halts, become uncomplimentary about our leaders, revile horses for
jogging and stumbling, warn companions of the damage they are likely to
do if they persist in being careless with their rifles. Cheerful and
good-tempered soldiers are few at 03.00.
And so on until we hail with relief the approach of dawn, which dispels
the hallucinations of darkness.
“ARAM.”
[Illustration:
ROMAN FORT, JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
HORSES UNDER COVER
A. L. HORSE IN CAMP
2nd A. L. H. MARCHING THROUGH KHAN YUNIS
]
A Gloomy Outlook
Amidst the universal joy—booming of guns, ringing of church bells,
cheering, and the screeching of ships’ sirens—I am gloomy and ill at
ease. I cannot share in the thanksgiving and tumultuous welcome of
Peace; my mind is dark with foreboding, oppressed by thoughts of three
things that have made so many happy lives miserable during the Great
War.
With the knowledge that huge stocks of dubbin, bully and biscuits are on
hand, how can a chap be joyful? They must be disposed of—not cast into
the incinerator—and thoughts of the woe that they will cause make me
sorrowful.
The war has ended, and with it the need for dubbin. Stacks of the
beastly stuff must be disposed of before we are demobilized. There is no
market for it, and nobody would take it as a gift. Offer it to a Light
Horseman or a driver, and you would see stars not of the firmament. But
I’m sure that The Heads won’t let it be wasted. It’ll be read out in
orders soon, that all saddlery and harness must be anointed with dubbin
once daily and twice on Sundays. There’s a good time coming!
Bully and biscuits are even dearer than dubbin to the granite hearts of
Q.M.’s, but they’ll have to issue them now by the ton. Rapid consumption
is the only way to get rid of the pyramids of B and B left on hand
through Fritz throwing in the towel sooner than the Supply Office
anticipated.
Army biscuits are beyond the capacity of Gyppos and Bedouin; if we
strewed them broadcast over Palestine, they would lie there untouched,
and ruin all agricultural prospects: even a stump-proof plough would
crumple up if it struck an army biscuit. We can’t dump our stocks in the
sea: think what would happen in a collision between a liner and an A.
B.! No; we’ve got to eat the lot, empty every tin of bully and biscuits,
and take the consequences like heroes.
“ARAM.”
[Illustration:
_FROM GENERAL CHAYTORS HDQTS._
_After the Battle of BIR EL ABD_
]
[Illustration:
_THE FIELD OF BATTLE
FOR
RICHON LE ZION_
_Morning 15th Nov_
]
[Illustration:
_THE BATTLE of BEERSHEBA_
_Drawn for Anzac M^{td} Div Hd Qts KHASHIM ZANA_
]
[Illustration]
Reconciliation
Full many a time we’ve known the call to arms,
The sudden storm ... the aching aftermath,
When spent companions slumbered ’neath the palms,
And wooden crosses marked the wake of wrath.
Full often have we saddled up and sped
Over the sand, sweeping along at large,
Braving the fitful hurricanes of lead,
Galloping down resistance in the charge.
Mute sorrow and great hardship have been ours,
Long journeyings and escapades in force—
But have we not beheld the poppy-flowers
Nodding in red confusion on our course?
Yea, we have crossed the woeful waste of sand,
Left sorrow far behind; and we have heard
The skylarks carolling in the Holy Land,
Where flower and tree commune with bee and bird.
“GERARDY.”
[Illustration]
Mail Day
“The mail’s in!” The glad tidings are tossed from lip to lip and shouted
down the lines, outstripping, and for the time suppressing, the current
furphies, “Furlough to Australia,” “Peace Negotiations,” “A big Stunt,”
and similar creations of the idle imaginative mind.
“There’s a mail in!”—A magic wand has been waved above the troops by an
unseen hand and weariness and even sleep are banished from the war-worn
soldiers. Even the sick are interested, and their eyes light up with an
eager look of expectancy.
“There’s a mail in!” The chronic grouser forgets to grouse, the lead
swinger lays aside the lead and, for the time, his petty pains, and they
join the eager throng around the perspiring orderlies who are struggling
with the jumbled mass of letters, papers and parcels, bringing chaos to
order, sorting mail into squadrons and then into troops, ere it can be
distributed.
What a study are the faces of that watching throng; what a joyous gleam
leaps into the sleep-laden eyes of a tired youngster who has caught a
glimpse of a letter addressed in the well-known hand of the mother who
waits at home.
There is a youth just from school, who has not yet tasted the mad joy of
battle, of a ding-dong mix up, when death shrieks through the air
missing one by inches, by hairbreadths. Here, too, is the war-hardened
warrior, who knew Anzac before the Suvla advance, who has met, fought
and beaten the Turk from Romani to Jericho, the hero of a hundred
fights, of scraps fought out on lonely patrol, that the world knows
naught of, though to the individual they are more fraught with peril
than a big battle.
To soldiers mail day is a day of bliss. Recruit or warrior, their faces
portray the emotions that are surging through their breasts. Their eyes
grow bright with eagerness as they watch the pile of mail assume shape
and order under the deft hands of the postal orderlies.
Men moving out on outpost or patrol shout to their mates, “Get my mail,
Jack,” “Get mine,” and ride off casting longing eyes at that waiting
crowd; with joyful hearts they move out into the night, to outwit the
enemy or return no more. But what care they—for it is mail day!
Before dawn, outpost and patrol return, weary and with sleep-laden eyes.
They off-saddle and picket their horses, and dash into the bivvies for
their mail. Matches are struck surreptitiously, candles are lighted and
hidden by blankets, for lights are forbidden when in touch with the
enemy; and thus are the letters eagerly read. Often Billjim falls asleep
from sheer exhaustion, the last letter still clutched in his hand, and
dreams of his Australian home; the fragrance of gum and wattle blossom
are wafted to him from overseas on the cool night breeze.
Mail day, the most joyous and most tragic in a soldier’s life, brings
messages of love and trust from dear ones, messages of faith and praise
from friends; and at times news that is sorrow-laden.
“WIL COX.”
[Illustration]
A Day Over the Lines
In the language of the Corps, “there was something doing,” for from dawn
till dark machines had been coming and going on the aerodrome almost
without a break; in fact, it was “some day.”
Just as the first grey streaks of dawn crept over the horizon the roar
of a couple of hostile aircraft patrol machines taking off woke an
otherwise peaceful camp. An hour later the orderly officer was bustling
round two more machines, which were to leave on the early morning
reconnaissance of the country behind the actual scene of operations and
along the Turkish lines of communication, to search for any signs of
fresh concentrations or reinforcements being hurried up.
At two hour intervals machines left in couples to patrol above our lines
and prevent any possibility of Boche machines sneaking over, either to
watch the movements of our troops or to bomb them; for, during a stunt,
it was just as important for us to keep the Hun blind as to keep our own
eyes well skinned.
[Illustration]
To me fell the first patrol, and a call from the Orderly Officer at 3.30
a.m. was not received with the utmost courtesy. After hot tea and toast
by candle light, we scrambled into warm leather coats, woollen-lined
boots, gloves and helmets, and climbed aboard. By the time I had
inspected my guns and the usual contents of the cockpit, the engine was
ticking over and we were ready to start. It was still dark enough, as we
took off, for the pilot to need all his lamps alight to see the various
instruments, and, as we climbed, the crisp morning air set our blood
tingling with the joy of living. When above the clouds at about 8000
feet the first rays of the rising sun shot across the sky, and very
shortly the clouds, which until then had been snowy white, were bathed
in a crimson glow that held us spell-bound with its beauty. Primarily,
the crests of those billowy mists were tipped as with a wand of fire
whilst, as we ascended into space and the sun gradually rose above the
horizon, the colour spread over that sea of cloud until it appeared like
a stupendous stream of lava belched forth from some volcano which, after
years of quiescence, had suddenly burst into activity.
[Illustration:
GOT HIM COLD
_By Lieut. O. H. Coulson_
]
[Illustration]
I have seen many sunrises under varying conditions, sunrises at whose
beauty I marvelled, but never before had I witnessed anything that could
come within coo-ee of the riotous blaze of colour that lay spread
beneath us, covering the Holy Land, as it were, with a cloth of gold. It
disappeared from view, however, all too soon, for, as the sun gained in
strength and we in height, the colour slowly faded from fiery brilliance
to a delicate pink until, finally, the clouds once again showed up in
all their glistening purity.
It seemed impossible to realize, whilst nature was all aglow beneath us,
that war was being waged with all its relentless cruelty, that guns were
sending forth their messengers of death and pain, and, above all, that
we, who had been privileged to witness the glory of God’s handiwork,
were scanning the heavens for something in the way of Hun airmen to
kill. To me it seemed a sacrilege that, on such a glorious day, hate
should be animating the hearts of men, and that I should be a willing
agent, eager for an opportunity of sending a fellow-mortal crashing to
earth and death. The Hun, however, evidently deeming discretion the
better part of valour, did not put in an appearance, and when, after
three hours’ cruising up and down the lines, we returned to the
aerodrome, I believe I was pleased that I had not been, by force of
circumstances, compelled to share in sending some creature to meet his
Maker.
So, throughout the day, the work went on, and, as a Hun “bus” was
reported to have bombed our troops in the early morning, every one of
our machines thereafter carried four bombs to drop on any suitable
target that offered itself.
Whilst on afternoon reconnaissance, the observer located a large body of
enemy troops, and, immediately on receipt of his report, a bomb raid was
ordered on which every available machine was to be sent. Luckily, I was
detailed for escort duty, and it was a pleasant experience to watch the
bombing machines assembling overhead, as they arrived from the different
aerodromes, and took up the allotted formation. About 5 p.m. the leader
fired his light and thirty machines, like a flock of great birds, set
off on their journey to play havoc with our old friend, the Turk. After
dropping the bombs, all machines swooped down on the troops and used
their spare machine gun ammunition in shooting them up and generally
giving them a devil of a time.
All good things come to an end, and, finally, we set out for home, which
we reached just as the sun, a ball of fire, was sinking to rest. The
machines, glistening white in the reflected sunlight, resembled a flock
of swans coming home, as, in slow, stately circles, one by one, they
glided to earth. The Mediterranean, as calm and unruffled as a
mill-pond, reflected the glory of the sun until its surface glowed like
a sheet of burnished gold. By the time we, as escort, had seen the last
of our charges land in safety and commenced our own descent, the sun was
well below the skyline, and the narrow ribbon of the pink afterglow that
skirted the horizon was all that remained to remind us of the sun and
its glory.
H. BOWDEN FLETCHER.
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
THE END OF THE SCRAP
_By Lieut. O. H. Coulson_
]
[Illustration:
TURKISH PRISONERS AT ES SALT
]
[Illustration:
JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
NAZARETH FROM THE AIR
]
Mounts and Remounts
[Illustration]
On my arrival at the Unit, I considered myself fortunate when the
corporal presented me with a fat, sleek remount, only lately up from the
Base. My suspicions were not aroused until, preparing to mount, I
discovered what an enormous supply of cameras the Troop possessed. All
classes seemed to be represented, from the V.P.K. pip-squeak to the
ponderous P.C. “Jericho Jane” variety. Maintaining a professional
attitude, I mounted.
[Illustration]
In my youthful days I’ve paid two shillings to see a horse perform
evolutions and gyroscope stunts not to be compared with the tricks that
animal unearthed. I had an irresistible tendency from the first to fall
off over the place where, in normal times, his head and neck should have
been. Finally, yielding to impulse, I descended to good Palestine mud
amid the shrieks of an ill-mannered crowd. Some imbecile sauntered up
and said, “By jove, matey, if you could only have stopped up another
five secs. I would have had one of the best snaps in the Unit.” I
wouldn’t trust my reply to a green envelope. The sergeant remarked that
horsemanship didn’t seem to be my forte, so I informed him that my
marching-in papers proclaimed me a flag-wagger, not a Bronco Buster.
[Illustration]
“Right,” said he, “take Maaleesh.”
[Illustration]
I took him, for better or for worse, and went to make his acquaintance.
That horse didn’t belie his name. Maaleeshness fairly radiated from him,
from his huge, out-of-proportion head that an A.S.C. mule might envy, to
his stump of a tail, the missing part of which had provided food for a
hungry moke on the Jaffa stunt. What was left of it provided me with
food for reflection.
He wasn’t a bad horse. As the Troop farrier said, he had no vice in him.
The trouble was, he was as devoid of energy or grey matter as he was of
vice. He progressed at a lumbering shuffle, with his head low down after
the manner of a cow-catcher on a locomotive. He had also acquired a
taste for feed-bags, and was blessed with a very good appetite. Every
time I fed him he disposed of _tibbin_, grain and nose-bag. The day
before we went on the stunt Maaleesh contracted Spanish Influenza, and
on the vet administering that panacea for all equine ailments, a ball,
he barracked and refused to move.
Then I was handed over to the tender mercies of “Lofty.” The lancejack,
who knew a bit about horses, confidently informed me that Lofty was one
of those horses that never carry much condition, and he knew a horse at
Cunnawulla.... I hastily agreed with him, especially the former part of
his statement. We looked at Lofty, who favoured us with an apathetic
stare. If the third generation theory is correct, Lofty’s granddad was a
camel. Going through a neighbouring town I was No. 1 of the section, and
being of a sensitive nature, it hurt me to see the people laugh; but
Lofty appeared indifferent.
The first day out he chewed up two signal flags and all the
straps on my mate’s gear. Half-way through the stunt he
faced the East, struck a prayerful attitude and, with a
don’t-give-a-hang-if-you-shoot-me-I-won’t-move expression in his eyes,
prepared to rest. Our sergeant shot him, whereupon he displayed more
agility than anyone had hitherto thought he possessed, and gambolled off
over a ridge. A sympathetic New Zealander recaptured him, but took
warning from the black looks and wild gesticulations of the mob. Shortly
afterward a report was heard. Lofty’s soul had gone West. Visions of the
photo I intended to send to my best girl, of my illustrious self mounted
on a fiery charger, faded into oblivion; and as I transferred my
trappings to a spare mule, I vaguely wondered, from force of habit, what
characteristic and peculiarities my new mount possessed.
“ACRABAH.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
“A LIGHT HORSE TYPE”
_By W. O. David Barker_
]
Concerning Medical Blokes
The Army Medical Corps is a chain of many links. Let the lay mind which
has condensed its conception of the Corps’ duties into “picking up the
wounded,” reflect upon an interwoven organization of Base Hospitals,
Convalescent Homes and Rest Camps; Auxiliary Hospitals, Isolation
Hospitals and Dermatological Hospitals; Stationary Hospitals (which are
liable to move about) and Casualty Clearing Hospitals—we are working up
the chain from the back to the front—Motor Ambulance Units and Hospital
Trains and Hospital Ships; Divisional Receiving Stations, Field Dental
Units, Field Operating Units and Field Laboratories (these all hear the
firing of the guns); Field Ambulances (which comprise within themselves
Field Hospitals), Dressing Stations and Advanced Dressing Stations
(these get bullets through their tents and shells in their bivvies);
and, end of the chain, the Medical Blokes with the Regiments. They are
the last link; they are the tip of the longest tentacle of the Medical
octopus. Truly, modesty forbids me from adding that they are the
sweetest violet in the bunch.
[Illustration]
The Medical Blokes are detailed from the Ambulance at the rate of an
N.C.O. and one man to each Regiment. Thereafter they become part and
parcel of that Regiment; live with it, move with it, minister to it;
share its trials, troubles, tribulations, triumphs and rum issues.
Nevertheless, in cold, official fact, they still belong to the
Ambulance, being upon its supernumerary strength—“attached for duty and
discipline to the Xth Regiment.” This little complication has its
unsuspected advantages, for it sometimes breeds in the mind of an R.S.M.
a shade of doubt as to exactly how far the Medical Blokes come within
his jurisdiction, and he is constrained to permit them a certain
independence of existence and exemption from routine. They obey
“Reveille;” they approximate their appearance on the horse-lines, to
groom, feed and water, as nearly to the Regimental schedule as the
exigencies of the medical service permit; they generally manage to
scratch an instant to be present at the cook-house at meal times; at the
Quartermaster’s bivvy when he is doling out rations, and at the Orderly
Room on pay-day. Their liabilities discharged, they are left free to
order their time as they please. They are usually to be found lurking in
the medical tent, though they sometimes go to earth in a bivvy pitched
somewhere in its vicinity.
[Illustration]
In addition to the two above-mentioned stalwarts, the Regimental medical
establishment carries a Medical Officer and an offsider, a trooper of
the Regiment, detailed for the job, who, in course of time, is likely to
become so imbued with the spirit of his surroundings that he is not to
be distinguished from genuine Medical Blokes themselves. Nominally he is
intended for water duties; to carry out daily at the area drinking-water
supply the mysterious rite (known to the uninitiated as “chlorinating”
and to the rank and file as “poisoning”) by which the further existence
of cholera and other germs in the water is discouraged. He is the man
responsible for making the water taste as if there were a very dead
camel lying a hundred yards further up the stream whence it was drawn;
while tea made with it always seems to have been cut with an oniony
knife. Yet he deserves a certain amount of pity. If he over-chlorinates,
the whole Brigade will blaspheme him and his activities; if he
under-chlorinates, Medical Officers accuse him of encouraging epidemic;
and the happy medium of chlorination is so deucedly elusive that he
never strikes it!
By way of transport for their chattels the Medical Blokes have a cart,
called Maltese, a square contrivance on two wheels and no springs, drawn
by three horses abreast. You can pick it out on the road at the tail end
of the Regimental transport in company with the water-cart. It is
invariably overloaded with what looks like a lunatic’s purchases at a
bargain auction sale—or somebody’s goods undergoing a back street
removal—baskets, bottles, barrels, boxes, bedding, brushes, blankets,
bivvies, buckets, to say nothing of all the things which begin with
other letters of the alphabet. The driver of the cart is not a Medical
Bloke; he is a Philistine from the transport lines.
[Illustration]
There are cinema-and-picture-nourished imaginations at Home who fancy
war as one unending, crimson, bloody pageant of battle, whereas it is
merely a different sort of humdrum existence from their own, with
occasional violent patches of excitement. Also, they worship the A.M.C.
man as the Red Cross Hero of the Piece, whereas ... never mind. But you
will grant me that, of all the A.M.C. personnel, the Medical Bloke gets
nearest to the heroic rôle. He shares the hazards of a fighting unit; he
is an all-but combatant. When the squadrons go out to fight he sloughs
all his bulky baggage, puts gauze, wool, bandages, iodine and scissors
into his haversack, and follows. Comes at dawn—we have branded dawn for
ever as the battle hour—a moment when a ragged, scattered line of men
begin to walk forward up the gentle slope of a low ridge. This is
attack. The split and scatter of shrapnel, the hiss-bang-crash of H.E.,
and z-z-z-en of flying fragments, make death a chance in the shallow
gully. But the top of the ridge is the edge of open, machine gun-swept
country. It is a hundred yards to the crest—and death for someone. This
Medical Bloke, the wind well up, has shrunk himself into a crevice and
waits for a call. He desires nothing better than to stay there. He
watches the men walking up the slope—such everyday, wise, silly, plain,
good, bad, smart, childish men—just simply walking up the slope. And in
that moment our Medical Bloke realizes that they are better men than he,
because they are walking up that slope of which _he_ is afraid. Are they
better? He is walking, rather slowly, up the slope now. He runs a few
steps and drops behind cover on the crest, and waits for the need that
will call him. Fate grants him a few minutes’ spell, and then puts him
to the test. “Stretcher-bearers!” they cry to the left. The Medical
Bloke can see two men bending over the third, and he faces one of those
decisions which mould character. Quite properly, he may wait until they
carry the man to him, behind cover (there are troopers whose hazardous
duty it is to act as stretcher-bearers), or he may walk out and help. He
walks out as steady as he can; it is quicker and ... well, what peculiar
right has a Medical Bloke to the safety of cover when the men are “out
there”?
[Illustration]
It is little enough can be done in action for the wounded; to cut away
the blood-clotted clothing, to clap a rough dressing of iodine and gauze
on the wound, or a crude splint on a smashed limb; to get the man to
comparative cover, to rig some sort of a shade over him and to give him
water; and then to wait—for the M.O. to come with the skill that soothes
and the hypodermical needle of comfort. But the bitterest game of
patience on earth is played when the tide of battle fails to flow
onward, and the wounded lie all the livelong, sun-tormented day in the
fire-swept zone, and the Medical Blokes can only watch and wait for
nightfall to give safe-conduct to the ambulance carts or the camels,
with great, unwieldy, white cacolets, which come to carry their poor
shattered charges to sanctuary.
[Illustration]
Believe me, romantic reader, that I will now reveal the true _raison
d’être_ of Medical Blokes; the nature of their life-work, their excuse
for existing. It is not, bless you, ministering to the wounded under
fire. It _is_ merely to bandage up septic sores and to distribute a
variety of pills, most commonly known in the proportion of “two of these
and one of those.”
[Illustration]
The daily life of the Medical Bloke hinges on “Sick Parade.” It is the
Daily Event. The M.O. sits enthroned in the Medical Tent. Orderly
corporals present their list of competitors. One by one they enter and
face the Presence. Pulses, tongues, throats, eyes, temperatures are
submitted to scrutiny. The questing stethoscope roams over bared bosoms
and backs. Each man speaks his piece—the most sick say least and the
least sick say most, as a general rule.
“Give him two of these and one of those,” prescribes the M.O., and the
victim, a handful of tablets clutched in his fist, retires. The rewards
to be gained by braving “Sick Parade” run up a scale from “Medicine and
Duty,” through “Light Duty” and “Exempt Duty,” to “Evacuate,” which last
is the coveted prize.