Towards the end of April a heavy concentration of cavalry round Jericho made it evident that another attempt was to be made east of the Jordan, and on the night of the 28th-29th the 1st Australian Mounted Division crossed the river and advanced due north, between the east bank and the foothills, towards the Turkish road from Nablus to Es Salt and the ford known as Jisr ed Damieh, whence they were to march east for the purpose of cutting off the retreat of the garrison at Shunet Nimrin should the attack of the 60th Division on that place prevail. Soon after dawn the cavalry came under very heavy fire, but pushed forward and attained their objectives, where two brigades, without artillery, went off to help the Londoners. The latter marched all night, and, taking the Turksby surprise in the early hours, stormed part of the pass, but despite all their efforts could make no further headway.
Meanwhile the 4th Light Horse and a brigade of horse-artillery were heavily engaged till dusk in holding off reinforcements from Nablus who were attempting to cross by the Jisr ed Damieh ford. After nightfall this brigade and the batteries retired a short distance and took up a position commanding the road, in a deep wadi where the guns had to be man-handled into place, after which the waggons and limbers were let down the sides of the wadi by means of drag-ropes, and the horses scrambled down as best they could. Dawn brought the news that the Turks had successfully crossed the Jordan during the night, and had followed the river southwards in the direction of our second bridgehead at El Auja, intending to come at the left flank of the Light Horse, which was absolutely in the air.
At seven o'clock they attacked, and plastered the batteries in the wadi with shells till, at the end of two hours, the position became untenable, and an attempt was made to shift the guns. It was incomparably more difficult to get out of the wadi than it had been to get in, and moving was but out of the frying-pan into the fire, for one wadi led into another, and the sides were so precipitous that the horses were almost useless for dragging out the guns. Four teams were hooked into a gun, butthe ground made it impossible for more than half a dozen horses at a time to be in draught, and when at last the position was cleared the horses slithered down the sides of the wadis, and guns and waggons overturned at the bottom in hopeless and inextricable confusion.
Frantically the gunners strove to get them out, some harnessing themselves to the drag-ropes and others shoving on the wheels; but every effort was to no purpose, and meanwhile horses and men were being shot down on all hands by the advancing Turks, whose cries of "Allah! Allah!" could now be plainly heard. At last the inevitable order was given to clear out with such horses as remained, for it was impossible to move, much less save the guns, and after these had been rendered useless to the enemy, the gallant gunners reluctantly withdrew.
The moment they were clear of the foothills they galloped into an inferno of machine-gun fire at close quarters from the Germans and Turks occupying wadis and shell-holes all over the plain. Horses were shot down right and left, and a team of eight which had not been unhooked were all hit, together with two of the drivers, who fortunately managed to get safely away. Finally the shattered remnants of the artillery brigade assembled at Ghoraniyeh bridgehead, while the Light Horse fell back towards Es Salt, which the other two brigades had succeeded in occupying. By their clever manœuvring, however, the Turks had rendered the position both ofthe Australians in Es Salt and the 60th Division in front of Nimrin so precarious that another withdrawal was urgently necessary, and after the Londoners had made a last desperate attempt to storm the pass, the retirement was carried out successfully and without loss, though in bitter disappointment at a second failure; that it was the only time in the whole campaign when British guns were captured by the Turks was remarkably poor consolation.
During the summer of 1918 great changes took place in the personnel of the army in Palestine. The early success of the great German offensive in France had caused the "S.O.S." to be sent out for other and more men to stem the tide of advance, and all the other British fronts were denuded of white troops, in whose place, so far as Palestine was concerned, came Indians, many of whom had only a few months' service to their credit. The infantry of the 52nd Lowland Division, who apparently had not done sufficient fighting for one War, left to give a hand to their comrades in France, as did the 74th, still acting as infantry, and all the remaining divisions sent at least one brigade; large numbers of cavalry and artillery also went overseas. Practically all the summer, therefore, was devoted to re-organising the forces and training the levies from India. The principle adopted in the infantry was to brigade one British battalion to every three Indian battalions right through the divisions; and this acted very well indeed, for the white troops provided just that leaven of steadiness lackingin the young Indians. In the cavalry much the same principle was adopted, but the artillery first tried the experiment of employing Egyptians as drivers in the ammunition-waggon teams, retaining the British drivers for the guns.
For a time all went well with the training of these Egyptians, until, as a test of their efficiency, night operations were ordered, which included a dash into a wadi and out the other side. This effort produced what can only be described as a "shemozzle": horses, waggons, and men piled themselves up in a hopeless tangle at the bottom of the wadi, and the night operations came to an abrupt end. In the searching inquiry which followed it was discovered by the medical authorities that less than twenty-five per cent. of these Egyptians could see clearly at night, a further twenty-five per cent. were stone-blind after sunset, and of the remainder, the most that could be said was that they could just see in the dark and that was all! When the weeding-out process was completed the British personnel returned as lead-drivers; Indians were added to make up the numbers, and this curious mixture acted satisfactorily.
A remarkable feature of the spring and summer was the gradual rise to power of the Royal Air Force, culminating in complete supremacy over the Turks immediately before and during the autumn campaign. Presumably a ship had at last arrived with adequate machines, for all through the summer long-distance bombing raids were undertaken withconspicuous success; and for the first time our planes "had the wings" of the Turks. One great raid was carried out after a report had been received that three German divisions were on their way south from Constantinople to reinforce the Turk. The trains containing two of the divisions were almost completely destroyed before they reached Damascus; the third division arrived more or less intact, and went into action in the Jordan Valley, where they were so badly mauled by the Australians that the fragments that remained bolted incontinently, and for the future stayed behind the line. In August the R.A.F., in conjunction with the forces of the King of the Hedjaz, who were working their way northwards across the desert east of Amman, made an attack on the Hedjaz railway at Der'aa, at which place the line was completely demolished and all communication severed with the north.
In single combats, too, our airmen now more than held their own, for the Turkish planes either fled at first sight or, if they stayed to argue the point, were generally brought down. From the Camel Camp on the hill overlooking General Allenby's Headquarters at Bir Salem we saw several battles in the air, for G.H.Q. was a favourite mark of the Turks, and these almost invariably went in favour of the British.
By the end of August the intensive training of the new troops and the work of re-organisation were complete; and it is interesting to note, as an indication of the way in which the army had been for the most part, made "on the premises," as it were, that it comprised British, French, Italian, Jewish, West Indian, Arab, Indian, Algerian, Armenian, and Egyptian troops, to say nothing of the tribes of mixed race but Mahommedan faith who assisted the King of the Hedjaz in the final struggle.
At this stage a word as to the disposition of the Turkish forces is necessary: their main position was at Nablus, (the ancient Shechem), which was well protected naturally by Mt. Gerizim in the south and Mt. Ebal in the north, and had been fortified with German thoroughness and ingenuity during the summer months. From here the line extended in a south-westerly direction towards the sea, includingen routeanother immensely strong position at Jiljulieh, immediately to the north of which was the village of Kalkilieh, also well fortified; another Turkish force operated west and east of the Jordan.
A frontal attack on Nablus was out of the question; an army of goats might have successfully scaled the mountains of Samaria, but it was no place for troops; nor was the Jordan Valley any more inviting. The best chance of success lay in the coastal sector, where the conformation of the ground was not so much in favour of the Turks, and it was decided that our main attack should be made here. The plan was for the infantry to make a wide breach in the Turkish line by storming the defences between Jiljulieh and the sea, whereupon the cavalry were tosweep forward on to the Esdraelon Plain and close all possible lines of retreat to the Turks, while at the same time an outflanking movement was to be carried out by the troops in the eastern sector.
The main difficulties were to concentrate unseen a large force of infantry in the plain of Sharon, and to bring the remainder of the cavalry from the Jordan Valley without observation by the enemy. The vast olive-groves round about Ludd and Jaffa comfortably concealed the infantry, whose movements were carried out at night and with the utmost caution, but the transport of the cavalry was a tougher problem, for the Turks were very much on the alert in the Jordan Valley, and did in fact expect the attack to be made in this direction.
Considerable guile was therefore necessary, into which entered a little innocent fun. It was a general and strictly enforced rule that no lights should be shown after dusk, on account of bombing raids, yet during the last weeks of August long lines of bivouac fires twinkled nightly in the Jordan Valley; and the authorities seemed to be singularly blind to this flagrant disobedience of orders. During the day at stated hours groups of men riding aged and infirm horses were strung out at 50-yard intervals, engaged in the gentle pastime of dragging sacks and branches along the roads; they made so much dust that it might easily have been caused by, say, a cavalry division going to water.Also, thousands of tiny tents sprang up round the bivouac areas, in front of which were equally diminutive soldiers in squads and companies, whose function it was to stand rigidly to attention all day long, and who treated the frequent bombing raids with utter contempt. A careful observer would have noticed a certain woodenness about them, but enemy airmen were profoundly impressed by this large concentration of troops.
Meanwhile every night brigade after brigade of British cavalry left the Jordan Valley on their fifty-mile ride across country to the friendly shelter of the orange-groves of Jaffa and Sarona, and the men left behind complained bitterly of the increase of work in having to light so many extra bivouac fires! The whole concentration was carried out without the Turks being any the wiser, and by the middle of September thirty-five thousand infantry were ready to pour forth from their hiding-places, with four divisions of mounted troops to follow hard upon their heels; it was scarcely possible to move in the coast sector without falling over a battery of artillery, and tucked away round Richon and Duran were thousands of transport camels of every shade and breed.
At dusk on the night of September 18th the orange-groves began to erupt, and for eight hours horse and foot in orderly columns marched silently forward, the infantry to their battle positions and the cavalry to the beach between Arsuf and Jaffa,there to wait till the breach had been made. At half-past four the next morning the shattering roar of artillery proclaimed that the offensive had begun, and at dawn the infantry attacked the Turkish positions, swept over those nearest the coast at the first onslaught, and then swung eastwards. One after another from Et Tireh to Jiljulieh, strongholds upon which months of labour had been expended fell before the irresistible élan of our men, though the Turks fought magnificently to hold their line. By noon the whole of the coastal sector was in our hands, and the plain of Sharon lay open to the cavalry, who had started on their historic ride north soon after our first attack.
In the meantime the infantry, driving before them the demoralised remnants of the Turkish 8th Army, captured Tul Keram, Turkish G.H.Q., together with a host of prisoners, and then continued east to help the Welsh and Irish divisions in their assault on Nablus. The Turks here had no information of the débâcle on their right, for the R.A.F. had started out at dawn and had destroyed every means of communication, except the roads, between the two armies. They therefore fought with the utmost determination, and aided by their well-chosen and well-fortified positions, held off our attacks all that day and the next, though the Irishmen by extraordinary exertions crumpled up one flank. Then the last message ever sent from the north informed them that the Britishcavalry had overrun the whole country in their rear, so far as they knew the only line of retreat left open to them was eastward across the Jordan, and this loophole, too, was soon to be closed. Panic reigned; the roads leading east were black with long columns of guns and transport and men mingled in hopeless confusion, fleeing with no thought of anything but their own safety; a routed, utterly demoralised rabble.
Nablus was occupied without difficulty on the 21st, but the infantry, who had been scrambling about the hills of Samaria for three days, could not run fast enough to catch the Turks, who were making their way through the Wadi Farah towards the Jisr ed Damieh ford. Half-way through the wadi the road has on one side a deep, gloomy gorge, while on the other stretch gaunt hills terrible in their desolation and stony barrenness. The whole aspect of the place is sinister and forbidding in the extreme, and one can imagine the panic-stricken Turks hurrying through yet a little faster, eager to sight the yellow waters of the Jordan. But they never reached the goal, for the Royal Air Force found the column half-way through the gorge. Relays of machines joined in the attack, first dropping bombs and then flying low and spraying the column with bullets. In five minutes the road eastwards was blocked, and driven by the slow but remorseless advance of our infantry far in the rear, with impassable hills on the one hand,and a precipice on the other, the column was caught in a trap.
A part of it tried to escape, before being driven into the gorge, by a road leading to the north, but were bombed back again into the shambles. Mad with terror, some of the Turks tried to scramble up the steep hills, others made an attempt to descend into the deep gorge; anywhere to escape from the awful hail of bombs and bullets. For four hours the slaughter continued, and when "Cease fire" was ordered, the road for nine miles was literally a vast charnel-house. Guns, limbers, commissariat-waggons, field-kitchens, every conceivable form of vehicle, including a private barouche, lay heaped together in monstrous confusion; and when night fell ragged, half-starved Bedouins descended upon the stricken valley, stealing from pile to pile of débris in search of loot, nor could the rifles of the guards deter them from the ghoulish task. It took an entire division three weeks to clear the roads and bury the dead.
Isolated columns from the Turkish 7th Army did succeed in reaching the Jordan, but were all killed or captured by the mounted troops left in the valley. Daily the toll of prisoners increased, as hundreds of Turks who had been in hiding in the hills round Samaria and Nablus were driven by hunger to give themselves up to the searching parties. Ras el Ain, which had been a part of our front line, presented an extraordinary spectacle,for most of the prisoners passed through here on their way south to Wilhelma and beyond. For thirty-six hours there was hardly a break in the procession shambling towards the great hill on which stand the ruins of Herod's Castle, where Salome danced for the head of John the Baptist, and where now the prisoners were caged. There was a marked difference between the condition of the Turkish prisoners and that of the Germans: the former were ragged, half-starved, and yellow with privation and fatigue, but all the Germans I saw were sleek, well-clad, and bearing every sign of good living. It was impossible to cage them together, for they fought like cats with each other on every possible occasion, and caused endless trouble to the guards, who had to go amongst them with the bayonet in order to separate them.
A Water Convoy
A Water Convoy.
The Valley of Chaos—before the Turkish Retreat
The Valley of Chaos—before the Turkish Retreat.
[To face p. 256.
Meanwhile, what of the cavalry whose business it had been to cut the Turkish lines of communication with Damascus and the north? Their chief objectives were El Afule, which might briefly be described as a place where all roads meet, Nazareth, a few miles farther north, the headquarters of the German General, Liman von Sanders, the Commander-in-Chief of the Turks, and Jenin, the headquarters of the enemy Air Force. They met with practically no opposition until they reached the entrance to the Esdraelon Plain, which is approached through a narrow pass, where a weak garrison was easily overwhelmed and captured. Had the Turkshad time to fortify this pass it is possible that the whole course of events might have been changed, for it commanded the way to the main arteries in the Turkish communications, upon the capture of which everything depended. But the surprise was complete; the fine work of the British airmen had prevented news of the destruction of the front line from reaching enemy headquarters, and their first intimation of our success was the sight of the cavalry streaming over the Esdraelon Plain towards Afule.
Most of the small garrisons on the way were literally taken in their beds, and when the few stragglers who escaped brought the tidings to Afule it was too late to make any great show of resistance. Thousands of Turks surrendered here, without attempting to fight, and when the Germans also had been roped in, the number of prisoners far exceeded that of the attacking cavalry. The loot was prodigious, for Afule was one of the main depôts of the enemy, and every house occupied by Germans showed signs of the extreme solicitude they had for their personal comfort; that of the Turks did not matter. In the hill upon which the town stands were numerous caves filled to overflowing with choice wines, cognac, tobacco and delicacies which made the mouths of the beholders, who had had neither bite nor sup for thirty-six hours, water in anticipation. An Australian trooper told me afterwards that there was sufficientwine in Afule and Nazareth for every man in the Expeditionary Force, at a bottle per head, and added naïvely that he had had his bottle just at the time it was most needed!
The column advancing on Nazareth had met with equal though not quite bloodless success. Arriving at dawn they, too, found the town asleep, and clattered through the streets in search of Liman von Sanders. He was warned in the very nick of time, however, and the cavalry had an interesting back view of a swiftly disappearing car in which sat Liman von Sanders in his pyjamas, followed at a respectful distance by some of his staff not so discreetly clad. Undisturbed by the defection of their Chief, the Germans resisted stoutly for a time, both in the streets of Nazareth and in the hills north of the town, but ultimately all were gathered in and sent across the ancient battlefield of Armageddon to join the rest at Afule.
The aerodromes at Jenin were captured, or, to be more exact, rendered useless by our aircraft, who had hovered over them ever since the beginning of the battle, dropping an "egg" whenever enemy machines attempted to come out. When the cavalry arrived, practically all they had to do was to tie up the hordes of men who were only too anxious to surrender.
In five days the combined forces had smashed up two Turkish armies and had taken forty thousand prisoners.
I cannot do better than end this chapter by giving in full General Allenby's letter to the troops thanking them for this remarkable achievement: "I desire to convey to all ranks and all arms of the Force under my command, my admiration and thanks for the great deeds of the past week, and my appreciation of their gallantry and determination, which have resulted in the total destruction of the 7th and 8th Turkish Armies opposed to us. Such a complete victory has seldom been known in all the history of war."
At this stage the campaign developed into a species of fox-hunt on an enormous scale, with the Turk very adequately playing the part of the fox. Although some forty thousand of the enemy had been captured in the grand attack, a similar number still remained at large who were running very hard in the direction of Beyrout and Damascus, and these it was our business to pursue. Also, the King of the Hedjaz emerged from the desert east of Amman, and in conjunction with the Australians, fell upon the 4th Turkish Army, who were still making some show of resistance in the mountains of Moab, captured most of them, and started the remainder on the long road to Damascus.
Thus the hunt was up on both flanks, the infantry for the most part following the coast route and the Hedjaz column ridingviaDer'aa.
In the centre, with a long start, the cavalry who had poured through the first gap in the Turkish line were still riding hard after the enemy. The cavalry travelled so quickly that they missed, I think, much of the interest of the journey, whichtook them through the centre of a country wherein almost every village has a history; the reader, therefore, will perhaps find the slower gait of the "Camels" more to his taste.
The prisoners were still pouring in when we left Ras el Ain, and in the eyes of those we passed was an awful glassy stare as of men who had come through great torment: these were they who had come out of the Valley of Chaos alive.
Here and there a German officer walked alone at the head of a batch of Turks, and as this was a sufficiently unusual sight, I asked one of the guards the reason. He replied that many of the Turkish battalions were commanded by German officers, whose principal asset was a firm belief in discipline as practised in the Fatherland. Hated and feared by Turkish officers, and contemptuously regarded as inferiors by officers of their own blood, in captivity neither party would own them: they were Ishmaelites.
The attitude of our camel drivers towards the Turks was somewhat amusing, though it is to be feared that pity is a quality but little understood by Eastern nations. "Turkey finish!" they would say with an indescribable shrug of the shoulders, and this expression, about the only English they knew, seemed to afford them infinite satisfaction.
In the early stages our route lay across the recent battlefield, where on every hand were the terrible signs of a routed army: dead horses, the wreckageof guns and waggons, rifles with the murderous saw-bayonet attached—a monstrous weapon for any nation to use, little clusters of shells near dismantled battery positions, long rows of sharpened stakes in front of a trench smashed almost out of recognition, and endless barbed-wire torn and blown into grotesque piles by the violence of our bombardment; and through the débris slunk the predatory Bedouin with his dingy galabeah full of loot. At one place a Turkish camel with a gaily caparisoned saddle trotted up to us and joined the column for company; he earned his keep, too, after he had recovered from the effects of his long fast and had been fattened up again. While on the subject of animals let me state that on this first day a goat, an ass, another camel, and numerous pariah dogs added themselves to our ration strength.
The goat earned opprobrium and early demise by eating one of my notebooks, which contained a nominal roll of some two hundred camel-drivers; and as each native has at least four names—Abdul Achmed Mohammed Khalil is a fair example—the fact that we made several meals off the goat was not adequate compensation for the labour of re-writing the roll. The ass performed the duty to which he has been accustomed from time immemorial in the Holy Land: he carried the aged. In the company we had a number of old men who had joined the corps probably because they had sons already serving, and we used to allow the old fellows to ridein turn upon the ass, particularly towards the end of a long day's march. The number of these "Abu's" (fathers) who developed a pronounced limp at some time or other during the day was astonishing, but the sudden and miraculous cure that was effected by the appearance of the Bash-Rais (native Sergeant-Major) completely bewildered the uninitiated. The second camel, being too young to carry a load, was killed, and gave me my first taste of camel-steak, which in flavour is not unlike veal.
Of the pariah dogs I dare not trust myself to say much. They would follow the convoy all day long, with the furtive air characteristic of those to whom life means nothing but a constant dodging of half-bricks violently hurled; and at night they would sit around in a circle and perform the mournful operation known as baying the moon, which they did with prodigious enthusiasm and complete indifference as to whether there was a moon or not. It will convey much when I add that there was a deplorable lack of suitable stones along the roadside.
After leaving Tul Keram, a hill town whose white mosque was a landmark for miles, we turned westwards and struck across the plain of Sharon towards the sea. Hereabouts the country with its red soil and glorious verdure is not unlike some parts of Somerset in appearance. The harvest had been gathered in, and we passed through vast fields of stubble, which were divided one from anotherby strips of curious coloured grass. Indeed, this bluish grass and the cactus-hedges were the only forms of boundary used in Palestine and Syria; I never saw a wall except one built by the troops for defensive purposes.
At one part of the trek the road led through a tunnel, very nearly half a mile in length, which was formed by a double row of vines whose branches bent over a kind of trellis-work; and on either side of this leafy tunnel were orchards of pomegranate and fig-trees. Dessert was plentiful for some days. There was little evidence now of the destructive hand of war, except that no one was working in the orchards and vineries, and the inhabitants of the small native villages through which we passed mostly remained behind closed doors, with not even an inquisitive eye at the window.
Cæsarea seemed quite busy by contrast, when we arrived in the cool of evening, though it is only a tiny fishing-village whose tumbledown mud-huts are completely overshadowed by the great masses of ruins with which the rocks are covered. As with other ruined sites in this country of ruins, it was difficult to realise that Cæsarea once represented the might of Rome, as an imperial city and the most considerable port in Palestine. Jaffa must have been small and mean by comparison, for Herod the Great not only built after the pattern of Rome a great city of pillars and columns, butconstructed an artificial harbour deep enough to float any ship of his time; nor were the defences neglected, for the city was once in its history besieged for seven years! Of the harbour nothing now remains, and, to come back to the present, the water was scarcely deep enough to float the lighters of the merchant-ships landing rations for the division.
We had the Mediterranean for company after leaving Cæsarea, except for an occasional brief incursion inland where the coast was too dangerous for traffic. On one of these détours we passed through Zimmerin, a German colony magnificently situated on a hillside and surrounded by a great forest. Here in times of peace lumbering was carried on, though whether the Germans followed Solomon's example, and floated rafts of timber down to Jaffa or north to Haifa, I was unable to ascertain. At any rate there seemed to be no other way to get their timber to the markets.
I wonder how many people are aware of the extent to which the Germans carried their policy of "peaceful penetration" in Palestine and Syria? Whenever in our wanderings we came across a neat, modern town or village, be sure that the inhabitants were mainly German; that in many cities they were also Jews does not, I suggest, make a great deal of difference.
The language of all was German, and their extraordinary thoroughness in devising means toovercome the climatic and other difficulties of the country was also German, with the result that they waxed fat and prosperous, while the people indigenous to the soil scraped a precarious living by tending the flocks and tilling the land of the interlopers. All through the country from Gaza, where there was actually a German school, to Haifa, of which the largest and wealthiest portion of the population was German, you will find these colonies occupying almost invariably the most commanding sites and situated in the midst of the most fertile tracts of land.
It was, I think, by contrast with these prosperous places that the ruins of Palestine and Syria took on an added desolation and loneliness: you could with difficulty visualise the past splendours of a crumbling mass of mighty pillars when on the hill opposite stood a town of bijou villas with modern appurtenances.
A mournful example of this was at Athlit, the remains of whose greatness lay half-buried almost at the foot of Mt. Carmel. For a brief moment you could capture the spirit of a bygone age; the massive walls seemed to ring again with the clash of arms and the shouts of that little band of Crusaders who were fighting their last fight in their last stronghold on holy soil. Then your eyes lit on the great barrack of a German hotel on the top of Carmel, and the great fortress dissolved into a crumbling, shapeless pile at your feet.
Beyond Athlit lay the port of Haifa, a town of considerable size, which contained the largest German colony in the country. The road leading into and out of Haifa is typical of the Eastern mind; that is, it is anything but straight.
After you have left what might be called the west-end of the town, which is inhabited by the Germans, the road winds interminably through the native quarter apparently undecided what to do. Eventually it turns and climbs the lower slopes of Mt. Carmel until, very nearly at the top, for no reason whatever that I could see, it makes up its mind to descend again. After about four hours of meandering you find yourself on the outskirts of the town, wiping a heated brow and wondering aggrievedly why the wretched road could not do its business properly.
Seen from the vicinity of the "brook Kishon," where we camped that night, Haifa is a beautifully clean-looking town of modern stone houses each with its little cluster of trees round it, built on the mountain-side high above the malaria-infested flats which stretch eastwards towards the Esdraelon Plain. The inhabitants seemed uncommonly glad to see British troops, and gave the sailors who were granted shore-leave a particularly warm welcome. It was pleasant to hear some news, after being "off the map" for five days. The cavalry had been doing amazingthings,for they started from Nazareth almostimmediately after its capture and rode westwards to Haifa, which they stormed in face of strong opposition. Another party rode on to Acre, twelve miles away, capturing it without difficulty; after which the two forces joined up and turned east again towards the Sea of Galilee. Meanwhile the cavalry coming from the Jordan Valley had been fighting constantly with the stray bodies of Turks encountered on the northward march.
Resistance was for the most part unorganised; but at Semakh, a town at the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, the Turks made a most determined effort to save the railway. The Australians, however, were in a hurry; they wanted to be the first troops to reach Damascus, and would brook no delay. Semakh was taken by a brilliant and impetuous charge which carried the Australians through the defences and ended in the Sea of Galilee, as also did large numbers of the enemy!
Royal Tiberias was occupied next, after which both the eastern and western forces started on the hundred-mile ride to Damascus, which necessitated a climb from six hundred feet below sea level to nearly three thousand above. Again there was some desultory but bitter fighting, notably at the Jordan soon after the march had begun, but the cavalry carried everything before them, and, riding day and night, reached Damascus on October 1st, after a final burst of thirty-six hours in the saddle. In the ten days since the opening of the offensivethey had covered upwards of two hundred and fifty miles, a feat which for endurance alone on the part of men and horses has not been equalled in this War.
In that time they had cleared the greater part of Syria of the enemy, and had captured or driven into the hands of the more slowly advancing infantry over eighty thousand prisoners, with practically all the guns and transport in the Turkish Army. Virtually the fighting was over, since almost the entire enemy force had been accounted for, the few thousands still at large being a disorganised rabble, incapable of further resistance.
But news of a greater peril than War reached Haifa. Famine stalked naked through the land of Lebanon; and it was urgently necessary to send help to the starving inhabitants of Beyrout and the surrounding country. Political reasons, too, demanded that we should occupy as much territory as possible. On October 3rd, therefore, we marched out of Haifa and began the long journey north.
Behold us, then, once more on the high road—or, to be more accurate, the broad firm sands leading to Acre. We were all mighty pleased to be on the move again, partly because Haifa was not a deliriously exciting place to be in, but chiefly because the neighbourhood of the famous river Kishon was singularly uninviting, and when the rains came, would be a veritable plague-spot of malaria and blackwater fever.
We did not need the history books to tell us that Acre was, and is, a fortress; for the great battlements are still standing, and the massive walls show little signs of decay. Magnificently situated on a promontory at the northern end of the bay, it rears its head proudly, as becomes a city that in twelve hundred years has withstood more sieges than almost any city in Palestine. It is, too, essentially English in its associations: from the time of the Crusaders, whose chief stronghold it was, down to within hailing distance of our own day.
Except for an itinerant stone-merchant thecountry around has few attractions; and as we proceeded it grew rougher and more difficult to negotiate, until it reached a point where all progress seemed likely to come to an abrupt end. A huge spur of rock, jutting far out into the sea and shutting off the beach, completely blocked the way; it was as though we had come to the limits of one country with this great sentinel to bar our entrance into another. It was the Ladder of Tyre, the geographical barrier between Palestine and the Land of Canaan; and we had to climb over it somehow.
Having negotiated a small hill in the foreground we descended into a steep gully with innumerable twists and turns, ever growing more difficult and dangerous. As the place was strewn with boulders the camels had great trouble in finding a foothold, particularly with the additional handicap of two bales of tibben or sacks of grain, which oscillated dangerously with the uneven movement. Presently the slope became more gradual, though not less rough in surface, and finally the path began to ascend towards the Ladder itself. Cut in the face of the rock were broad but shallow steps, in some places worn almost flat by the passage of countless thousands of feet. Indian pioneers were hard at work on the Ladder and had already, in the short time at their disposal, done wonders in the way of removing the litter of stones that covered the steps, blasting away portions of overhanging rock, and building rough ramparts on the sidenearest the sea. The camels approached it very gingerly at first, but after one or two had "refused," tackled the climb. About half-way up the cliff there was a sort of platform which marked the turn in the Ladder; here a false step meant destruction, for it was a sheer drop down to the sea three hundred feet below.
A pioneer chose the precise moment at which I reached this platform to touch off a small blasting charge, the noise of which so startled my mare that she very nearly stepped off the edge; and a piece of rock hit a camel and all but started a stampede. After that, being a person of small courage, I dismounted and walked.
The descent was even worse than the ascent for the camels, for the steps were not only broad but wide from back to front, and it needed a big stride successfully to negotiate them. I found it difficult enough on foot; how the camels accomplished it without mishap, carrying their heavy burdens, will ever remain a mystery.
Eventually we reached the level ground on the other side, and continued along the shore as far as Tyre, a town nowadays of poverty-stricken fishermen, with scarcely anything visible of the ancient city. "I will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found again, saith the Lord God"; thus spoke Ezekiel the Prophet concerning the fate of Tyre, and his words are literally true to-day.
The Valley of Chaos—after the Bombing Raid
The Valley of Chaos—after the Bombing Raid(see p.255).
[To face p. 272.
We began shortly to come upon the real beauties of the Land of Canaan. The road was bordered in many places by fruit trees of all kinds, overhanging so far that you had only to reach out your hand to pick the fruit as you rode along. Also, there were numerous orchards and kitchen-gardens with whose owners we used to bargain for the produce. Curiously enough we had extraordinary difficulty in persuading the people to take Egyptian money: they would insist on having Turkish money in spite of our reiterated assertions that it had suffered a serious slump in value. One old lady to whom I showed a Turkish one pound note—worth about the cost of printing—simply jumped at it, and immediately fished out an enormous bag of small change. She was quite upset at my refusal to part with the note; and we haggled for a quarter of an hour about whether she would give me, roughly, sixteen shillingsworth of Turkish silver for a piece of worthless paper, or whether she would accept five piastres Egyptian in exchange for a hatful of limes.
The camel-drivers thoroughly enjoyed this part of the trek; indeed, they were in amazingly high spirits the whole way, despite the long daily march. They had as much water as they could drink, a great thing for the Egyptian native, there was fruit for the picking on the trees, and everything was free! So they imagined, but the exasperated ladies who were continually coming to complain that asportsman in a blue galabeah was rifling their orchards evidently thought otherwise.
All the camel-men had the predatory instinct strongly developed, and they were adepts at concealing the "evidence," which sometimes was very much more than fruit or eggs. On one occasion the convoy passed an old man driving a flock of sheep, of which one mysteriously disappeared. I happened to be riding immediately behind the flock and saw nothing unusual, yet some time after the old man caught us up at the midday halt and complained that one of the camel-men had stolen a sheep. We searched the convoy from end to end and found no trace; we even went so far as to search the men's clothing! and ultimately the old man had to go away without his sheep.
Curiously enough, a leg of mutton appeared in the mess that night; and a very welcome change it was, too, from bully-beef.
I can offer no explanation of the phenomenon; I only know that we searched the convoy conscientiously and thoroughly and there was no sign of mutton, dead or alive. It must have needed marvellous sleight-of-hand to conceal a full-grown sheep from view!
That was the reverse side of the medal: the obverse was much brighter. It was impossible not to admire the extraordinary endurance of the camel-men. They would march fifteen to twenty miles a day for days, and even weeks at a time, providedonly that they had enough water; and, well led, they would go anywhere and do anything.
On the fifth day out from Haifa we marched into Sidon, whose inhabitants turned outen masseand welcomed the column with great and spontaneous enthusiasm, which left no doubt as to its genuineness, though at times it became a trifle embarrassing. On the surface the people looked little the worse for four years' privations and ill-treatment at the hands of the Turks, but a glance into the shops as we passed showed little else but fruit in the shape of food; and this is not very satisfying as a sole diet. In some parts of the town pinched faces and wan cheeks were frequent; and one group consisting of an elderly man with his wife and two daughters especially attracted my attention. Their faces were dead-white, as if they had been living below ground for years, and the dull, stunned look of misery in their eyes was terrible to see; obviously they had not yet fully realised their deliverance. The old gentleman, a French Syrian, told me that when, three years before, he had heard of the coming of German troops to Sidon, he gave out to his neighbours that he and his family were going to the north, leaving the empty house in charge of the native caretaker. The family disappeared, and until the hurried departure of the Germans nothing more was seen of them, when they—apparently—returned once more to their home.
In reality, they had never left it. They hadretired to a disused wing of the house, barricaded themselves in so skilfully that no one but the old caretaker who looked after the supplies suspected their presence; and there they had lived for three years, never venturing out except to walk at night in their extensive garden! On one occasion the house was occupied by a German staff-officer, and their walks ceased for three weeks; but for the greater part of the time it had remained untenanted. During the period previous to our coming they had been almost entirely without food, other than fruit and dried legumes.
That was the story told to me as nearly as I can remember it, and the lifeless pallor of the old Frenchman's face and those of his family certainly gave colour to the narrative. It is very hard to believe in starvation when you are surrounded on all sides by beautiful gardens and orchards abounding in fruit; and those at Sidon were surely the loveliest on earth. All round the town stretched great masses of green, in the midst of which, like diamonds in a sea of emeralds, were white cupolas and summer-houses, with scores of fountains playing all day long. On the hills behind the gardens were many modern houses admirably built after the Italian fashion, whose mellow terra-cotta blended effectively with the green mass below. Riding through the umbrageous lanes between countless orchards you could believe anything but that people here were starving.
The division had been promised a rest at Sidon forthe remainder of the day, but shortly after two o'clock in the afternoon an urgent message came ordering us to make a forced march in order to reach Beyrout, thirty-five miles away, the following night! At four o'clock we left the beach and climbed steadily past those glorious gardens, until we struck the highroad. A few miles outside Sidon, we passed an inn which could not have changed much in character since the time of Christ. It formed a bridge across the road, and thus gave shelter to the passer-by from the noonday heat in summer and the torrential rains in winter; on one side there were the living rooms for the traveller and on the other side the stables wherein his ass or his horse could rest for the night. There were a few men lying in the shade of the "bridge" as we passed, and, peering into the stable, I could just see a donkey contentedly munching at the manger: the whole scene seemed to have come straight out of the New Testament.
Later in the afternoon I noticed a beautiful little house standing in its own garden, and rode over to examine it more closely. One thing only I saw; the rest was blotted out. Nailed to his door was the body of the owner, and beneath lay the charred—yes, charred—remains of what had once been his legs. He had been crucified and burnt alive; the twisted body, and the awful, tortured expression on the martyred man's face, left no room for doubt.
After a halt for a couple of hours at midnightwe began the final stage. While it was yet dark we had tremendous difficulty with those camel-drivers who were unable to see at night, the "mush-shuf-bi' leil's" ("can't see-at-nights") we used to call them; and as we had a few blind camels as well the situation called for some ingenuity. The only way to solve the problem was to tie the men's wrists to the saddles of the camel immediately in front of them. They then allowed themselves to be towed along, keeping the rope just taut enough to act as a guide.
The blind camels were similarly treated, though even then there were accidents. One came shortly before dawn as we were crossing a viaduct with neither wall nor protection of any kind against a thirty-foot drop. A blind camel blundered towards the edge, slipped, and crashed down into the riverbed, and as he had 200 lbs. of biscuits on his back to speed his fall, it looked like a certain casualty. With some difficulty we clambered down to him, and found him not only alive but calmly grazing on the herbage around! And when the biscuits were removed he got up, grunting and snarling, but absolutely uninjured and ready to carry his load again.
As we approached Beyrout the signs of distress among the people grew more and more pronounced. Along the route were several tiny villages whose inhabitants gathered by the roadside to beg for food, and it was awful to see the wolfish way they ate thebiscuits we gave them. At many places women stood with jars of water which they offered to the camel-drivers, not, I am sure, as aquid pro quo, but because it was all they had to offer.
Just at the entrance to the olive-groves, which extend for six miles out of Beyrout, I saw a dead child lying by the roadside, and from that point the journey became a succession of heartrending sights. Gaunt, lean-faced men, women thin to the point of emaciation, and children whose wizened faces made them look like old men, lined the route weeping for joy at their deliverance. Every one of our men as he passed handed over his day's rations of bully-beef and biscuits to the starving people; I saw one woman hysterically trying to insert a piece of army biscuit into the mouth of the baby in her arms, and groups of little boys fighting for the food thrown to them. It was pitiful to see the gratitude of people who succeeded in catching a biscuit or a tin of bully; and the way they welcomed our camel-drivers, who, of course, spoke Arabic like themselves, was a revelation.
A man, haggard with want, came out of his little wine-shop and offered me a glass of aniseed, apologising courteously for its poor quality, and explaining that it was the only drink he had been able to obtain for sale during the War! A glance at the rows of empty bottles in his shop-window confirmed the statement. God knows how he had earned his living during the past three years.
Towards evening the head of the long column entered Beyrout: from miles behind on the hills we could see the swinging kilts of the Highlanders, while the sound of the bag-pipes floated faintly back to us. By eight o'clock, we, too, were marching into the town through crowds of delirious people, who clung to the troops as they passed and kissed the boots of the mounted men; it was the most painful, pitiful experience of all. As we swung down the hill towards the beach a man said: "You are just in time, monsieur; in six days we should all have been dead."
That was the main thing: we had marched ninety-six miles in six days, we were dog-tired after a last continuous trek of eighteen hours, but—we were in time!
Sixty thousand people died of starvation in Beyrout during the War, out of a total population of one hundred and eighty thousand. There is overwhelming proof that this was a part of the brutal policy of systematic extermination adopted by the Turco-Germans towards the weaker races of Syria and Palestine. When Beyrout was evacuated the enemy collected all the food they could lay hands on, including the recently garnered harvest; and what they were unable to carry away with them they dumped in the harbour rather than give it to the starving people. Four hundred tons of foodstuffs were wantonly destroyed in this manner; and as an example of callous and spiteful vengeance, towards a people whose chief fault apparently was that they were hungry, this would be hard to beat.
The mortality amongst children was appalling. You could not ride out of the town without seeing their dead bodies lying by the roadside, where they had dropped from the arms of mothers too weak to carry them, often enough themselves lying dead a few yards farther on. In the poorer quarters of the town, especially near the docks, the dreadfuldeath-roll lengthened every day. The Turks had gone out of their way to destroy many of the houses, with the result that hundreds of people were wandering about, foodless, homeless, and utterly friendless. For the first few days most of our work was carried on in and around the docks, where crowds of women and children congregated daily in the hope of obtaining food. I saw one small boy walking in front of me with a curious, unsteady gait, and just as I drew level with him he pitched forward on to his face without a sound. He was stone-dead when I turned him over; and judging by the terrible emaciation of his body he had died of protracted starvation.
Until the foodships arrived the British Army fed most of the people; I use the word "most" advisedly, for even here there were fat profiteers who had made fortunes out of the War, and who cared nothing for the sufferings of others. The poorer inhabitants literally thronged the various camps in search of food, and with characteristic generosity the troops tried to feed them all! They gave away bully-beef and biscuits to those most in need, and, whenever possible, their tea and sugar rations also; it was painful to see the gratitude of the recipients.
Except amongst the very wealthy both tea and sugar had been literally unknown for four years. When we entered Beyrout the price of tea was four hundred piastres (£4 2s.) per lb.—and chemically-treated stuff at that; and sugar, which was all but unobtainable by anybody, cost three hundredpiastres per lb.! Within a week of our arrival you could buy both commodities in the shops at about twenty piastres and five piastres per lb. respectively.
But distress and suffering were not confined to Beyrout alone. On the pleasant hills of Lebanon north of the town are numerous villages through which the Turks had swept like a plague. Here the policy had been not so much starvation as extermination: whole villages were stripped of their inhabitants, who had been forcibly carried away, the men to slavery or death; the women to something worse. You could ride through village after village without seeing a soul, save perhaps an old man who would tell you that he was keeping the keys of the houses for their owners—who would never return. It is impossible to describe the pall of desolation that hung over those silent villages, a desolation that seemed to be accentuated by the beauty of the surrounding country.
Upwards of a quarter of a million people were either deported or massacred by the Turks in the Lebanon hills alone; and only in the villages occupied by Circassians, whom the Turks themselves had subsidised, were there any signs of even moderate prosperity. These people, moreover, showed marked hostility towards our troops, and had to be suppressed.
When the 7th Division left Beyrout in the middle of October to march farther north to Tripoli the situation was considerably easier. Foodships had arrived, and arrangements had been made forregular supplies to be given to the people, though at first they needed medical aid rather than food, so weakened were they by long privation and want. The chief difficulty in the distribution of supplies was the shortage of labour, for the advance had been so rapid that it had quite outdistanced the administrative branches of the service. Half a dozen R.A.S.C. clerks and a small party of the Egyptian Labour Corps, assisted by the "Camels," toiled night and day at the docks: we were dock-labourers, stevedores, and transport all in one. The fact that Beyrout was the only real port in the whole country nearer than Port Said did not tend to relieve the strain, for the natural disadvantages of Jaffa as a port prevented its being utilised to the full, while Haifa, although it possesses a magnificent harbour, had not as yet enough accommodation for ships.
Our own men now began to feel the effects of the arduous campaign. The rainy season was imminent, and malaria and blackwater fever claimed their victims by the score. The troops who had spent the previous five months stewing in the hothouse atmosphere of the Jordan Valley suffered particularly heavily through malignant malaria, contracted during those months, which lay dormant while operations were actually in progress and appeared when men were run down and weakened by their tremendous exertions. The Australian Mounted Division, who had been the first to enter Damascus, were amongst the hardest hit by thedisease, for the oldest city in the world is also one of the most unhealthy—or was, at all events during the time of our occupation.
The River Abana, which runs through the city, was choked with dead horses and Turks for ten days. Hundreds of Turks wandered about, nominally prisoners, but with no one to guard them; they were far more numerous than our own men; and as the Turks generally had little idea of sanitation and less of personal cleanliness they were extremely unpleasant people to have about the place.
There were no regrets at leaving Damascus, for though the odour of sanctity may hang over the venerable city, it is as naught compared with the other odours, of which it has a greater and more pungent variety than any city in the country.
With the capture of Beyrout and Damascus hostilities had not ended, although the greater part of the Turkish Army had ceased to exist. While the 7th Division wereen routeto Tripoli the cavalry were making a corresponding advance in the centre, despite the ravages caused in their ranks by malaria. Indeed, with cheerful indifference to the geographical, to say nothing of the other difficulties in the way, they proposed to ride as far as Constantinople; that, it was felt, would be the crowning point of a great ride! However, for the moment they contented themselves with occupying Homs, a town on the caravan route about a hundred miles north of Damascus. ThenGeneral Allenby ordered a further advance on Aleppo, the last stronghold of the Turks in the country; and on October 21st the 5th Cavalry Division with the armoured cars started on what was to be their last ride. It was a worthy effort: in five days they covered a hundred miles, entering the city on October 26th, preceded the day before by the troops of the King of the Hedjaz, who had driven all the Turks away during the night.
After the capture of Aleppo, Turkey, having no army left, threw up the sponge, much to the disgust of the Australian Mounted Division, who, having reached Homs, hoped to be in at the death. Still, since theirs had been the honour of entering Damascus, it was but fitting that the 5th Cavalry Division should be the first into Aleppo, for the exploits of the two forces had been almost parallel throughout the campaign.
Thus in forty days, in the course of which the army had advanced upwards of five hundred miles, Turkey had been brought to her knees, her armies had been completely destroyed, and a country that had suffered from centuries of misrule had been cleared of the oppressor. It is, however, significant of the bitter hatred the Turks bear towards the Armenians and other races of Asia Minor, that even after the Armistice one of the chief troubles of our troops was to prevent the Turkish prisoners, who were awaiting transportation to the great camps in Egypt, from maltreating Armenianswherever and whenever they came into contact with them! Drastic measures with Turkey will have to be adopted by the Allies if these little nations are to live in comfort and security in the future.
The weeks following the surrender of Turkey were occupied by the army in feeding the people, in reinstating them on the land, and in setting up a stable form of government in the country. It is unnecessary here to enter into detail, but it may be stated that the policy which had met with universal approval in Palestine was adopted in Syria. Subject to certain obvious limitations every man was free to come and go as he pleased; and, with no restriction whatever, he could worship as he pleased, whether Christian, Mussulman, or Jew. To quote one example of the goodwill that prevailed: the head of the Greek Church in Homs offered his Cathedral to the Army for the thanksgiving service held after the signing of the general Armistice, and members of nearly every religious denomination were present at a most impressive ceremony.
The Arabs took over the government of Damascus and the surrounding country, which presumably they will retain for the future; the French, who have large interests in Beyrout and Lebanon, will, I believe, be the paramount influence there—though curiously enough, the one question we were constantly asked by the people of Beyrout was whether the British were going to take over the town; and from fifteen miles north of Acre down tothe Suez Canal the country will probably be under the protection of the British. As this includes the desert of Northern Sinai the conquest of which had taken two long years, it is unlikely that we shall be accused of land-grabbing!
It is reasonably certain that Palestine will need material help for some time, for Turkish maladministration, and the iniquitously heavy taxes imposed upon the people, have almost killed initiative. So far as real development is concerned, it is almost a virgin land, and although the efforts of those responsible for the work of reconstruction are both vigorous and successful, it will be many years before Palestine is producing up to her full capacity. At present the grain crop of the entire country could be brought to England in about seven ships; in fact, before the War most of it was bought by a well-known firm of whisky distillers!
Whether the Jews as a nation will ever settle in Palestine is a question the future alone will solve; certainly the wise policy of the British and French governments offers them every inducement, if they really wish to become a nation again in their own ancient land. If the prophets are to be believed Jerusalem will one day be the capital of the world—but it will not be in our day.
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