Amman, that the enemy showed fight. There our advance guard came under
machine gun fire; but the Division’s rapid advance on the town was not
stayed. As the scene of the severe March fighting came into view the
Australians appreciated the disaster which had so suddenly fallen upon
the Turkish arms. In March, the only possible approaches to Amman led
through hurricanes of machine gun fire, together with shells from
several field batteries. But now, the broken foe, although he fought
gamely at this particular spot, was quickly out-witted and out-classed
by Light Horse manoeuvre, and soon the Australians, after trifling
casualties, were riding in the streets of the squalid modern village,
and marvelling at the glory of the ancient Roman amphitheatre. Contact
with the Roman in this hour of our triumph did us good. It subdued our
vanity. In these far outposts of the old Roman Empire, on the very edge
of the barbarian desert, the massiveness of the stone-work and the fine
quality of the decorative carving proclaimed to the least imaginative
mind the culture and mighty physical achievements of our great rivals in
the task of Empire building. “The splendour that was Rome” is told far
more convincingly in distant Amman and Baalbek than in the ruins of Rome
itself.
[Illustration]
The Australians took 350 prisoners in Amman, and the New Zealanders
another good bag as the Turks attempted to escape to the north. But the
chief, and by far the most amusing, exploit of the Anzacs’ campaign,
fell to the 2nd Light Horse Brigade under General Ryrie, at Ziza, about
twenty miles to the south. News came through that a large Turkish force,
which had been far to the south on the Hedjaz railway at Maan, was in an
entrenched position at Ziza, and a regiment of Queenslanders rode down
to spy out the land and, if possible, to smash them. The C.O. reported
that he was in touch with 5000 Turks, who wished to capitulate, but they
would not lay down their arms until they were sure that a great force of
hostile Arabs, by whom they were surrounded, would be kept away from
them. So the Colonel of the Queenslanders suggested that the whole
Brigade should hurry down to assure the Turks of their safety. General
Ryrie at once decided to go, and the twenty miles were covered in less
than three hours.
ARABS AND TURKS
The Brigade arrived shortly before dark, and an extraordinary situation
was discovered. The Turks were in a strongly defended position around
the village. They were made up, in the main, of Anatolians, regulars and
the cream of the Ottoman army. Moreover, they were well armed and
capable of a good fight. Our Brigade was not complete and was
outnumbered by about ten to one. The Turkish commander rode out to meet
the Australian Brigadier. “I will surrender,” he said, “if you will
protect us against the Arabs.” “Certainly,” said the Brigadier. “The
Arabs are our allies; if you surrender, you have nothing to fear.” But
the Turkish leader would not be convinced, and he demanded that the
Australian force should be greatly increased before his men gave up
their arms. Otherwise, he would be pleased to fight. General Ryrie was
anxious to complete the surrender and save casualties, and the
Australians and Turks spent the night together in arms around the same
camp fires!
Next morning, the Turks laid down their arms and marched as prisoners to
Amman. The incident was an interesting sidelight on the feeling of the
Turk towards the Arabs, whom he has so long governed. But it is a highly
significant fact that, in the long campaign, the Arabs took 17,000
Turkish prisoners, and the Turks not a single Arab. To the Arab, the
Turk has been an enemy in arms. To the Turk, the Arab has been a rebel,
and deserving of a rebel’s fate.
Ziza practically finished the Anzacs’ brilliant little campaign. In all,
some 11,000 prisoners were taken. The total battle casualties for the
Division did not exceed a few score.
THE TECHNICAL SERVICES
The writer of this sketch has been obliged to keep severely to the work
of the Force as a whole, and has recorded little or nothing of the great
achievements of the many technical services, lacking which the
victorious progress of the Light Horsemen would have been impossible.
The performances of the Australian No. 1 Flying Corps Squadron, the
first Commonwealth Flying Squadron engaged in the war, deserve a volume
to themselves. Recruited chiefly from the Light Horse Regiments, both
pilots and observers excelled in resource and daring, and in their
golden chivalry to their foes, and in their many fine rescues of fallen
comrades far behind the enemy lines, shone the spirit of Saladin and
King Richard. They were the modern Knights of Palestine.
[Illustration:
ANZAC RIDGE, GAZA
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration]
Then there were the Engineers (no attempt is made to place these
services in order of merit—a hopeless task), who found us water at will,
as with a magician’s wand, beneath the blistering sands of Sinai; who
bridged the Jordan under heavy fire for the crossing to Moab, and who,
so often, blew enemy railroads, bridges and viaducts heavenward. Working
over every kind of country from the desert to the mountains, they won
through because of their indomitable spirit, and their boundless gift
for improvization.
THE M.O.
[Illustration]
In the whole war there has not been a campaign which depended so much
for its success upon the native wit of the individual. Conditions
changed with dramatic suddenness from battle to battle. What served
to-day, was useless to-morrow. As an example of this, take the superb
work of our Medical Services. The Medical Officer was, all the way, a
man of many inventions. In the desert the wounded were habitually
carried on sledges made of sheets of galvanized iron, and, later, upon
an improvement of this device; as the campaign progressed, they were
borne on camels; and once, at least, in the mountains east of Jordan,
they were carried lying flat on rough beds made of greatcoats on the
backs of horses; and as the road improved, they were carried in
two-wheeled sand-carts, in ordinary G.S. wagons and every kind of motor.
The Light Horse galloped, and those who would serve them must gallop
too. The almost miraculous rapidity and efficiency with which the
Medical Units would establish their various stations and communications,
at the very heels of a fight, distant perhaps a hundred swiftly-covered
miles from railhead, made them worthy peers of the sparkling horsemen.
And, thanks to the establishment of the mobile operating theatre—a
veritable galloping machine, like the rest of the force—under a gifted
surgeon, it was possible for the most intricate skull and abdominal
operations to be carried out at the edge of the zone of fire. All honour
to our doctors and their devoted staffs! And especially dear in the
memory of Light Horsemen will always be the mounted stretcher-bearers.
No wounded man was beyond their gallant reach.
Of the Light Horseman’s debt to the Nursing Sisters this narrative will
not dare an estimate. As long as memory lasts, every officer and man
will think with deep gratitude of the sustained, self-sacrificing
devotion of these noble Australian women. Fighting in this alien and
uncivilized land, thousands of young Australians for years never spoke
to a British woman, except when in hospital. What the ever-ready
sympathy and helpful friendship of the Sisters meant to them only these
lonely soldiers could tell.
THE A.S.C.
[Illustration]
The supreme masters of improvization were the officers and men who
handled the supplies. Not only the Australians, but the whole of the
Imperial Cavalry—the greatest mounted force in the war under a single
command—led by General Chauvel, depended for their rations upon the
distinguished ability of the Queensland Colonel who was responsible for
the direction of the supply and transport for mounted corps in the
Desert. A cavalry force requires about four times the quantity of
supplies which suffices for infantry, and, on occasions, it travels four
times as fast. During the ride to Damascus, the horsemen, more than
once, covered sixty miles in twenty-four hours; and on the whole
advance, no man or horse went short of a mobile ration. British
railways, captured Turkish railways and rolling-stock, motor-lorries,
four-wheeled G.S. wagons, two-wheeled limbers (their off-side horses
carrying pack-saddles, so that, if the vehicle failed, the load could be
transferred), camels in tens of thousands, countless mules and
donkeys—the interminable, sleepless procession on the roads during
General Chauvel’s final triumph was a fitting culmination to the great
transport record from the Canal onward.
Of our Australian machine gunners and signallers, and of the model
Veterinary Service, which cared for our sick and wounded walers as
promptly and faithfully as the Medical people cared for the men, and of
the British batteries of Horse Artillery, which unfailingly advanced to
extreme limits with their guns and shot so unerringly (never was man so
welcome as a galloping gunner in a sticky dismounted fight)—of all
these, it is enough to say that without them Palestine could not be ours
to-day.
[Illustration]
The fighting ceased for the Australians early in October, with the
capture of Damascus and Amman, though No. 1 Australian Light Car Patrol
(Captain James), accompanying the 5th Cavalry Division, took a prominent
part in the capture of Aleppo, and in the pursuit of the Turko-German
forces north of that city. The final campaign yielded prodigious results
at a trifling cost in battle casualties. Of the 75,000 prisoners made by
General Allenby’s Army, more than 40,000 were taken by the Australian
and Anzac Mounted Divisions. The losses in killed and wounded, in the
two Divisions, were nominal. Unfortunately, however, the Force then
suffered the worst spell of sickness it had known since leaving
Australia. The terrible ordeal of Jordan Valley during the summer took
its suspended toll. Malaria ran like wildfire through the regiments, and
there was also much acute influenza with pneumonia following, sandfly
fever, and other more or less serious diseases peculiar to the Holy
Land. Many brave men, who had survived four years of hard fighting and
extremely rough living, lost their lives by sickness in the moment of
victory.
The Australian Mounted Division was pushing on from Damascus towards the
country north of Aleppo, and the armistice was signed as they reached
Homs, which marked the northern limit attained by the Light Horsemen.
To-day, the force asks only one question: “Who goes Home—and when?”
[Illustration: H. S. Gullett.]
_Palestine, December, 1918._
[Illustration]
Anthem Bells
Heard ye the bells, the chapel bells,
Pealing in Bethlehem?
The vibrant swells, the solemn knells,
On the eve of a requiem?
Saw ye the trees
When the gentle breeze
Caressed the leaves of them?
Heard ye the guns, the distant guns,
That thundered down the vale,
When comrades strode the mountain road
To brave the battle gale?...
O, see the worn, returning men whose march no fire could stem,
And hear their song as they surge along
The road to Bethlehem!
O, hear the hoofs, the iron hoofs,
Falling in Bethlehem,
While sunlight flames on the ruddy roofs
In the hills of Jerusalem!
And if you’ve crossed the wilderness by well and palmy hod,
Pray heed the bells, the heavenly bells,
That call the folk to God.
“GERARDY.”
Palestine Poppies
From the hills to the sea, a scarlet trail of flowers in the spring,
when the little grey larks are singing and all the low country is green
with barley. Wild flowers everywhere, yellow and purple and
butterfly-blue—but the poppy is our choice. It glows on Australian
graves in the plains and down by the sea where the surf croons all day
long; it makes beautiful old battle-grounds, and flakes the wady’s brown
banks with scarlet. The blood-red poppy is Palestine’s flower. At the
wind’s touch petals fall from the slender stems to lie softly in the
grass, as if some rare and lovely bird had shed its plumage there. The
red poppy is our flower of War, and in the tranquil days of Peace will
be our flower of Memory.
Among the sea-dunes white lilies grow, and they, too, will have power to
win us memories of Palestine, unclouded by sorrow; memories of the blue
Mediterranean, serene as a summer sky, or flinging ramparts of foam
alongshore. When we camped at Malala or Marakeb beach, heeding all day
the call of the surf, the land wind bore to us faintly the scent of
blossoms unseen. A colour, then, and a fragrance of flowers are the
gifts we shall take overseas. One will bring memories tinged with
sadness; the other of golden hours.
Palestine is a wild garden in spring. Many plants blossom on through the
summer, fading at last in the season of mists, when dawn comes veiled
like a bride and the earth is pearled with dew. In spring, when the
wattles shower gold on our streams, Palestine poppies are blooming. From
the white sea-dunes to the long blue hills the land is alight with
flowers. And all the larks of the world and all the butterflies seem to
be gathered there. Over every blossom some bird is singing or a
butterfly floating on sunlit wings. A murmur of bees in convolvulus
bells; grasshoppers leaping over the tall grass; wagtails gleaning in
sheltered places; white vultures high in the blue; and kestrels hovering
over the barley, keen-eyed for prey.
Those long rides across the plains, before the Turks were driven back to
the hill country, were wonderful. Our horses breasted a green sea of
barley, and it was hard to urge them on. Often we drew rein to look at
leisure on the earth’s green mantle inwrought with flowers. The plains
and the valleys were beautiful. We rode inland along the blue ways of
Dawn, rode on till noon, then, after rest, took the sunset trail, when
cloud shadows were skimming over the earth. We gazed at the purple
ranges and wondered what lay beyond. Under the stars we slept well.
One ride I remember more vividly than all others. We started at sunrise
from Belah, rode through a village, and came to a place of little hills
whose slopes were bare of trees. Here the Bedouins had pitched their
tents, some on the hills and some in the valleys, singly or in groups.
When we cantered past men came from the tents to look at us, and
children followed after, wailing for backsheesh. The women remained at
their tasks. Dogs barked at our horses’ hoofs till their masters cursed
them, when they slunk back snarling. We travelled on, with Fara on our
left—a great grey bulk against the sky—coming at length to old
pasture-lands that War had restored to Nature. Where dust had lain deep,
and all plant life had perished under the feet of an army, Nature had
won loveliness, healing earth’s wounds with grasses and flowers. It
seemed an idle dream that the red tide of war had surged where poppies
flamed in the sun and the little speedwell’s eyes of blue shone amid the
grass.
Far as our vision ranged the land was bright with flowers—tulips, blue
salvias, scarlet pimpernels, asphodels, white daisies, anemones, and
lilies swaying on tall stems; hollows brimming with sunshine and pink
with cyclamens; acres of red poppies set in emerald; sky-coloured
lupines; a green knoll fringed with “pheasant’s eye”; and away to the
west a long, brown field flaked with white convolvulus flowers.
For a mile we rode along the wady, seeking vainly an easy descent for
the horses. Every cleft was starred with flowers; over the ledges melon
plants trailed, making caves of tiny crevices haunted by lizards and
spiders. Down a steep track we rode carelessly, letting our eyes dwell
on blossoms and giving the horses free rein. We won to the other side
safely, then on again through flower-land, with the white tents of the
Camel Corps gleaming afar at Shellal. A long, glad ride from dawn till
dusk across the plains in spring.
When we carried war to the Judean hills we found wild beauty there;
flowers among the terraced hills and olive trees in the valleys. Pink
hollyhocks grew on the heights along the Jerusalem road. The valleys
were gardens. Gehenna’s goat-tracks, winding among old tombs, were
bordered with scarlet poppies.
Wild flowers are Palestine’s glory. No one has named them all. From Dan
to Beersheba, among the hills of Moab and Judea, on the wide plain of
Esdraelon, on Hermon and Tabor, in Gilead and Bashan; everywhere in
Palestine Spring casts down her kindling buds. We have seen them all in
our long campaign, and out of the shining company have chosen two for
remembrance: the little red poppy (symbol of sleep), and the lily that
grows by the sea.
CHARLES BARRETT.
[Illustration]
Farming in Arcady
Up in fanatical, uncorrupted old Hebron, where, happily, the cheap
tourists are afraid to venture, you see the rude but expert craftsman
making the plough. Seated in his gloomy little recess, hewn out of the
stone of the hillside, he works swiftly with toes and fingers. Seizing a
rough bent branch of an olive tree, he stands it up and grasps the lower
end firmly with his deft and supple toes. The pieces fly. Slashing and
turning, he lops the smaller limbs, hacks it here and prunes it there,
and, in a few minutes, flings it aside complete, except for the steel
tip which plays the part of the share.
For a few shillings the plough is bought by the Bedouin. The selection
of the land for cultivation is equally simple. Over most of the
Palestine we covered, there is little regularity in the tenure of the
small holder. The Sheik of the village has a loose control over a wide
area, for which he pays tribute and taxes in grain to the Turk. The
Bedouin is granted a plot the size of which is according to his capacity
to cultivate and his inclination to work. He is rarely ambitious, and
always lazy. If he has more than one wife, or has children of a working
and a hungry age, he will extend his area. But, like the piece of glass
bottle in Grimm’s fairy tale, he loves best just to lie about and
glitter in the sun. That is better than any exceptional success as a
farmer.
As a cultivator he has complete confidence in Allah. He has never heard
of artificial manures, or of the rotation of crops; he rarely troubles
to irrigate even when water is available. Here, as all over the Eastern
Turkish Empire, there is fertile land for every inhabitant, and to
spare. So the Bedouin roams wide with his plough. He crops here this
year, and next year tries a patch a few miles away, which has been
resting for a season or two under the thin native grasses. His selection
made, he appears at dawn one morning, riding on his mournful ass and
carrying his plough in front of him. Or perhaps he rides one of his
little black oxen and leads the ass; or he may ride either the ass or
the oxen and lead a horse or camel. The point is, that he always rides
and carries the plough, and that his wife, if she is in attendance,
always walks and carries half-a-hundred-weight of something on her head.
It is a significant commentary upon his neighbours that he always brings
his plough home at night.
[Illustration:
HARVEST TIME
]
[Illustration:
PLOUGHING AS OF OLD
]
[Illustration:
NATIVE STOCK
]
[Illustration:
THE FRANCISCAN MONASTERY
]
[Illustration:
LAKE OF TIBERIAS
]
In his team he seldom drives two of a kind. It is a cow and a donkey, or
a scabby, bony ghost of a pony and a camel. You can yoke them as you
please. Palestine is a land that knows no shame, and so the horse does
not rebel at being harnessed with a cow. Lazy as he is, the Bedouin is
always up at dawn. At dusk he goes to his mat to sleep; he cannot read,
and the villages burn no night-lights.
Cleverly holding his simple plough upright with one hand, he pelts clods
at the team or wields a long goad with the other. Up and down he
scratches little gutters a few inches apart, his camel towering
ludicrously above his ass. Usually, he sows his seeds in strips before
the plough. He rarely harrows and never rolls, but sometimes he shows a
sense of the value of fallow by ploughing twice. The rest he leaves to
Allah.
Sometimes, in the spring, he will pluck the wild turnip and radish and
other tares from the growing corn. As a rule he prefers to sit in his
coloured rags in the pleasant sunshine. Or he may go off to Jaffa with
his asses and his women, and traffic in oranges. Then you see him, with
both asses and women brutally overloaded, goading the donkey, or perhaps
astride behind the burden of fruit, as the little long-eared slave
totters along the tracks. The women, like the asses, never protest. The
man is master. It is the way of the East.
The beautiful lilies and poppies vanish as summer comes upon the
rolling, treeless plain. The corn ripens and harvesting begins.
Machinery plays as little part here to-day as it did among the “alien
corn” near Bethlehem long ago, when pretty Ruth worked for Boaz. In
Palestine the world has stood still for a thousand years or more, or
when it moved it moved backward. Much of the barley and wheat is pulled
up, roots and all, but some is cut with sickles. In each village there
is a harvest floor—a patch of clean, hard ground, where each man builds
his little stack and sees about the threshing.
Occasionally you see the flail at work, but it is not popular. To wield
the flail is hard work. So the Bedouin employs his cattle, his wives and
his children. He spreads the loose crop in a little circle about two
feet deep. Donkeys and oxen and ponies are then tied together, from two
to four abreast, and goaded round and round upon the straw. Sometimes
the threshing is done by their hoofs alone; but often a rude wooden
sledge is drawn after them. Time is of no concern. The cattle barely
move; the owner sits with his friends under the shade of an olive tree,
smoking many cigarettes and occasionally dreaming luxuriously over his
hubble-bubble; pleasant breezes blow across from the gleaming
Mediterranean. The season has been generous: Allah is good. Why hurry?
The threshing finished, rough wooden forks are used to remove the
coarsest straw, and then the winnowing begins. Day after day the harvest
is thrown high into the air, and, slowly but surely, the chaff and dross
are separated from the grain by the Mediterranean breezes.
Then the Turk comes—or he did before the war—and takes from thirty to
sixty bushels out of every hundred! That is why the Bedouin is so fond
of glinting in the sunshine, like the piece of glass bottle in the old
fairy tale.
H. S. G.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
“Standing to.”
While the sleep-drunk world behind lies still abed,
And the dawn breath chills the smoking mists before,
Down the lines between in commune of the Dead,
There are eyes, that world of slumber watching o’er;
There are trenches darkly sheening readied steel,
There are orbs aglint, the darkness peering through;
And the shades of Night, the shades of Death scarce veil,
For the millions, to the Day, who’re “Standing to”
“Standing to”—in grim attesting to a Thought,
By the scars that weal Earth’s Face from sea to sea
In the pride to set the need of Life at naught
For the will to live a fancied Destiny;
Waiting, watching, till the hour of dree be gone,
Or muezzin-guns roar forth their hate anew—
O! Well may the world of Slumber slumber on,
For those watchers of the Dawn, who’re “Standing to.”
BRENTOMMAN.
[Illustration:
OUTPOSTS
]
[Illustration:
JORDAN VALLEY DUST
]
[Illustration: DINNER GONG!]
[Illustration]
A WALER’S STORY
Of my early life I remember but little. I have a dim recollection of
golden sunlight, of wide-sweeping plains, of a huge dam down by a
homestead, of tall trees like some I have seen around Jaffa, and others
with golden blossom, and of a long trip in a railway truck to
Homebush—ah! you know the place?—where I was sold.