IN FULL CRY
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 riding _via_ Der'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, which took 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
wreckage of 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 ride in 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 another by 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, but
constructed 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 to overcome 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 amazing things, for they started from Nazareth
almost immediately 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 offensive they 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.