With the Judaeans in the Palestine Campaign Part 16

It must have been close on midnight when I lay down, and, as I was unable to sleep, I was reading by the dim light of a candle when suddenly I saw a white ghostly face appear in the tent door, and only that I knew Cross was dead I would have thought it was the face of Cross. Then a sepulchral voice said, "Are you awake, Sir?" and I began to wonder if it were all a dream. When the figure approached the light, I saw that it really _was_ Cross, so I bounded up to give him a welcome--such a welcome as one would give to a friend who had risen from the dead.

It appeared that when the patrol had been ambushed, Cross got wounded and lay under a sandbank where he was discovered by the Turks; they carried him off, and, as they were then retiring as fast as they could, took him with them, pushed him on to Amman, and from there by rail to Damascus. He was about to be sent further north when the British entered the city. In the confusion Cross made good his escape and eventually worked his way back to me. Thus it was that n.o.body knew anything of his whereabouts, for he had never reported to any of the Hospitals en route.

Mrs. Cross had already been informed by the War Office that he was missing and reported killed. I told Cross that I had just posted a letter to his wife to say that I feared that he must have been killed: he, of course, at once sent a private cable to tell her that he was alive and well, while I sent an official one to the War Office giving the same account. At all events, my letter of condolence to Mrs. Cross will always be a good souvenir of the part her husband took in the Great War.

CHAPTER XXII.

AT RAFA.

The Armistice with Turkey was announced on the 31st October, 1918, amid the firing of guns and rockets and joy stunts by the Air Force above our camp at Ludd.

On the 6th November the battalion was ordered to proceed to Rafa to recuperate, refit and reorganise, and on the 7th, in the early morning, we arrived at this frontier station bordering on "the desert and the town."

Rafa is actually in Egypt, just over the borders of Palestine, on the Palestine-Egyptian Railway line some five miles from the Mediterranean, and here the tents of Israel were pitched.

Along the whole coast in this neighbourhood there runs a belt, about four miles deep, of sand dunes and sand hills. These are very irregular in outline, running in some places to peaks nearly 100 feet in height, and in others forming miniature precipices, valleys and gullies. It is, in fact, a mountainous country on a lilliputian scale.

The sand is so firm that a horse can be ridden all over it, thereby giving great joy to the hunters of the jackals and hyenas which roam on its barren surface. The air on this stretch of sandy dunes is wonderfully fresh and exhilarating, and we drank it in with delight after our trying experience in the Jordan Valley. The seash.o.r.e itself abounds with millions of curious sh.e.l.ls.

The sand belt ends abruptly landwards and, at the very edge of it, the Bedouin scratches up the soil with an antiquated plough which dates from the time of Abraham. Green waving crops, pleasant to the eye, may be seen almost under the shadow of a sand cliff. The country inland consists of a somewhat sandy soil and gently undulating plains which are, for the greater part, cultivated by Arabs who live in scattered villages, and by Bedouins who come and go as the spirit moves them. The whole place is honeycombed with holes burrowed by the little conies, which makes riding at a fast pace somewhat hazardous.

Such was the quiet little spot in which we found ourselves after our strenuous and exciting days in the Jordan Valley and the Land of Gilead.

Day by day our men gradually came back from Hospital and, owing to drafts from the 40th Battalion, our strength was soon over 30 officers and 1,500 other ranks.

After a brief time for rest, we took over "Line of Communication"

duties, and found ourselves with many miles of railway and country to safeguard. Our life now became one constant round of guards, escorts, fatigues, and drills whenever a few men could be spared from other duties for the latter purpose. There were thousands of prisoners of war in our custody, as well as a huge captured Turkish ammunition depot, supply stores, engineer park, and all kinds of workshops, etc., etc.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HERE THE TENTS OF ISRAEL WERE PITCHED"

(_See page 173_)]

Soon after we got to Rafa I lost the services of Captain Leadley, M.C., who was demobilized at his own request and returned to England. I selected to succeed him Captain Duncan Sandison--as stubborn a Scot as ever wore a kilt, a first-rate officer, loyal to the core, and a great favourite with everybody except the evil-doers.

Early in December I received another large draft of raw Jewish recruits from the 40th Battalion Royal Fusiliers--all American citizens.

I strongly objected to these untrained men being sent to me under the circ.u.mstances in which I was placed, for it was impossible to give them any training owing to the excessive duties we were called upon to perform day and night. I knew that the result of putting raw recruits to fulfil duties which should have been carried out only by seasoned soldiers, must, before very long, end in disaster. I foresaw endless breaches of discipline, not because the men were evilly disposed, but because they were untrained and knew nothing of military discipline.

I accordingly urged the Staff to remove all these recruits, of whom I had about 800, to a training centre, and repeatedly warned the authorities of what the result must be if this were not done, but not the slightest notice was taken of my appeal.

It was a thousand pities that these enthusiastic American volunteers did not get a fair chance to show their mettle. I well remember how favourably I was impressed with their physique and general appearance when I inspected them on their arrival at Rafa. They were miles ahead, physically, of the men who joined the battalion in England--in fact I do not believe that there was a unit in the whole of the E.E.F. that held such a fine-looking body of men. Because they were untrained and had no idea of discipline, these hefty youths were constantly in trouble for committing breaches of military rules and regulations. They simply did not understand soldiering or what it meant. In this way I got to know the majority of them fairly well. We had many interesting meetings at "office hour." Of course, in dealing with these volunteers, I never forgot that the faults they were guilty of were, in great measure, due to lack of training, and I dealt with them accordingly. Their military offences were not grave, just the delinquencies that must be expected of recruits, because they are recruits.

Nevertheless, it is always a danger to have a battalion, supposed to be at any moment ready to take the field, swamped with some 800 raw untrained men.

I felt so strongly on this question, and so clearly foresaw the inevitable end, that having failed to move the authorities myself, I cast about me to see where I could look for help and sympathy in the difficult situation in which I was placed; the only possible man who might be able to do something was the Acting-Chairman of the Zionist Commission then in Palestine. It will be remembered that, soon after the famous Balfour Declaration, Dr. Weizmann, the President of the Zionist Organisation, was sent out at the head of a Commission to investigate conditions and safeguard Jewish interests in Palestine. Dr. Weizmann was received by H.M. the King before his departure from England, and came out armed with strong letters from the Prime Minister and Mr. Balfour to General Allenby. Dr. Weizmann spent some time doing useful work in Palestine, and was then recalled to England in connection with the Zionist policy then before our Government. The mantle of Dr. Weizmann eventually fell on Dr. Eder, and to him I now applied myself, as it was a matter of the greatest importance that no undeserved slur should fall upon the Jewish Battalion.

Like myself, however, Dr. Eder was unable to effect anything.

I felt very strongly that the whole att.i.tude adopted towards the Jewish Battalions was unworthy of British traditions of fair play. It is of course possible that General Allenby did not know of the treatment to which we were subjected by certain members of his Staff and other underlings, for naturally only the greater questions would come before him. If he had known he would surely never have countenanced the jeopardising of the good name of any battalion in the E.E.F. by swamping it with over 800 raw recruits who, owing to the "exigencies of the service," had to be put on trained soldiers' duties the moment they joined.

Unfortunately I was unable to let him know of our dilemma, for the Chief of Staff, Major-General Louis Jean Bols, had forbidden me to address the Commander-in-Chief direct, and apparently the appeals which I had made on this question never reached a sympathetic quarter.

As I have already said, I had been ill from the time we began operations in the Jordan Valley and was now reduced to a skeleton, but by careful dieting I had hoped to weather the storm and had so far managed to keep out of Hospital.

Thinking that a few days change would improve my health I applied for leave and went to Cairo. While I was there I happened by chance to meet Captain Salaman in the street, and he was so shocked at my appearance that he straightway convoyed me off to Nasrieh Hospital, where I was taken in hand by Captain Wallace, R.A.M.C. In a couple of weeks he had me well enough to be transferred to the beautiful Convalescent Home at Sirdariah, where the matron and staff of nurses were kindness and consideration personified; a short spell in this well-managed inst.i.tution completed my cure, at the end of which I rejoined the battalion.

CHAPTER XXIII.

RETURN OF THE ANZACS.

About this time the battalion was inspected by the G.O.C. Lines of Communication, and the following is what he wrote of the impression we made on him:

HEADQUARTERS, PALESTINE LINES OF COMMUNICATION,

8TH JANUARY, 1919.

I was very glad to inspect your battalion and I was much struck with the soldierly appearance presented by the men.

(Signed) E. W. BROADBENT, General Officer Commanding P.L. of C.

Isolated as we were on the edge of the desert we found life at Rafa somewhat dull and dreary. Sandstorms were the bane of one's life there; a "Khamsin" or hot wind would blow for days at a time, enveloping the place in a cloud of fine sand and making life one long misery while it lasted. One's eyes, nose, and throat got choked up, while every morsel of food was full of grit. "Khamsin" is Arabic for fifty; the hot wind is supposed to blow for that number of days but, thank Heaven, it rarely lasted more than a week on end at Rafa.

There were no other troops in the place to vary the deadly monotony.

True, there were some Engineers of the Railway Operating Division, but we found them somewhat selfish, for although they had an excellent Concert Hall they refused our Concert Party permission to use it. Even at Rafa the few underlings on the Staff took their cue from above and did what they could to make our life as uncomfortable as possible, until they came to know us better.

It can be imagined, therefore, with what joyful feelings we saw our old friends of the Anzac Division march into Rafa and make it their headquarters.

Since we had parted from the Anzacs in Gilead we had seen nothing of them, but we knew that they had been camped in the green fields and pleasant pastures surrounding the Jewish Colony of Richon-le-Zion. The slings and arrows of misfortunes removed them from these sylvan surroundings, but whatever ill wind blew them to Rafa it was a G.o.dsend for us.

In these piping days of Peace, now that we were among our old friends once more, there was horse-racing, hunting, tournaments and boxing galore, while an enterprising kinema man came and photographed camp scenes and groups of officers and men.

In the sand dunes around Rafa many ancient coins were to be found, and General Chaytor himself could always be relied on to head a hunt for these and other relics of antiquity. We never failed to find some objects of interest--bits of glazed pottery, gla.s.s, beads, pins, bangles, rings, etc. Every time there was a storm the top sand would get blown away and we could always go and make fresh finds in the ground we had already explored, and great was the compet.i.tion as to who should discover the best specimens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROUP OF OFFICERS AT RAFA]

The General had the eye of a lynx for such things, and it was rarely indeed that anyone else had a look in while he was to the fore. He discovered some very beautiful old mosaics buried at Sh.e.l.lal, and these he had carefully sketched and artistically coloured, exactly as they were in the original. I was very pleased when he kindly presented me with a copy.

The rolling downs round about us were dotted here and there with the graves of fallen Australian and New Zealand soldiers, and, riding as I often did with General Chaytor, he would explain the operations which took place when the British first entered Palestine at this point. He gave me many vivid descriptions of the part which his Brigade had taken in the overthrow of the Turks at the Battle of Rafa.

The General had a very narrow escape on that occasion. In the middle of the battle, when he was galloping from one position to another, attended only by his orderly, he came suddenly upon a concealed trench full of Turks. Fortunately they thought he was at the head of a Squadron, so threw up their hands and surrendered. The General left his orderly to march off the prisoners and galloped on to conduct the fight elsewhere.

We motored over to Gaza once and spent a most interesting day there.

From Ali Muntar, a hill to the east of the town, which had been the General's headquarters in the first battle of Gaza, he described the whole situation. From this point almost every bit of Gaza and the surrounding country could easily be seen.