the middle of 1916, he turned the Turks out of Mecca, killing or capturing the entire garrison, and proclaimed the independence of the Hedjaz; in which courageous action he had the support of the British Government. As his army was mainly composed of undisciplined Arabs he confined himself thereafter to guerilla warfare and made constant attacks on the Turkish lines of communication, especially on the Hedjaz railway.
So well did the Cherif succeed that the Turks were compelled to send large numbers of their best troops in order to retain their hold on the railway. At various places on the line strong posts were established, fully equipped with the latest guns and material of all kinds. These posts were a constant menace to our right flank. One of the largest garrisons was at Maan, from which troops could easily be sent via El Auja to Beersheba if needed. Our raid, therefore, was for the purpose of blowing up a large section of the railway between Beersheba and El Auja, and it was planned and carried out with consummate skill.
The demands made on the endurance of bothmen and horses were tremendous. The cavalry and demolition parties operating farthest south had to cover upwards of seventy miles in order to reach their objectives, and even those operating nearest home had over forty miles to go. Moreover, it was a dash right into the midst of the enemy's country with Beersheba almost at our backs. This, together with the impossibility of concealing the movements of a large body of mounted troops for any length of time, owing to the dust, made speed an essential part of the proceedings.
We started after dark and travelled, with no more than an occasional stop for ten minutes, until about two o'clock the following afternoon. Then the cavalry struck a strong Turkish outpost and had to beat them off before the work of demolition could begin. One of our aeroplanes reconnoitred and came back with the news that a viaduct might profitably be destroyed, and a sixty-pounder battery, which had casually come up while we were waiting, started leisurely to work and laid the bridge in ruins, after which they dropped a few shells on a Turkish train farther down the line and demolished that, which concluded their part in the entertainment. Then they made tea, at which we looked with envious eyes, having tasted none for thirty-six hours, limbered up their guns, and started back as casually as they had come. It seemed to be a pleasant life in the "heavies."
As our brigade had succeeded in driving theTurkish cavalry back our guns were not needed in support, so we watered the horses at a well eighty feet deep and had to use reins and drag-ropes and anything else we could find in order to reach the surface of the water with the canvas buckets. It was as well that we had time on our hands, for the whole business took three hours. Thenwehad some tea. It was the only bright spot in what was for us a very uninspiring day.
Meanwhile the raiders elsewhere had successfully reached their objectives. Then the demolition parties put in some deadly work, and about eighteen miles of Turkish railway scattered itself over the surrounding country. This ended the menace of enemy reinforcements from the south, though Maan itself hung out stubbornly for a long time against the repeated onslaughts of the Arabs.
The journey back will not easily be forgotten by some of those who took part in the raid. The Australians, having completed their work, started back just before sunset. Moving more rapidly than we they were soon well ahead; but their dust lingered and most of it settled on us. Later, other parties, also ahead of us, came from other directions and added their quantum. Ultimately we must have taken the dust spurned by the whole division. It was indescribable in the wadi, where we arrived towards midnight. The battery was cut in two by the last brigade of cavalry to cross. One section crossed over safely, advanced a short distance andwaited for the other to make the journey. This, too, was accomplished, after which the two sections tried to find each other in the clouds of dust. For nearly two hours we rode round and round each other, hardly ever out of earshot but unable to meet! This may sound incredible, but it is the plain fact. Those who have tried even to cross the road in a London fog of the old pea-soup variety will best appreciate our predicament.
In the end a driver from one section rode into a gun belonging to the other, and the situation was saved. Another driver briefly expressed our unanimous view when he said: "If this is blooming Palestine, give me two yards of Piccadilly and you can have all of it!" Finally, as it never rains but it pours, we had the cheering news that we were not returning to El Chauth, that we were to have a couple of hours' sleep, the first since starting out, after which we had a further twenty miles to go!
The last five miles of those twenty were the hardest I ever remember. The horses had not had the saddles off their backs for over two days and were almost dropping with fatigue; nor were their riders in much better state. The heat was terrific, and the greater part of the journey was over country on which scarcely a vestige of green remained; indeed, the last few miles were through heavy sand powerfully reminiscent of the desert.
We camped at last in a great grove of fig-trees near the sea.
At Fig-tree Camp we had what the army calls a "rest," which must not in any way be confused with the word that implies repose. There is nothing of a reposeful nature about an army "rest." It means that you come out of the line for periods varying from two hours to two months, usually a great deal nearer the former than the latter, and spend the time doing what the authorities term "smartening up," after the gay and festive season through which you have just passed. This generally takes the form of parades every other hour, when the officers prattle amiably of matters to which you have long been a stranger, and the Sergeant-Major takes the opportunity of preventing his vocabulary from falling into disuse. Also, if you are in the artillery, you clean your harness and polish up the steel-work thereon till it twinkles like a heliograph in the sun. Then you go out and dirty everything again.
When you come to examine the various forms of army discipline there are usually to be found sensible and logical reasons for their existence; but weamateur soldiers could never understand the necessity, on active service, for polishing and burnishing steel-work, especially in a country of strong sunlight; and there was certainly nothing in our daily duties that we loathed half so much. For ceremonial parades, of course, you turned out as "posh" as the next man, but in a parched land where you could with difficulty keep your own person clean, it seemed a grievous waste of time and energy polishing bits and chains and stirrup-irons merely for the sake of doing it. Besides, think of the hours so spent which might have been devoted to sleep! The afternoon we arrived at Fig-tree Camp most of us would have liked to follow the sound example of that Lord Chesterfield who, when he felt tired, used to say to his servant: "Bring me a dozen of sherry and call me the day after to-morrow!"
We rested (army pattern) for five days, and, amongst all the pother of parading and cleaning up, knew again the glorious delight of a daily dip in the sea. Then we took the trail again and in due course took up a position in another part of the wadi, Tel el Fara by name, the second of the great boundary-hills built by the Crusaders. Here our position was at the edge of the wadi, fortunately in one of the places where water was fairly abundant both for horse and man. As an off-set to this we had ten miles a day to travel for rations and forage, so the balance was about even as things were in Palestine. At dawn on the first morning of ourarrival the familiar crash of bombs was our réveillé, and for a month the Turks repeated the performance every morning as soon as it was light and every evening just before sunset. With enormous difficulty, for the ground here was mainly sandstone, we dug burrows for ourselves on the bank of the wadi. Some of them were just large enough to contain the body stretched at full length; others, more ambitiously conceived, bore an uncanny resemblance to a grave; and a few strenuous people made shelves for their belongings in the sides of their burrows.
Here we extended our acquaintance amongst the inhabitants of these regions. Scorpions we knew well, tarantulas we had nodded to, but the visitor who now invaded our narrow dwellings was the homely beetle; a monstrous fellow this, as big as a crown piece. His correct name is, I think, the scavenger-beetle, though we used a much more uncomplimentary term. He was quite harmless, but he would treat blankets as a rubbish-bin. He would seize a lump of earth or refuse much bigger than himself and push it in front of him till he came to a convenient blanket, where he dropped his load and went away for more. But his star turn was an attempt to crawl up the perpendicular side of a burrow, pushing his load in front of him. The side generally selected for this attempt was the one nearest your head as you lay; and often the first intimation you had that the performance had begunwas the abrupt descent on to your face of beetle and load. Neither the fall nor the subsequent profanity discouraged him in the least; on the contrary, it spurred him to greater efforts. The next attempt would land him an inch or two higher up, when down he would come again. I used to have the most profound admiration for the legendary spider of the late King Bruce of Scotland, but after a scavenger-beetle had fallen on my face for the fifth time just when I was trying hard to go to sleep, I thought that even perseverance had its limits. So I picked up the beetle and threw him into the next burrow, and, in order that he could give his performance there, sent the piece of earth after him. Judged by his remarks, however, the occupant was no naturalist.
The outstanding feature of those days at Tel el Fara was eternal weariness; we were always tired. "Stand-to" was at half-past two in the morning, when we harnessed up and waited for orders. Often our cavalry would sight a Turkish patrol and away we went across the wadi into no-man's-land playing hounds to the Turkish hare. Rarely did we approach near enough to get a shot at him for he departed at the gallop at first sight of us, and in addition to his start he had the foot of us for speed. Then we trailed back, generally after dark, scratched a hurried meal and went to earth again till 2.30 a.m. the next day, when the whole business perhaps had to be done once more. The Australians thoroughlyenjoyed chasing old Johnny back to his lair, and sometimes landed themselves in a tight corner through over-keenness. They always managed to scramble out again somehow, occasionally with the aid of our guns, most often without any help but their own mother wit.
The Australians were rather difficult fellows to know intimately, mainly I think, on account of their self-consciousness and an inordinate fear of ridicule. With our brigade we had been good "cobbers" since the second show at Gaza, where we were able to help them out of a nasty hole, and once their confidence was gained the Australians were very stout allies. But they were drawn more to the Scottish than to any other British troops. Perhaps it was the Scots clannishness that attracted them. They influenced enormously troops brigaded with them, as far as externals were concerned.
It was the habit of the Australians to cut off the sleeves of their graybacks at the shoulder, thus making the shirt look like a loose kind of gymnasium vest. We copied this, and it did certainly make for comfort and freedom of movement. You would see a squadron going to water with scarcely a shirt-sleeve between them; and some of the men also dispensed with the shirt and rode mother-naked to the waist! The usual state of their saddlery would have sent a British General of the "spit and polish" type into a fit of apoplexy, for a harness-cleaning parade was a thing unheard of amongst theAustralians. They used to say that the horses needed all the care; bits and stirrup-irons did not matter.
The popular idea, I believe, is that all Australians are born in the saddle and that they dash about doing wonderful things with a lariat before they are out of long clothes. This is ludicrously wide of the mark. The percentage of Australians who can ride at all is less than that in England; and very few even of the good horsemen are comfortable for some time on an ordinary English trotting-horse. Their own horses have only two gaits: the lope and the gallop.
Of course the real boundary-rider or cattleman is without equal in his own way. There was one grizzled sportsman in our brigade at Tel el Fara who could do extraordinary things with a horse, and nothing could dislodge him from the saddle. His own pony had come to him in the ordinary way from Remounts and had been a wild, half-broken creature; five months later the same horse would follow him about like a dog. The Australian never mounted in the ordinary way but would give a peculiar little chirrup; whereupon the horse at once barracked, as a camel does to be loaded, and the rider had merely to stretch his leg across the saddle and sit down. Similarly when dismounting he would chirrup and the horse again went down on his knees. Any one else trying the same trick with the horse would be received with a stare of blankindifference; and woe betide the one who tried to mount!
The highest percentage of good riders was to be found in the men from Queensland; even the men from the other states said that, though they would die rather than admit that any other good thing could possibly come from a rival state.
Summer in the Wadi Ghuzzee
Summer in the Wadi Ghuzzee.
[To face p. 176.
As fighting men there was nothing to choose between them; and the Turks hated and feared them all impartially. In this connection a good story went the rounds. The Turks holding a certain advanced section of the line sent a messenger under the white flag across no-man's-land to our trenches to ask the nationality of the troops holding them. If it was English, the messenger said, his comrades were prepared to surrender. As it chanced, a battalion of men from the Home Counties was in possession of the trenches, and the messenger returned with information to that effect. Within ten minutes the whole party of Turks were in our lines! Later, they were asked why they had been so anxious for their captors to be English; the reply was that they had been told, with much circumstantiality of detail, that the Australians were cannibals and habitually ate their prisoners; and that the Scottish and Welsh troops went one better than this, for they never took prisoners—alive! A tall story, of course, but it is reasonably certain that some such rubbishy propaganda was fromtime to time circulated amongst those simple Anatolian peasants, whose sole desire was to return to the meagre farms from which they had been dragged by the heavy hand of war.
In the wadi the engineers were incessantly trying to improve the conditions. When the horses had been catered for, they constructed a small dam across a portion of the watering-place and made a bathing-pool where you could stand up to your middle in clear, cold water. As we were not supposed to remove even our putties except for bathing, or washing clothes, the pool was soon working overtime. On a broad, flat ledge jutting out into the wadi the engineers made a place where you could wash your clothes, with gutters and channels for carrying away the soapy water cut in the face of the cliff. When this was done a powerful clothes-washing offensive was begun, for few of us had more than one shirt and that, of course, was on our backs. Of our socks it could be said that the welts were good; the toes and heels had perished of overwork.
One of the few charitable things men ever said about the sun was that it dried your clothes quickly; you could take your shirt off your back, wash it, and in an hour or so put it on again, bone-dry. This was a consideration in a place where, while your shirt was drying, you wore your tunic over the bare skin and prayed that there would not be an alarm turn-out for, at any rate, an hour. When supplies are scarce you cannot afford to lose many articlesof kit, nor can you call for an armistice while you wait for your shirt to dry.
Elsewhere I have mentioned, perhaps too frequently, the remarkable speed with which the railway followed the troops. On the fourth day after our arrival, it reached Tel el Fara. This was the branch line running eastwards across our flank from Khan Yunus to Shellal, on the extreme right. Just below the Crusaders' hill the sides of the wadi sloped gently down and it was possible to cross in comparative comfort. Here a group of engineers and E.L.C. were working in a casual, aimless sort of way, apparently building a bridge for the branch line. Turkish aircraft very soon found this party, who, indeed, seemed anxious to advertise their efforts, and bombed it incessantly with considerable success.
Every day joists and beams and stones went up in the air and every day, when the strafe was ended, the E.L.C. put them back again and added a few more. But the Turks were very persevering and literally gave the workers no rest. The bridge made little progress, but nobody worried very much. The men appeared to be content to advance three yards, as it were, and slip back two; there was no hurry over the business. Indeed, it looked like a lapse on the part of the engineers to choose such an unsheltered and unsuitable spot for a bridge; it would almost certainly be swept away by the floods of the rainy season.
Curiously enough, moreover, their comrades a mile away laying the line parallel with the wadi were working at a snail's pace now, compared with their previous efforts, and were not making theslightestattempt to swing the line in toward the crossing. This was unpardonable, but the Turks noticed nothing out of the ordinary, and unerringly bombed the working-party in the wadi, quite content at finding so obvious a target. But the whole business seemed a gross waste of time and labour—unless you followed the wadi for about a mile farther along. This very unusual negligence on the part of the engineers was then fully explained.
At this point the wadi narrowed appreciably, though there was little else to the uninitiated eye to recommend it as a crossing. The engineers, however, were well satisfied, for here, out of sight of inquisitive aeroplanes, men were toiling as if for their lives; there was nothing casual or lackadaisical about this effort. While the Turks were assiduously bombing the dummy, the real bridge was being built at a great pace and without interference.
The shaped stones for the foundations were brought by the railway as far as it had then reached and transported thence by night into the wadi. The rough stones for the approaches and embankments came from higher up, where the Turks by their bombing activities had kindly saved the engineersthe trouble of blasting. At the appointed place and time the line curved in towards the bridge, crossed it, and having reached Shellal proceeded along the wadi to Gamli, thence to Karm, some ten miles from Beersheba. This last stretch of line was not completed till later, for the Turks, doubtless becoming uneasy, made serious efforts to hamper the work of construction.
For three months they made repeated attacks on the Yeomanry and Australians screening the engineers but met with no success, and the line was carried on inexorably, if slowly, towards the appointed goal.
It was fairly obvious now from which direction our third attempt on Gaza was to be made: everything pointed to the eastern flank, though it should be said that the Turks right up to the last moment were in ignorance as to where the main blow would fall.
A frontal attack was out of the question. If, during the summer months, we had been stealthily and laboriously preparing for the assault the Turks had been no less active in strengthening their defences. Gaza itself was almost impregnable; and from the sea to Beersheba they had constructed a series of enormously strong works, of which those at Atawina Ridge and between Sheria and Hereira were the chief. These defences were absolutely up-to-date in every respect. They were connected by telegraph and telephone, and it could with truthbe said that as far as Sheria the Turkish front was one continuous tangle of wire. Beersheba itself was in a measure isolated from the rest of the line. Indeed the only real opening in the whole chain of defences was between that place and Sheria, the Turks no doubt trusting to the exceptionally difficult country, which hereabouts was a maze of small wadis and nullahs, to prevent any attempt at a break through. Similarly they relied on the desert south-east of Beersheba to make an outflanking movement impossible in that direction. In both these beliefs they were sadly deceived, as will be seen later.
In addition to these defences the Turks were well served by their railways on both flanks and in the centre. Beersheba was in direct connection with the north,viaSheria, and Gaza, although not actually on the railway, was only about four miles from the railhead—Beit Hanun—of the other branch of the northern line. Their roads both laterally and longitudinally were in the main excellent, and they were in the midst of a country where water was plentiful and the land fertile. Finally, their immediate reserves and supplies were at such places as Hebron and Huj, both of which were within easy reach of the front.
From about the middle of June our "nibbles" at the Turkish line became more frequent and more ambitious.
The Scots made a characteristic raid on UmbrellaHill, one of the ridges south-east of Gaza, and found out all they wanted to know without firing a shot and with, I believe, only four casualties. The Turk at night-time was very susceptible to the bayonet. This raid was typical of many, and the combined result was that our line in the neighbourhood of Gaza was materially advanced and the positions taken consolidated.
At the end of June General Allenby arrived in Palestine to take over the duties of commander-in-chief. Shortly after his arrival there was a notable increase in the quantity and quality of our rations, and beer in barrels—yea, barrels—came up the line for the troops.
I am not going to suggest that the two events were in point of fact connected, but I do know that the sudden and welcome change was universally attributed to General Allenby, and that thenceforward the E.E.F. was "on him," as the phrase goes, to a man.
I wonder if many of our big commanders realised as fully as did General Allenby the enormous influence the "personal touch" had on the troops they commanded? Just to see your chief wandering about more or less informally, finding things out for himself, watching you—not on parade, but at your ordinary daily jobs; to know that he was not above getting out of his car to ask a question personally, or, during operations, to sit on a gun-limber digging his bully-beef out of a tin with a jack-knife, likeany other man. These things went a mighty long way.
You get more willing and selfless service out of men if you are seen of them, known of them, and if, perhaps, you suffer with them for a space.
By the middle of October everything was ready. The railway had been brought forward as far as possible and the army at the gates of Gaza had been largely increased in numbers. That Irish Division which had had such a terrible time during the Serbian retreat in 1915 and the 60th (London) Division, which had fought both in France and Macedonia, had come from Salonica to help. There were now English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh troops on various parts of the front; large numbers of Indian cavalry had also been added to the mounted divisions, and our artillery was at least equal, if not superior, to that of the Turks. Every scrap of transport available had been concentrated for the tremendous task of supplying the army when it began to move forward. Some idea of the magnitude of this task may be gathered from the fact that thirty thousand camels, practically the entire strength of the Camel Transport Corps, were needed for the troops on the right flank alone since they were farthest from railhead. For these it was estimated that at least a week's supply of waterwould have to be carried, to say nothing of forage and rations, until Beersheba with its water-supply was captured. This was to be the first part of the enterprise, and the whole plan hinged on its success.
Two divisions, one of infantry and the other of dismounted yeomanry—which latter had done so well as infantry that they were rewarded by being further employed as such—were to make for the gap between Beersheba and Sheria and make things unpleasant for the Turks occupying the defences of the former place. The part assigned to the mounted troops was that they should disappear into the desert land south-east of Beersheba and wait there till the time appointed, whereupon they were to perform the outflanking movement which, as has been stated, was utterly unforeseen by the Turks. For the moment we will, if you please, follow the fortunes of the cavalry.
If you have persevered so far with this narrative you will have noticed throughout that the troops had little assistance from Nature in beating the Turks. Here, doubtless relenting, she had with kindly forethought provided two small oases—one about twenty miles from El Chauth, the other ten miles farther away—in the desert where the cavalry was to hide. At both places there was a moderate supply of water, sufficient for a few days at any rate, which was all that was required.
During the night of October 27th, what time the Turks were being severely trounced in an attempton the branch railway, two columns of cavalry started for these providential hiding-places, following substantially the same route as that taken when the railway between Beersheba and El Auja was blown up. The dust was still there, in greater quantities than ever after six months of drought, and the fond illusion that we had taken most of it on our persons during the railway raid was rudely shattered. Fortunately the Turks were profoundly ignorant of the move, and the two columns reached their respective destinations without discovery. They remained unseen until the night of the 30th, when the long trek northwards began. If you can imagine a mighty column of dust well over ten miles in length, in the midst of which were many thousands of half-suffocated men and horses, you have no need of further words to picture that night's march, which lasted for ten hours.
At dawn all the troops were in their assigned positions. The infantry had marched all night and were to open the performance as soon as it was light enough for the gunners to get on to their targets. At the outset these consisted of the barbed-wire entanglements with which the defences south of Beersheba were surrounded. Unfortunately the light was not too good for accurate shooting, and although most of the wire was destroyed a few patches were left which caused considerable trouble to infantry when they went forward to the assault. Moreover the Turkish—or rather Austrian—artillery fire was very heavy and accurate; they had the range of every spot in the vicinity of their defences, which our own guns found very difficult to locate. Despite the volume of fire the storming-parties pressed on, tearing down the wire with their hands or forcing themselves through it, until at last they got to close quarters with the bayonet. After that nothing could stop them, and by the early afternoon all the defences south of Beersheba had been taken. Also, the artillery by admirable shooting had succeeded in putting the railway out of action: a great feat.
By this time the Turks had received a rude shock from another direction: east-north-east. Our cavalry, having unseen closed the northern exits from the town, suddenly swooped down and seized positions menacing the town from the east. Here some topographical details will be necessary. The only way to approach Beersheba from the desert is by crossing the steep-sided Wadi es Saba—from which the town and a small village near by take their names. On the Beersheba side of the wadi and forming almost a semi-circle round the town is a broad, flat plain commanding which was Tel es Saba, the highest of all the surrounding hills. This had to be captured before any direct attack on the town could be made.
All day long the Australians, on foot, made desperate attempts to carry the hill by storm, but the Turks, well served by their magnificent position,held on stubbornly. Another party of the Australians scrambled across the wadi and made an attempt to cross the plain in face of the appalling fire that was poured into them. They did succeed in capturing Saba village, though the place was a death-trap after it was taken. Just before sunset Tel es Saba succumbed to the incessant hammering it had received all day, and one great obstacle was removed from the path.
But fundamentally we were "no forrader." Although the outlying positions had been taken Beersheba itself was still intact, and its immediate capture was urgently necessary; the whole adventure turned upon it. With the coming of night, the artillery had ceased fire, and of course no further support could be expected from them. The town had to be taken by direct assault with the bayonet; there was nothing else for it. First the wadi had to be crossed, no easy matter, then the plain, which was heavily trenched. The Yeomanry, who had not been needed during the day, were ordered to tackle the job—of course, dismounted. They did actually start from their reserve positions, but they were forestalled. From under the shadow of Tel es Saba a vast cloud of dust was seen sweeping over the moonlit plain. Inside it was the 4th Light Horse Brigade, who, tired of waiting and with their usual cheerful disregard of the conventions, had decided to take the town themselves. Also, having had sufficientfighting on foot during the all-day struggle for Tel es Saba, they determined that the horses should share in the excitement.
So, using as lances their rifles with bayonets fixed, the whole brigade—and any one else with a horse and rifle and bayonet—charged yelling upon the town. Over trenches, rifle-pits and obstacles of all sorts they leapt and burst into Beersheba like a tornado. The Turks were literally paralysed by the audacity of the effort and made a mere travesty of resistance, in comparison with their stubbornness during the day. It was all over in a very short time and Beersheba was ours. The Yeomanry, astonished to find so little resistance, came in at the death in time to help round up the large numbers of prisoners captured by the Australians.
Speaking without the book I should say that this mounted bayonet charge is without parallel in military history. It was at any rate worthy of the best traditions of Australianresourcefulness. Their motto seemed always to be: "If you haven't the right tools for a job, do it with anything that's handy and trust to the luck of the British army to pull you through." A very sound maxim, on the whole, if their headstrong adherence to it did sometimes land them in a tight corner.
It was difficult to realise in the midst of a jostling crowd of soldiers, with guns and all the impedimenta of war in the background, that once on a time old Father Abraham had lived at Beershebawith his family and developed the water-supply for his flocks. Impossible, too, to visualise the past splendours of Beersheba, as became the city on the southern border of Palestine, on the main caravan-route through the Land of Goshen, across the Sinai desert into Egypt, and through which on account of its wells, travellers for countless ages had passed on their leisurely journey south. Nowadays, it is but a collection of exaggerated mud-huts of the usual native type, with the addition of a few modern works and the railway.
Though I saw it frequently enough later on the sight of a railway-station in or near a native village always seemed strangely incongruous. Do not for a moment imagine that by railway-station I mean anything so elaborate as the merest village station at home; except at Kantara even the best and largest of ours did not rise to such heights. The platform, if there was one, was of sleepers piled almost haphazard one upon another with sand shovelled into the interstices and spread over the top. Occasionally cinders were used to form an extra hard surface; but this was a luxury. Unless a stationary train marked its presence the station was very difficult to find at all, for one bit of the railway looks very much like another at a distance. I remember a party of us trying for a long time to find one of these elusive places. We found the railway all right but the only sign of human habitation was a tiny wooden hut, almost invisibleagainst the background of sand, towards which we made our way. A lance-corporal in the R.E. was the sole inmate. "Where's the station, chum?" he was asked. He looked at us suspiciously for a moment.