Part 16 (2/2)

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.

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