Book: With Our Army in Palestine

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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 debris 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.

Caesarea 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 Caesarea 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 Caesarea, except for an
occasional brief incursion inland where the coast was too dangerous for
traffic. On one of these detours 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.




CHAPTER XXI

OVER THE LADDER OF TYRE


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 the country 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 side nearest 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.

[Illustration: 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 a sportsman 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, provided only 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 out _en masse_ and 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 had retired 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 for the 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 midnight we 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.

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