With Our Army in Palestine Part 15

of these Egyptians could see clearly at night, a further twenty-five per cent. were stone-blind after sunset, and of the remainder, the most that could be said was that they could just see in the dark and that was all!

When the weeding-out process was completed the British personnel returned as lead-drivers; Indians were added to make up the numbers, and this curious mixture acted satisfactorily.

A remarkable feature of the spring and summer was the gradual rise to power of the Royal Air Force, culminating in complete supremacy over the Turks immediately before and during the autumn campaign. Presumably a ship had at last arrived with adequate machines, for all through the summer long-distance bombing raids were undertaken with conspicuous success; and for the first time our planes "had the wings" of the Turks. One great raid was carried out after a report had been received that three German divisions were on their way south from Constantinople to reinforce the Turk. The trains containing two of the divisions were almost completely destroyed before they reached Damascus; the third division arrived more or less intact, and went into action in the Jordan Valley, where they were so badly mauled by the Australians that the fragments that remained bolted incontinently, and for the future stayed behind the line. In August the R.A.F., in conjunction with the forces of the King of the Hedjaz, who were working their way northwards across the desert east of Amman, made an attack on the Hedjaz railway at Der'aa, at which place the line was completely demolished and all communication severed with the north.

In single combats, too, our airmen now more than held their own, for the Turkish planes either fled at first sight or, if they stayed to argue the point, were generally brought down. From the Camel Camp on the hill overlooking General Allenby's Headquarters at Bir Salem we saw several battles in the air, for G.H.Q. was a favourite mark of the Turks, and these almost invariably went in favour of the British.

By the end of August the intensive training of the new troops and the work of re-organisation were complete; and it is interesting to note, as an indication of the way in which the army had been for the most part, made "on the premises," as it were, that it comprised British, French, Italian, Jewish, West Indian, Arab, Indian, Algerian, Armenian, and Egyptian troops, to say nothing of the tribes of mixed race but Mahommedan faith who a.s.sisted the King of the Hedjaz in the final struggle.

At this stage a word as to the disposition of the Turkish forces is necessary: their main position was at Nablus, (the ancient Shechem), which was well protected naturally by Mt. Gerizim in the south and Mt. Ebal in the north, and had been fortified with German thoroughness and ingenuity during the summer months. From here the line extended in a south-westerly direction towards the sea, including _en route_ another immensely strong position at Jiljulieh, immediately to the north of which was the village of Kalkilieh, also well fortified; another Turkish force operated west and east of the Jordan.

A frontal attack on Nablus was out of the question; an army of goats might have successfully scaled the mountains of Samaria, but it was no place for troops; nor was the Jordan Valley any more inviting. The best chance of success lay in the coastal sector, where the conformation of the ground was not so much in favour of the Turks, and it was decided that our main attack should be made here. The plan was for the infantry to make a wide breach in the Turkish line by storming the defences between Jiljulieh and the sea, whereupon the cavalry were to sweep forward on to the Esdraelon Plain and close all possible lines of retreat to the Turks, while at the same time an outflanking movement was to be carried out by the troops in the eastern sector.

The main difficulties were to concentrate unseen a large force of infantry in the plain of Sharon, and to bring the remainder of the cavalry from the Jordan Valley without observation by the enemy. The vast olive-groves round about Ludd and Jaffa comfortably concealed the infantry, whose movements were carried out at night and with the utmost caution, but the transport of the cavalry was a tougher problem, for the Turks were very much on the alert in the Jordan Valley, and did in fact expect the attack to be made in this direction.

Considerable guile was therefore necessary, into which entered a little innocent fun. It was a general and strictly enforced rule that no lights should be shown after dusk, on account of bombing raids, yet during the last weeks of August long lines of bivouac fires twinkled nightly in the Jordan Valley; and the authorities seemed to be singularly blind to this flagrant disobedience of orders. During the day at stated hours groups of men riding aged and infirm horses were strung out at 50-yard intervals, engaged in the gentle pastime of dragging sacks and branches along the roads; they made so much dust that it might easily have been caused by, say, a cavalry division going to water. Also, thousands of tiny tents sprang up round the bivouac areas, in front of which were equally diminutive soldiers in squads and companies, whose function it was to stand rigidly to attention all day long, and who treated the frequent bombing raids with utter contempt. A careful observer would have noticed a certain woodenness about them, but enemy airmen were profoundly impressed by this large concentration of troops.

Meanwhile every night brigade after brigade of British cavalry left the Jordan Valley on their fifty-mile ride across country to the friendly shelter of the orange-groves of Jaffa and Sarona, and the men left behind complained bitterly of the increase of work in having to light so many extra bivouac fires! The whole concentration was carried out without the Turks being any the wiser, and by the middle of September thirty-five thousand infantry were ready to pour forth from their hiding-places, with four divisions of mounted troops to follow hard upon their heels; it was scarcely possible to move in the coast sector without falling over a battery of artillery, and tucked away round Richon and Duran were thousands of transport camels of every shade and breed.

At dusk on the night of September 18th the orange-groves began to erupt, and for eight hours horse and foot in orderly columns marched silently forward, the infantry to their battle positions and the cavalry to the beach between Arsuf and Jaffa, there to wait till the breach had been made. At half-past four the next morning the shattering roar of artillery proclaimed that the offensive had begun, and at dawn the infantry attacked the Turkish positions, swept over those nearest the coast at the first onslaught, and then swung eastwards. One after another from Et Tireh to Jiljulieh, strongholds upon which months of labour had been expended fell before the irresistible elan of our men, though the Turks fought magnificently to hold their line. By noon the whole of the coastal sector was in our hands, and the plain of Sharon lay open to the cavalry, who had started on their historic ride north soon after our first attack.

In the meantime the infantry, driving before them the demoralised remnants of the Turkish 8th Army, captured Tul Keram, Turkish G.H.Q., together with a host of prisoners, and then continued east to help the Welsh and Irish divisions in their a.s.sault on Nablus. The Turks here had no information of the debacle on their right, for the R.A.F. had started out at dawn and had destroyed every means of communication, except the roads, between the two armies. They therefore fought with the utmost determination, and aided by their well-chosen and well-fortified positions, held off our attacks all that day and the next, though the Irishmen by extraordinary exertions crumpled up one flank. Then the last message ever sent from the north informed them that the British cavalry had overrun the whole country in their rear, so far as they knew the only line of retreat left open to them was eastward across the Jordan, and this loophole, too, was soon to be closed. Panic reigned; the roads leading east were black with long columns of guns and transport and men mingled in hopeless confusion, fleeing with no thought of anything but their own safety; a routed, utterly demoralised rabble.

Nablus was occupied without difficulty on the 21st, but the infantry, who had been scrambling about the hills of Samaria for three days, could not run fast enough to catch the Turks, who were making their way through the Wadi Farah towards the Jisr ed Damieh ford. Half-way through the wadi the road has on one side a deep, gloomy gorge, while on the other stretch gaunt hills terrible in their desolation and stony barrenness. The whole aspect of the place is sinister and forbidding in the extreme, and one can imagine the panic-stricken Turks hurrying through yet a little faster, eager to sight the yellow waters of the Jordan. But they never reached the goal, for the Royal Air Force found the column half-way through the gorge. Relays of machines joined in the attack, first dropping bombs and then flying low and spraying the column with bullets. In five minutes the road eastwards was blocked, and driven by the slow but remorseless advance of our infantry far in the rear, with impa.s.sable hills on the one hand, and a precipice on the other, the column was caught in a trap.

A part of it tried to escape, before being driven into the gorge, by a road leading to the north, but were bombed back again into the shambles. Mad with terror, some of the Turks tried to scramble up the steep hills, others made an attempt to descend into the deep gorge; anywhere to escape from the awful hail of bombs and bullets. For four hours the slaughter continued, and when "Cease fire" was ordered, the road for nine miles was literally a vast charnel-house. Guns, limbers, commissariat-waggons, field-kitchens, every conceivable form of vehicle, including a private barouche, lay heaped together in monstrous confusion; and when night fell ragged, half-starved Bedouins descended upon the stricken valley, stealing from pile to pile of debris in search of loot, nor could the rifles of the guards deter them from the ghoulish task. It took an entire division three weeks to clear the roads and bury the dead.

Isolated columns from the Turkish 7th Army did succeed in reaching the Jordan, but were all killed or captured by the mounted troops left in the valley. Daily the toll of prisoners increased, as hundreds of Turks who had been in hiding in the hills round Samaria and Nablus were driven by hunger to give themselves up to the searching parties. Ras el Ain, which had been a part of our front line, presented an extraordinary spectacle, for most of the prisoners pa.s.sed through here on their way south to Wilhelma and beyond. For thirty-six hours there was hardly a break in the procession shambling towards the great hill on which stand the ruins of Herod's Castle, where Salome danced for the head of John the Baptist, and where now the prisoners were caged. There was a marked difference between the condition of the Turkish prisoners and that of the Germans: the former were ragged, half-starved, and yellow with privation and fatigue, but all the Germans I saw were sleek, well-clad, and bearing every sign of good living.

It was impossible to cage them together, for they fought like cats with each other on every possible occasion, and caused endless trouble to the guards, who had to go amongst them with the bayonet in order to separate them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WATER CONVOY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE VALLEY OF CHAOS--BEFORE THE TURKISH RETREAT. [_To face p. 256._]

Meanwhile, what of the cavalry whose business it had been to cut the Turkish lines of communication with Damascus and the north? Their chief objectives were El Afule, which might briefly be described as a place where all roads meet, Nazareth, a few miles farther north, the headquarters of the German General, Liman von Sanders, the Commander-in-Chief of the Turks, and Jenin, the headquarters of the enemy Air Force. They met with practically no opposition until they reached the entrance to the Esdraelon Plain, which is approached through a narrow pa.s.s, where a weak garrison was easily overwhelmed and captured. Had the Turks had time to fortify this pa.s.s it is possible that the whole course of events might have been changed, for it commanded the way to the main arteries in the Turkish communications, upon the capture of which everything depended. But the surprise was complete; the fine work of the British airmen had prevented news of the destruction of the front line from reaching enemy headquarters, and their first intimation of our success was the sight of the cavalry streaming over the Esdraelon Plain towards Afule.

Most of the small garrisons on the way were literally taken in their beds, and when the few stragglers who escaped brought the tidings to Afule it was too late to make any great show of resistance. Thousands of Turks surrendered here, without attempting to fight, and when the Germans also had been roped in, the number of prisoners far exceeded that of the attacking cavalry. The loot was prodigious, for Afule was one of the main depots of the enemy, and every house occupied by Germans showed signs of the extreme solicitude they had for their personal comfort; that of the Turks did not matter. In the hill upon which the town stands were numerous caves filled to overflowing with choice wines, cognac, tobacco and delicacies which made the mouths of the beholders, who had had neither bite nor sup for thirty-six hours, water in antic.i.p.ation. An Australian trooper told me afterwards that there was sufficient wine in Afule and Nazareth for every man in the Expeditionary Force, at a bottle per head, and added navely that he had had his bottle just at the time it was most needed!

The column advancing on Nazareth had met with equal though not quite bloodless success. Arriving at dawn they, too, found the town asleep, and clattered through the streets in search of Liman von Sanders. He was warned in the very nick of time, however, and the cavalry had an interesting back view of a swiftly disappearing car in which sat Liman von Sanders in his pyjamas, followed at a respectful distance by some of his staff not so discreetly clad. Undisturbed by the defection of their Chief, the Germans resisted stoutly for a time, both in the streets of Nazareth and in the hills north of the town, but ultimately all were gathered in and sent across the ancient battlefield of Armageddon to join the rest at Afule.

The aerodromes at Jenin were captured, or, to be more exact, rendered useless by our aircraft, who had hovered over them ever since the beginning of the battle, dropping an "egg" whenever enemy machines attempted to come out. When the cavalry arrived, practically all they had to do was to tie up the hordes of men who were only too anxious to surrender.

In five days the combined forces had smashed up two Turkish armies and had taken forty thousand prisoners.

I cannot do better than end this chapter by giving in full General Allenby's letter to the troops thanking them for this remarkable achievement: "I desire to convey to all ranks and all arms of the Force under my command, my admiration and thanks for the great deeds of the past week, and my appreciation of their gallantry and determination, which have resulted in the total destruction of the 7th and 8th Turkish Armies opposed to us. Such a complete victory has seldom been known in all the history of war."

CHAPTER XX

IN FULL CRY

At this stage the campaign developed into a species of fox-hunt on an enormous scale, with the Turk very adequately playing the part of the fox.

Although some forty thousand of the enemy had been captured in the grand attack, a similar number still remained at large who were running very hard in the direction of Beyrout and Damascus, and these it was our business to pursue. Also, the King of the Hedjaz emerged from the desert east of Amman, and in conjunction with the Australians, fell upon the 4th Turkish Army, who were still making some show of resistance in the mountains of Moab, captured most of them, and started the remainder on the long road to Damascus.

Thus the hunt was up on both flanks, the infantry for the most part following the coast route and the Hedjaz column riding _via_ Der'aa.

In the centre, with a long start, the cavalry who had poured through the first gap in the Turkish line were still riding hard after the enemy. The cavalry travelled so quickly that they missed, I think, much of the interest of the journey, which took them through the centre of a country wherein almost every village has a history; the reader, therefore, will perhaps find the slower gait of the "Camels" more to his taste.

The prisoners were still pouring in when we left Ras el Ain, and in the eyes of those we pa.s.sed was an awful gla.s.sy 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 princ.i.p.al a.s.set 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 att.i.tude 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 cl.u.s.ters of sh.e.l.ls 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 a.s.s, 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 a.s.s 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 a.s.s, particularly towards the end of a long day's march. The number of these "Abu's"

(fathers) who developed a p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.sed through vast fields of stubble, which were divided one from another by strips of curious coloured gra.s.s. Indeed, this bluish gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.sive 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 sh.o.r.e-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.