Armed with signed certificates of identity we went to the officers' rest house to demand beds.
"Speak English?" said a quartermaster-sergeant as we entered.
"Yes."
"Been expecting you. The Greek contractor's sons, aren't you?"
Later, not long before the bulletin-board showed the rumoured armistice with Germany to be premature, an orderly in the rest house wished to share the great news that wasn't true with the nearest person, who happened to be White. He stopped short on seeing a dubious civilian. But his good-fellowship was not to be denied. French being the lingua franca of the multi-nationalitied troops in Salonika, he slapped White on the back and announced: "Matey, la guerre est finie!"
Metamorphosed by ordnance uniforms from third-class scarecrows to the regulation pattern of officer, we spent glorious days of rest and recuperation. Then, by the next boat for Port Saïd, we left Salonika the squalid for Cairo the comfortable; and so to the world where they dined, danced, demobilized, and signed treaties of peace.
EPILOGUE
A DAMASCUS POSTSCRIPT; AND SOME WORDS ON THE KNIGHTS OF ARABY, A CRUSADER IN SHORTS, A VERY NOBLE LADYE AND SOME HAPPY ENDINGS
Of all the cities in the Near and Middle East Damascus is at once the most ancient, the most unchanged by time, the most unreservedly Oriental, and the most elusive.