OÙ L'ON S'AMUSE
If I set out to make a categorical list of the things that existed or were
made for our amusement in Palestine, it would, I think, consist of no more
than four items, viz.: sea-bathing, military sports, sight-seeing, and
concert parties; and I am not sure that the last-named ought to be
included, for it was not until the final year of the campaign that they
played any considerable part. Certainly Palestine was a difficult country
in which to set up any of the more usual forms of relaxation. There were no
neat little towns just behind the lines where a man could drink his glass
of beer while he sat and watched the pictures, for example; nor were the
Judæan hills exactly the ideal place wherein to set up a cinema or theatre
of your own. Those who were fortunate enough to be stationed near Jaffa
could, of course, visit that delectable spot, with its glorious
surroundings and incredibly filthy streets; where they could see the
alleged house of Simon the Tanner, or tread the sands whereon Napoleon
slaughtered some three thousand prisoners in cold blood because he had no
idea what else to do with them; and where, if they had a mind to renew the
agony of their schooldays, they could pick out the extremely common-place
rocks to which that unfortunate lady Andromeda was chained before her
sensational rescue by Perseus.
These about exhausted the amusements of Jaffa, and you will notice that
they do not exactly make for hilarity. A few miles away to the south were
the Jewish colonies at Richon and Duran, whose inhabitants were extremely
hospitable, and any troops quartered there subsequent to the fall of
Jerusalem were assured of a warm welcome. At the former there was a
considerable vine-growing industry and, as a natural concomitant, the
troops showed commendable industry in drinking the produce.
Personally, I remember Richon chiefly because a tragedy befell me there.
The village contained a real barber's shop, if one may judge from the word
"Coiffeur" writ large on the sign outside, and having heard of this
startling phenomenon I rode over one evening for a hair-cut and shampoo. My
foot was on the very threshold when a large person clad in fine raiment and
wearing an armlet inscribed with the mystic letters "A.P.M." emerged from
the shop, banged the door and pinned thereon a notice: "Out of Bounds." I
pointed dramatically to my tangled mop of hair. "Eight weeks," I murmured
brokenly. Whether or no that young man thought I was repeating the name of
an erotic novel I cannot say, but he made a very tactless answer. I
retired discomfited to find that my camel, having succeeded in breaking his
head-rope, had returned to home and friends, leaving me to trudge back to
camp and the tender mercies of the horse-clippers. I never heard for what
crime the barber had been arraigned, though it would appear that the word
"Coiffeur" can be sometimes misinterpreted; but I find it hard to forgive
the A.P.M. for not allowing him to continue in his nefarious career,
whatever it was, for another quarter of an hour. Successfully to cut your
own hair needs, I imagine, considerable agility and a complicated
arrangement of mirrors; and a pair of horse-clippers, the only alternative,
was a fearsome weapon in the hands of a man whose sole experience in the
hair-cutting profession was a murderous performance every morning with an
army razor.
Elsewhere on the western portion of the front there were one or two similar
small towns, but either they were out of bounds for sanitary reasons or
were negligible in the matter of amusement; the average native village
offered no inducement whatever for a visit. Even Ludd, which in the spring
and summer of 1918 became a mighty depôt and the terminus of the Military
Railway for the time being, never rose to the dignity of a cinema. Like the
inhabitants of a certain country village in the North of England, if you
wanted distraction at Ludd you went to the station and watched the trains
shunt.
After the Turks had made the last of a series of costly but abortive
counter-attacks to regain Jerusalem and were finally and for ever driven
back, the city was placed strictly out of bounds until Borton Pasha and the
medical authorities had thoroughly purged it of all unpleasantness: the
Germans and Turks were extremely uncleanly in their habits. Later, when
this had been done, Desert Corps established a Rest Camp at Enab, about six
miles from Jerusalem, and from time to time organised parties to visit the
tombs and other holy places in the neighbourhood. As these were very well
arranged and were usually in charge of padres from the various
denominations they were much appreciated by the tired men coming up from
the Jordan Valley for a rest. It is no part of my purpose to take the
reader on a kind of personally conducted war-time tour of Jerusalem; the
guide books will supply him with all the information he wants. Besides, he
would inevitably be disappointed, unless his first glimpse of the Holy City
was from the summit of Nebi Samwil or, coming out of the Jordan Valley on a
moonlit night, he saw the shimmering radiance of the Mosque of Omar at the
top of Mount Moriah.
But the Rest Camp at Enab was strictly limited both in size and scope. It
was for the use of the mounted divisions only, and men went there chiefly
for a rest; amusement, such as could be had in the form of sight-seeing,
was of secondary importance. A more universal camp was at Beni Saleh, on
the coast near Khan Yunus, where glorious sea-bathing was to be had; it
was, in fact, the only thing to do.
You started the day by a wild sprint across the short stretch of beach
between the tents and the sea, finishing up with a headlong dash into the
water, which was just cold enough to make the body tingle, but imparted
none of the shock that comes with the morning tub at home. This gave you an
appetite for breakfast, if any such aid were needed. When the sun grew hot
towards the middle of the morning you went in the sea again and stayed
there for an hour or two, with an occasional sprawl on the warm sand by way
of a sun-bath.
If you felt particularly energetic a pair of ancient drill shorts rolled up
and tied with a piece of a head-rope made quite an adequate ball for
water-polo, until it became water-logged and sank to the bottom; then you
had to fish it out and spread it on the sands until it was dry enough to
resume duty. A few units used footballs for water-polo, but this was mere
luxury. Ours, worse luck, always had a puncture somewhere in its internal
economy.
Another camp on a similar but larger scale was the attractively named
"Change of Air" Camp at El Arish, which could accommodate some thousands of
men at a time. Here the tents were pitched almost at the water's edge. Men
divided their day between lounging about in their pyjamas and bathing,
whilst in the evening they could sit and listen to one of the numerous
concert parties who came up the line from Egypt. There was also a library
of sorts; it was, rather, an olla podrida of books, some left by the troops
themselves, but largely cast-offs from the stately homes of England,
ranging in variety from the admirable racing-stories of Mr. Nat Gould to a
learned treatise on bee-keeping, the latter evidently intended by the
sender as a guide to budding colonists in the Land of Canaan.
Many thousands of the troops in Palestine will, I fancy, have pleasant
memories of these two camps, if only because you could, if you wished,
bathe for twenty-four hours every day; and it was a wonderful sensation to
feel really clean.
Those who had the misfortune to sojourn for a while at Deir Sineid,
however, will remember the Rest Camp there with quite different feelings.
This was established during the rainy season of 1917-18, and most of the
rain in Palestine fell on the Rest Camp. Troops returning from Kantara to
rejoin the Desert Corps stopped at Deir Sineid _en route_. Sometimes, more
particularly when the railway was flooded, the congestion was so great that
one tent to sixteen men was considered a liberal allowance by the
authorities. The men thought otherwise. Once the sixteen were safely wedged
in, there they stopped for the night. There was, indeed, no encouragement
to wander abroad even if you could get out without the aid of a shoe-horn.
Frequently a tent collapsed under the weight of its responsibilities, and
there are few things more disconcerting to a sleeping man than suddenly to
be enveloped in a mass of cold, clammy canvas. Mr. Jerome, in _Three Men in
a Boat_, speaks amusingly of his efforts at putting up a tent; by the same
token, his description as an onlooker of the efforts of sixteen sleepy but
infuriated soldiers, indifferently protected by a ground-sheet against the
cold blast and the pouring rain, struggling to erect a tent in ankle-deep
mud would have been deliriously comic. One party acquired a number of
wooden boxes--once the home of tins of "Ideal" milk--with which to make a
floor for their tent. This answered satisfactorily for a time, until the
heavens opened and the rain descended almost solidly for three days. On the
third night the sleepers were awakened by the sound of rushing waters.
Their floor was afloat, a raft on a sea of mud and rain, and in a few
moments the tent made an unsuccessful attempt to act as a sail.
Subsequently the use of makeshift floor-boards was strongly discouraged; it
was better to sleep in the mud.
It is a relief to turn from these doubtful amusements to the more solid joy
of a little horse-racing. It is safe to say that no form of relaxation was
more popular amongst the troops. Considering that we made our own
race-courses, with all the appurtenances thereto, the military race
meetings were astonishingly successful. There was even a totalisator for
those, which meant everybody who could obtain an advance on his pay-book,
who liked what is called in racing circles "a flutter"; and there were
always several amateur "bookies" as well. The only adjunct familiar to the
race-courses at home missing from our meetings was the professional
tipster, with his information "straight from the horse's nosebag." As was
natural in an army largely composed of cavalry, there were several crack
riders well known at home, amongst them at least one who had won the Grand
National. This officer, by the way, so the story goes, was turned out of a
riding-school one morning because the instructor considered that he did not
know how to ride! It would be interesting to know what standard of
attainment was required!
Wherever a meeting was held everybody who could beg, borrow, or steal a
horse, a mule, or a camel entered it, entirely indifferent of the feelings
of the animal in the matter or whether its best distance was five furlongs
or five miles.
The camel races, while not exactly regarded as a medium for speculation,
were the most amusing to watch. No course was too large for a camel. He
zig-zagged all over the countryside, and as often as not finished the race
with a fine burst into the midst of the spectators. The mules had their
moments too; and some of them were nearly as fast as a horse. There was a
great deal of speculation, in the literal sense of the word, over the
mules; some of them would start, others "dwelt," and others whipped round
and made for their stables.
One N.C.O. entered a mule whose chance was esteemed so lightly that the
owner-rider was the sole purchaser of a twenty-piastre (4s.) ticket at the
totalisator. In the race, however, the mule was on his best behaviour and
walked away with the prize; his courageous rider received £66 for his faith
and his one ticket! This glorious uncertainty was one of the features of
military racing and added not a little to the excitement. Army horses,
except officers' chargers, are notoriously gregarious by reason of their
training, and you could generally be sure of a close finish in any race
confined to horses belonging to "other ranks" of the cavalry and artillery.
I believe the infantry on the whole were a great deal worse off in the
matter of amusement than were the mounted troops; regimental sports formed
the staple joys of their leisure hours, except for boxing matches when they
could be arranged; and the latter ran racing very close in the matter of
popularity.
When all is said, however, there was singularly little beyond what we made
for ourselves which could legitimately be called amusements. The wonder is
not that there was actually so little but that there was so much. Our
nomadic existence hardly lent itself to the more permanent forms of
relaxation. Men occupying a portion of the Jordan Valley one week and the
next holding the line on the banks of the river Auja, had neither the time
nor the inclination for anything but sleep; we were nearly always on short
rations of both water and sleep.
So in the end it came to this: if you wanted a complete change from
Palestine you had to go to Egypt for it, either _via_ hospital or on leave.
In the latter case, when you had succeeded in the superhuman task of
convincing the orderly-room clerk that your name was next on the roster,
there came first a long trek across country to railhead. Here you were
harassed by an officious person called the R.T.O. who inspected your papers
and then scrutinised your person in order to satisfy himself that you were
not a criminal escaping from justice. Then you were handed over to an
underling who led you to a glorified cattle-truck, whose interior was an
amazing jumble of boots, bare knees, helmets, rifles, packs, faces, and
drill clothing, and courteously invited you to step inside.
Regardless of the howl of protest from within the truck you thrust a
tentative leg over the side, to be met immediately with a muffled but
earnest request that you removed your boot from the speaker's face. This
little difficulty overcome, perseverance was necessary before you could add
_your_ person and kit to the heterogeneous collection already filling the
truck. This resolved itself presently into some thirty fellow-sufferers,
who, by dint of shuffling and squeezing, made room for yet another on the
floor. Then came the thirteen-hour journey to Kantara, followed by another
four hours on the Egyptian State Railway to Cairo, or seven to Alexandria.
If you accomplished the whole journey without going into hospital you
could, on your arrival, consider yourself on leave.
Now in seven days it was impossible to do more than touch the fringe of
Cairo. The first three were occupied in accustoming yourself to sleeping in
a real bed and to being caged within four walls at night. Then you set
yourself to discover interesting places to visit. By the time you had made
a selection for the day, it was too late to start for the place and you
retired to Groppi's for a "mélange," with which to console yourself for the
disappointment. I knew quite a number of men who neither went to the
pyramids, nor saw the Sphinx, nor climbed up to the Citadel to see the
mosque of Mahomet Ali, nor penetrated into the bazaars, nor even visited
the Zoo. They all said that it took them so long to make up their minds
where to go that the day was spent ere they had decided, so they went
nowhere. I fancy that a large number of men were so overcome by the
unaccustomed sight of shops and streets and people that they did naught but
wander round looking at them, breaking off at intervals to eat large and
variegated meals. When you think about it this was not a bad way of
spending a short leave, especially in a city like Cairo where there was so
much to see and so little time to see it in. Moreover, by the time you had
settled down to your leave it was over, and you had to face the
cattle-trucks once more. All things considered, since home-leave was out of
the question, it saved at least a bad attack of nostalgia if you stayed
with your comrades up the line and made your own fun.