Book: With Our Army in Palestine

A >> Antony Bluett >> With Our Army in Palestine




All this is not entirely a digression. There were times--and just after the
battle of Gaza was one of those times--when the utter futility of war in
general, and this one in particular, pressed heavily upon us. For the most
part we worked by the day alone nor took thought for the morrow; but
sometimes the desire to see well-loved faces and familiar scenes again took
hold and bit deeply. If you were wise you strangled the desire at birth,
for if you nursed it the result was very much more than a bad quarter of an
hour. By the same token let us continue.

On the night of the battle, after withdrawing about five miles, we took up
a position alongside some batteries of sixty pounders, in a saucer-shaped
valley, dug the guns in and prepared to hold on till further orders. The
following day the Turks counter-attacked unsuccessfully in various places,
and without pressing their attacks too closely presently left us in
possession of the three ridges we had captured at so great a cost.

The problem now was to maintain the troops in these positions. For obvious
reasons the railway could not be brought too near the wadi; indeed, it was
at this stage, I believe, that the branch line running eastward to our
right flank was begun, and despite the constant attentions of enemy
aircraft this work was carried on steadily and without pause.

Belah had now usurped the position of Rafa as railhead and the station had
been greatly enlarged by the addition of numerous sidings for the reception
of the heavy trains daily arriving from Kantara. The few wells in the place
had been medically tested and numbered and were now in use, supplemented by
those of Khan Yunus and the supply of water sent up by rail. In the wadi
itself the engineers had been labouring incessantly since its capture to
bore wells for the troops holding it. This was no light task, for with the
summer drought drawing nearer every day the wadi was drying up rapidly.
Even now, except for a few small "pockets" of water not unlike the hill
tarns in the North of England, the bed was for all practical purposes dry.
Eventually sufficient wells were sunk to provide a fairly ample supply of
water, which not only relieved the Army Service Corps of some of its heavy
burden, but released a large quantity of transport for other duties. By far
the most pressing of these was to supply the mounted divisions on the right
flank with food and water; and of all the amazing feats performed by the
engineers and the transport service, either combined or separately, this
effort was surely one of the most wonderful.

Our position was near Tel el Jemmi, one of the three high hills, each
artificially built in the form of a double cross, that once marked the
southern boundary of the land conquered by the early Crusaders. It was too
far away from the wadi for us to draw our water there; nor in point of fact
was there sufficient for our needs had we been conveniently near. There
were at least six thousand horses to be watered daily, in addition to which
their forage and the men's rations and drinking water had somehow to be
brought, and quickly. About two miles from our position and under the
shadow of Tel el Jemmi was a nullah, probably an off-shoot of the wadi,
perhaps half a mile long by a couple of hundred yards broad.

To the eye it was as if a large slice had been cut out of the earth's
crust, leaving a tapering cavity not unlike the shape of a battleship;
fortunately, however, the floor was fairly flat and even. The engineers
immediately seized upon the nullah and proceeded to transform it into a
gigantic reservoir. Along one side of the nullah was dug a series of large
shallow tanks shaped like a swimming-bath, the counterpart, in fact, of the
one used for the same purpose at Khan Yunus. These were lined with
tarpaulins. Next to the tanks was a long row of canvas water-troughs, handy
affairs which can be erected in a few minutes; and finally the two were
connected by means of hand-pumps, each tank supplying a certain number of
troughs. Other parties of engineers were busy making the nullah easy of
access and exit, for, except in one place, the sides were too precipitous
to allow one even to climb down with safety.

There were, I think, six approaches to the nullah, all of which had to be
blasted and cut out of the sides, as sandstone was encountered after the
top layer of soil had been removed; and not the least difficult part of the
business was to make the inclines safe and convenient for all traffic.

All this, it should be stated, was not the leisurely work of weeks or even
days; the main part of it had to be completed in twenty-four hours, to
supply the thousands of thirsty horses waiting to be watered.

Meanwhile at railhead transport was rapidly arranged to carry the water,
most of which had already been brought a hundred and thirty miles on the
train, to the nullah.

Camels only were used, in such numbers that from Belah to Khan Yunus the
country was like a vast patch-work quilt of greys and blacks and browns. It
seemed as if all the camels in the world were assembled here; sturdy little
black Algerians; white long-legged beasts from the Soudan; tough grey
"belody" camels from the Delta; tall, wayward Somalis; massive,
heavy-limbed Maghrabis--magnificent creatures; a sprinkling of
russet-brown Indian camels; and, lest the female element be neglected, a
company of flighty "nitties," very full of their own importance. The native
drivers were of as many shades as the camels they led, from the pale brown
of the town-bred Egyptian to the coal-black Nubian or Donglawi. Twenty-five
thousand camels carrying water! The first relays were filing stolidly into
the nullah in the early hours of the morning after the battle, as though
their business were the most ordinary thing in the world!

They entered the nullah by one of the hastily constructed roads and
"barracked" in a long row in front of the big tanks. Then the two
twelve-and-a-half-or fifteen-gallon fanatis carried by each camel were
unloaded and their precious contents poured into the tanks, after which the
empty fanatis were reloaded on to the saddles and the camels passed out of
the nullah by another road, and returned to Belah or Khan Yunus for another
supply. There was no confusion and hardly any noise but the grunting and
snarling of the camels as they "barracked" and got up again, the whole
process of unloading and reloading being like a piece of well-oiled
machinery. Indeed, so well was the work done that troops coming in to water
their horses scarcely noticed it.

Day and night the two long columns--the one with full, the other with empty
fanatis--passed in and out of the nullah; and for twelve miles there was no
break in the slow-moving chain.

By noon on the day following the battle two thousand horses at a time were
able to water comfortably, without congestion and without interfering with
the work of the camels. They entered the nullah by a different route, drank
their fill and went out again by yet another road.

Needless to say this was not carried on without molestation by the Turks.
It was impossible to conceal our presence in the nullah, since even one
battery of artillery moving along in watering order raised tremendous
clouds of dust visible many miles away, and when several such clouds
approaching from different directions were seen converging on the one
place, it was obvious that a splendid opportunity had arisen for a little
bombing practice; one, moreover, of which the Turks took full advantage.
Hardly had we left the comparative shelter of our position than the
familiar hum of an enemy plane was heard, and in a few minutes a peculiar
swishing sound heralded the rapid approach of some of his detestable
ironmongery. Sometimes he would hover overhead and follow the long line
till we were almost at the lip of the nullah before releasing his bombs,
and this was the very refinement of torture. During the whole of the
two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing
that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their
backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the
hope of catching us in the narrow defile.

The extraordinary thing was that though we must have made an excellent
target, no one to the best of my recollection was ever hit. Many times
bombs dropped on the very edge of the road as horses were passing, but
providentially the splinters all went wide. For this immunity we had, in
great measure, to thank our own aircraft, who, out-classed though they were
for speed, invariably went up to harass the Turk and put him off his aim,
in which gallant attempt they nearly always succeeded. Bombs dropped in the
nullah itself had no better effect, and if the object of the Turks was to
stampede the horses, it failed miserably. Frequently they would transfer
their attentions to the camel convoys with even worse results; it required
a great deal more than mere bombs to upset the camels, who padded steadily
along, eternally chewing and supremely indifferent to the agitated people
overhead.

Considering our unprotected positions and the undoubted superiority of
their machines over ours, the Turks were not very enterprising. Once or
twice they came over the batteries, flying low and sniping--with
indifferent success--at the gunners. But that was the limit of their
boldness; and when our solitary "Archie" in the valley briskly opened fire
on them they turned tail and scuttled abjectly out of range.

Near the nullah a day or two after our arrival a few more anti-aircraft
guns came up for the protection of watering parties, which function they
performed most successfully, though if British airmen had been operating
the Turkish machines I doubt if we should have escaped unscathed. Perhaps
the hard-fighting qualities of the British troops led the Turks habitually
to over-estimate the numbers and defences opposed to them, for they rarely
attacked even a small post save in great force. As a defensive fighter,
however, especially behind a machine-gun, the Turk has few equals, and,
assisted no doubt by his fatalistic temperament, he will take the severest
hammering for days without flinching.

Tel el Jemmi being by far the most considerable hill in the neighbourhood,
an observation post was established on the summit from which the whole wide
plain of Gaza lay open to the view. Northwards stretched fields turning
brown under the hot sun, with here and there a flicker of white in a patch
of dark green marking the presence of a native dwelling; westwards was Ali
Muntar thrusting its sombre height through fringes of cactus; Gaza tucked
away behind, almost hidden in foliage; and beyond, the shining waters of
the Mediterranean. To the south numerous black patches indicated the
presence of our troops and something of the activity at Belah; but most
striking of all to the eye was the endless chain of camels extending to the
distant horizon.

What an enormous amount of wasted effort there is during a campaign!
Herculean labour to meet the need of the moment. Troops are thrust into a
forward position, and to keep them provided with the necessaries of life
transport is organised to the very pitch of perfection. Often the position
is occupied for a few days only, when the troops are sent elsewhere and the
whole business starts again.

So it happened at Tel el Jemmi. We had thought that we were merely resting
there preparatory to taking part in a third attempt on Gaza. But that time
was not yet. After the first two days our guns were never fired, and though
a brigade went out on a reconnaissance there were no signs of renewed
activity by the Turks.

On our left the infantry were now securely entrenched on the captured
ridges and were obviously settling down for the summer. There appeared to
be no need for the mounted divisions _en masse_ to remain on the right
flank, especially with transport strained to its utmost limits to maintain
them there.

The "heavies" were the first to leave the valley, then the anti-aircraft
gun rumbled away on its lorry, and finally we were left in sole possession.
At dusk on the fifth day after our arrival we too departed; and the
engineers were busy striking the canvas water-troughs in the nullah as we
passed. All through the night we travelled, and the journey was a
repetition of our first retreat from Gaza, except that this was a voluntary
retirement. We seemed to cross the wadi half a dozen times and might, in
fact, have done so, for it wound fortuitously across the whole of our
front, and we were everlastingly climbing into or out of steep-sided
places. The heavy traffic of the last few days had churned up the whole
countryside into a powdery dust, which rose in such heavy clouds as to make
breathing difficult, and to see even the man immediately in front was next
to impossible.

In the early hours of the morning we came to Sheikh Nuran, a position which
had been very strongly fortified by the Turks but evacuated without a
struggle, like those previously at Rafa, when we attacked Gaza the first
time.

I remember little about this camp save that the Turks had left it in an
unspeakably filthy condition, causing us to spend days clearing away their
refuse.




CHAPTER XII

CAVE DWELLERS AND SCORPIONS


It soon became evident that we should make no more attempts on Gaza during
the summer, and while both sides were preparing for the inevitable finale,
a species of trench warfare began. This had little resemblance to the kind
that obtained in France, where the rival trenches were frequently within a
stone's throw of each other. Here, the nearest point to the Turks was on
our left flank, where the trenches were perhaps eight hundred yards apart.
Then the line, which for the most part was that taken by the wadi in its
meanderings, gradually swung south-eastwards till on the right flank we
were at least ten miles away from the enemy; which does not mean that
profound peace reigned in this region--on the contrary. The main reason for
this wide divergence was the old difficulty of maintaining mounted
troops--or indeed, troops of any kind--in a waterless country. Though
officially we had crossed the border into Palestine, we were actually a
long way from the land of milk and honey; and it may here be stated that
the troops saw little milk and less honey even when they did at last reach
that delectable spot.

In the coastal sector--we rose to the dignity of "sectors" when trench
warfare began--the infantry amused themselves by making a series of
night-raids the cumulative effect of which was considerable. They were
carried out on a small scale with meticulous regard for detail, as was very
necessary if only because the storming parties had rarely less than a
thousand yards to cover before they reached their objectives.

Most of these operations were for possession of the sandstone cliffs on the
Turkish side of the wadi and the terrain was generally the beach itself,
which from Belah to beyond Gaza was rocky and dangerous and in few places
more than fifty yards wide. At the mouth of the wadi, which had to be
crossed, there were shifting sands extremely difficult to negotiate
especially at high tide. After some weeks of successful nibbling, which
exasperated the Turks into a vast, useless expenditure of ammunition, the
infantry firmly established themselves along the coast to a point just
south of Gaza, beyond which it was not expedient to go. Here they proceeded
to make homes for themselves by digging holes in the face of the cliffs and
lining them with sand-bags.

They became, in fact, cave-dwellers, though they certainly had army rations
to eat in place of the raw bear of their troglodytic ancestors; and their
caves were not dug here and there according to the indiscriminating taste
of the diggers. They were cunningly conceived with a keen eye to defence
as well as comfort. So elaborate was the system that it was universally
known as the "Labyrinth," and no apter name could have been devised.

Long months afterwards, when "the strife was o'er, the battle done," I rode
along this stretch of beach where the cliffs for upwards of a mile were
honeycombed with caves of different sizes, all of them made by the hand of
man. There were neat steps cut in the sandstone leading from one to the
other; narrow ledges along which you crawled, clinging like a fly to the
face of the cliff; and outside some of the caves was a kind of sandstone
chute which presumably served the same purpose as did the banisters of
irresponsible boyhood's days. I cannot imagine what else the occupants
could use them for, nor when they had reached the bottom, how they climbed
the steep incline again, except on hands and knees.

There were wells, too, sunk in various places about the Labyrinth and
adequately protected with sand-bags. Rations were brought up by camels who
made the stealthy and perilous journey across the mouth of the wadi nightly
from Belah.

Towards the centre the distance between the trenches was too great to allow
of much "nibbling" and the activity here was confined mainly to a regular
daily "strafe" on the part of the artillery, and listening-patrols, who
occasionally came across a party of Turks similarly engaged, whereupon
silent work with the bayonet ensued, until one or other party was wiped
out.

The Royal Air Force provided the _piece de resistance_ of this period of
comparative stagnation. By way of retaliation for a heavy Turkish bombing
raid on one of the dumps at Belah, where amongst other things a
field-hospital had suffered severely, they collected about thirty machines
and flew over to Gaza. Their objective was a large shell-dump, said to be
nearly a mile in area, situated near the big mosque. Though the night was
pitch dark and landmarks difficult to detect, the raid was a huge success.
Many bombs must have hit the dump simultaneously for the roar of the
explosion was appalling. The force of it shook the earth for miles round
and the sky in the north-west was a vast sheet of red flame. All through
the night the racket went on, as first one part of the dump and then
another exploded. Seen from our position on the right flank, the blaze of
light after each explosion was like the great blast-furnaces of Sheffield
as you see them from the night train.

Not for days after did we understand what had actually happened; at the
time it was thought to be the beginning of another attack on Gaza, and one
man was profoundly convinced that the Day of Judgment had arrived. What the
Turks thought about it is not known, but the raid taught them a terrible
lesson; and they did not, in fact, send over another bombing expedition
till long afterwards.

The mounted troops were disposed in various places along our right flank,
some in the wadi, others more or less conveniently near; and they led an
existence peculiar to themselves. For our part, after resting for a short
time at Sheikh Nuran, we moved eastwards to El Chauth, one of the positions
gallantly captured by the Imperial Camel Corps in the first battle of Gaza.
The Turkish trenches enclosed a lovely little spinney of fig-trees and
almond-trees in full bloom, under which we concealed the guns and beneath
whose sheltering branches we slept. Preparations for sleeping in those days
were very simple: you dug a hole for the hip-bone with a jack-knife and you
were ready. The army authorities had not yet adopted the Turkish idea of
bivouac-sheets, two of which, buttoned together and propped up with a
couple of poles, made an admirable shelter accommodating two persons. There
are many worse things, however, than dropping gently to sleep in the open
air with the faint scent from the almond-blossom titillating the nostrils.

El Chauth at first sight appeared to be the kind of spot where every
prospect pleases and only man is vile; and as we had not had a really
comprehensive wash for some considerable time and were very hairy withal,
the adjective was aptly descriptive. Apart from this trifling handicap and
the fact that we should have to travel fourteen miles a day for water, the
place seemed an ideal one for a rest-cure. Considering that we had been
incessantly on the move for the past five months the time for a
"stand-easy" was about due.

We prepared everything to that desirable end. The cooks built a
cunningly-contrived kitchen in a section of one of the old Turkish trenches
and firmly announced their intention of cooking for us every kind of
delicacy that could be made--out of army beef, onions, and potatoes!--for
which pleasant piece of optimism we were duly grateful. Then we heard that
an E.F. canteen had set up house about a day's trek to the south-west,
whereupon a limber went forth and returned on the third day heavily laden
with tins of fruit, biscuits, various meats, and something in bottles that
maketh glad the heart of man, especially if he has a Palestine thirst. Most
of us had one from Egypt in addition.

After about four days of comparative peace and quietness the blow fell--in
fact, two blows. As a trooper in the Yeomanry said, when he found a frog in
his boot: "There's allus summat in this dam country." He spoke a great
truth. It is unsafe to trust Palestine very far, fair of aspect though she
be. The first blow fell, literally, while we were having dinner one
evening, when a Turkish aeroplane arrived and dropped bombs first on the
horse-lines and then on us. Fortunately his aim was as bad as his taste was
deplorable in coming at a time when decent folk were having a meal. Neither
men nor horses were hit and we had the ironic satisfaction of sheltering
from his bombs in the trenches his countrymen had made. Even that failed to
keep the dinner warm, however.

The second and heavier blow was that the inhabitants of our little spinney
suddenly and unmistakably made their presence felt. Just as at Belah the
mosquitoes battened shamelessly upon us and the frogs burst into mighty
paeans of welcome, so at El Chauth the scorpions extended the glad hand--if
I may venture thus euphemistically to describe the spiked atrocity they
wear lengthwise on their backs. Apparently on strike for better conditions
of living they decided upon an army blanket as a desirable residence and
were quite indifferent as to whether you shared their quarters or not.
Often they were already in possession when blankets were unrolled for the
night, and if not then, one was usually to be found in the morning nestling
coyly in the folds. The moment you touched him with a stick he elevated his
poisonous battering-ram, which was as long as himself, and struck and
struck again in an ecstasy of rage, until sometimes he actually poisoned
himself and died from his own blows!

I believe a few men died after being stung by scorpions, certainly many
were temporarily incapacitated with poisoned arms and legs. This pleasing
possibility made a careful scrutiny of the blankets very necessary before
you settled down to sleep; and on waking in the morning you made no
unnecessary movement until you had first assured yourself that a scorpion
was not within striking distance. After a time somebody made the brilliant
discovery that every scorpion hates all other scorpions with a deep and
abiding hatred. This provided us with a new game. Instead of killing them
out of hand we caught the biggest scorpions, made a ring in the sand about
a couple of feet in diameter, and matched them in single combat.

They never went outside the ring, however low was the barrier of sand, but
would manoeuvre round the edge glowering at each other till one found an
opening; whereupon he sprang in, tail or battering-ram first, and hammered
away vigorously while his opponent tried his utmost to get round to the
other's head; then he started rapid fire on his own account. Generally they
ended by standing back to back and belabouring each other till one, or
both, dropped dead.

Sometimes, instead of putting two scorpions in the ring, by way of
variation we used to catch another sworn foe and match him against a
scorpion. This was the tarantula, a great hairy spider with a leg-spread
covering the palm of the hand, another of the unpleasant inhabitants of El
Chauth. Against this creature, however, it was always a shade of odds that
the scorpion would win, though there was a surprise occasionally. Talking
of odds reminds me that nearly always at these fights some sportsman would
open a little book and announce that he was prepared to lay "evens on the
field." Nor was it unprofitable, for the British as a race, and
particularly the British soldier, will bet on anything. One man, a sapper,
made quite a good thing out of backing a scorpion which he carried about
with him in a tobacco-tin. It was a great scrapper, and as it was a very
undersized creature, he usually managed to obtain good odds from men who
were backing larger and more powerfully developed specimens. What this
sapper fed his gladiator on was a mystery; but it won many fights.

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