The Little Bint of Wady Hanein
Throughout the long campaign the fighting was fairly constant, but there were occasional brief seasons of rest, and the happiest of these were spent in the neighbourhood of the Jewish orchard settlements. The 1st Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealanders favoured Richon, where the wine vaults are said to be the largest in the world; and the Jewish girls are the prettiest in all Palestine. But the 2nd Brigade was loyal to modest little Wady Hanein. The three Jewish villages of Richon, Wady Hanein and Deiran stand about three miles apart in a rough line across the sandhills. Deiran, where the polyglot lassies were wooed by the troops associated with Desert Mounted Corps headquarters, is, like Richon, a large village, almost a town, with considerable social pretentions. There the Jews hold political meetings, and the girls dress with an eye on distant Paris. But Wady Hanein is demure—a true little Arcady set amidst hills and hollows beautiful and fragrant with orange groves and orchards of almonds. In the early spring the settlement was a glory of pink and white blossoms, and, later, its lanes were scented with the breath of the flowering oranges. As I write, the 2nd Brigade is in Wady Hanein for the last time, having come down from its strenuous work around Amman, across the Jordan; and the plump round oranges are coquetting between green and golden.
It was from Wady Hanein that the Brigade moved out on the long trek across Judea and Jordan Valley and the Mountains of Moab for the first attack on Amman, in March, 1918. Nearly every Australian feigns qualification in his regard for the Jews in Palestine. But as the Regiments made ready for the road that morning it was pretty to see Jewish families visiting their favourite officers and men in the bustling camp, and wishing them God-speed with a sincerity and a touch of distress quite unmistakable. And all ranks rode to that bitter fight the stronger and better for those Jewish good wishes.
The 2nd Brigade also chanced to be in the village in December of 1917, when Jerusalem was captured, and the citizens entertained the Brigadier and his officers at a feast, a speech-making and a dance. Proceedings were, for a time, somewhat formal and cold. The Brigadier and his senior officers sat at a central table in a large hall with the village fathers and notables. The girls, expectant, their toes tingling for the dance, sat stiffly in a row down one wall and the matrons along the other—a very convenient arrangement, because the dashing young Light Horse subalterns could seek a pretty partner without feeling obliged to ask for the programme of her elderly chaperon. The young men of the village stood with the junior officers of the Brigade at one end of the hall.
The eloquence was terrific. The erudite village schoolmaster proposed the “Health of the King of England,” coupled with the name of the Brigadier, the British Army, the Australian Army, and the British universe generally. He spoke fluent and faultless Russian—or so it seemed to us. (Our linguistic attainments will startle Australians when we come home. There is not a man amongst us who cannot now say Bread and Wine and Darling, in all the languages of East and West.) He made happy reference to great British apostles of freedom, instancing Cromwell, Lord Byron, and Gladstone. He garbled the names, but we caught his drift; and, anxious to get in, we cheered tumultuously; and then, in an unhappy moment, some one on our side released the Brigade interpreter—a dusky fellow of dubious nationality—who rose eagerly to make the meaning of the village schoolmaster a little clearer to us. His success was indifferent, but he brought down the house with references to Lord Cromwell, Mr. Byron, and Sir Gladstone.
Then the Brigadier hopped up to respond. He was at his best. He referred to the joy which we, as Christians, experienced in driving the infidel from the Holy Land, and then, after an apt allusion to the Crusaders and King Richard, he became so eloquent and forceful, and slammed the table so hard, that all the village matrons gave play to their religious and patriotic feelings in subdued but prolific tears; which, when you consider that they did not know a word of English, was a unique testimonial to the eloquence and dominating personality of our versatile Brigadier. And then came the swelling triumphant peroration in which the “Old Brig.,” declared that “Palestine had been conquered and Jerusalem delivered by the help of God, but mainly by the might of the British Army.” After that we danced, and very gay it was, despite our unanimous opinion that speaking Russian was an easy task, compared with attempting correctly to foot a Russian measure with a pretty Jewish maiden. To be honest, it was a dumb show; but eyes were eloquent.
But we have been a long time coming to the story of the Little Bint. She was one of many of her unhappy kind in Palestine. In that country, as in all the East, the rich know no compassion for the poor. If you starve it is the will of God and no concern of the more fortunate. That interference with the ways of Allah is the cardinal sin is a satisfactory article in the creed of the rich in Palestine. So the poor starve, unsuccoured, about the doors of the wealthy.
The Little Bint of Wady Hanein was first seen slinking around the outskirts of Brigade headquarters. She was a wretched little Arab of seven or eight years, clad only in a tattered filthy shirt which came to her knees; with matted verminous hair, sparkling black eyes and a pitifully skinny little body. She sneaked round the lines at meal time, pouncing like a hungry dog on empty bully tins and jam tins, scooping out the remnants with a deft forefinger and flashing happy smiles as she put the finger to her mouth. The men were quick to notice, and soon the Bint had ten times more than she could eat. But she did not thrive. The vermin on her wretched body, and her unsheltered winter nights, kept her thin and miserable.
The grooms and batmen on Brigade conferred on the subject of the Bint and her future. The ringleader, whom we shall call Pine, a groom whose Regimental reputation was far from the best, led a deputation, accompanied by the interpreter and the Bint, up to the Bey, a fat Arab with a comfortable home and substantial wealth. Pine was forceful and the interpreter glib and honest. But the sleek Bey was obdurate. “There are many such,” he said suavely and finally, disowning any responsibility for the Little Bint, and he was not at all moved at the nasty reflections which the outspoken Pine cast upon his mother as the deputation withdrew. The missionaries returned to camp, baffled but not defeated. “We’ll adopt the little beggar ourselves,” declared Pine, “and take her on as a blasted mascot.” And they did. The preliminary work was decided. First the Bint must, as they say in plain army English, be “deloused” and bathed. Nobody wanted the job. But Pine was determined to see it through, and with the Brigade Major’s batman he cut the Bint’s hair, disinfected her and scrubbed her until her dusky colour was in danger. Other clumsy but Christian fingers cut up shirts and made her clothes; the remainder contrived a bivvy in which she was to sleep. And the Little Bint of Wady Hanein waxed fat and happy, and was a touch of soft femininity and a source of much delight to Brigade headquarters.
Then came marching orders for Amman. You occasionally find Arab boys travelling with the Light Horse, keen little beggars who act as cooks’ offsiders and batmen’s batmen, and officers smile and sympathetically shut their eyes to it. But it was clear that the sprightly little black-eyed Bint could not be taken out over the mountains into the bitter cold and bloody fighting at Amman. So Pine sought the Padre, and the Padre went off twelve miles to Jaffa and talked to the Mother Superior at the convent. Next day the Brigadier lent his car, and Pine—his leggings gleaming and spurs shining, and amusingly self-conscious—accompanied the Bint to Jaffa, and handed her over to the kindly nuns. Perhaps, as he left her, he gave her a big brotherly kiss and a trooper’s rough benediction; but probably he was too shy. I do not know.
“CAMP FOLLOWER”
BRIG.-GENERAL RYRIE INSPECTS THE “BULLY”
BRIG.-GENERAL COX ON RIVER JORDAN
A WALLAD OF PALESTINE