With our army in Palestine

by Antony Bluett

Presently the ladies of the village came out en masse, all with baskets of oranges, some as big as the two fists. We had a glut of them. Personally I ate ten—this is not claimed as a record—and never enjoyed fruit so much in my life; it was a very satisfying experience.

Later in the day we rode into the village again to water the horses and fill the water-carts. As the well was not yet in full working order the engineers had dug a large shallow hole in the ground, lined with a tarpaulin, and not unlike a swimming bath in appearance. This was filled with water from fanatis brought up by the camels, and connected up by hand-pumps to the canvas troughs erected alongside, by which ingenious means we were enabled to water the horses in comparative comfort. For this blessing we were truly grateful after our recent experiences in the desert.

Coming back we met some wretched half-starved Bedouins fleeing into the village for safety. One mournful little cavalcade struck the eye arrestingly as it passed. At the head of the party and mounted on a white donkey rode the handsomest Arab I ever saw in Palestine, with clean-cut features and large, sorrowful eyes. Behind him, also on donkeys, rode his womenfolk, heavily veiled, and his retainers in burnous and flowing robes. Hereabouts the road was strewn with leaves and branches blown from the trees, and the whole made a picture startlingly suggestive of that representing Christ's entry into Jerusalem.

It must be remembered, lest this scene be set down as a figment of the imagination, that the people of this land are still the people of the Bible: their dress, their habits, their methods of travelling are precisely as they were two thousand years ago. The husbandman still uses the cumbersome wooden plough of the Old Testament, the women still go with their "chatties" down to the well at sunset, to draw water and gossip with their neighbours, as did Rachel before them, and any day can be seen, tending their flocks, shepherds the exact prototype of those who followed the Wise Men of the East to the cradle of the world.

I am not going to suggest that this incident of the fugitive sheikh was instantly linked up with the sacred picture, the process was gradual. There was first a sense of being on familiar ground, of having witnessed the whole scene before somewhere, which was followed by the transition to the Bible stories of childhood's days. Then came the inevitable dénouement, and the picture was complete. Similar scenes constantly recurred the farther we advanced into Palestine, and it was impossible that they should leave no impression.

We found our orders waiting for us when we arrived back at our halting place and at once hooked in and started again, only to be held up a little way out by the congestion of troops who had marched into the village during the morning. The cactus-hedges bordering the lanes afforded admirable protection from observation by enemy aircraft, some of which were hovering in the neighbourhood.

Dispatch-riders on motor-cycles threaded their way to the front in and out amongst the horses with amazing skill, the cavalry swung forward en route for the open country, staff officers galloped along the lanes, and in a few short moments the whole atmosphere had changed from pastoral peace to the tense excitement of military activity. Every few moments an enemy plane came over to have a look at Khan Yunus, though it is doubtful whether they saw very much, for an army could easily have hidden itself between the hedgerows of the village.

So great was the bustle that most of us fully expected that the first battle in the Holy Land was about to begin. It was by now high noon and insufferably hot, and the soft alluvial dust churned up by motor bicycles and galloping hoofs rose in suffocating clouds. We were penned in by the high cactus-hedges and not a breath of air could reach us to dissipate the choking dust. We had, it would appear, escaped the sand only to encounter a worse enemy, and to add to our discomfort, we were still wearing the serge tunics of the winter months. Nor could we ease ourselves by taking them off, for this was a lengthy business, first necessitating the removal of water-bottles, haversacks, bandoliers, and revolver-belts; and orders to move might arrive while we were in medias res. The early morning rhapsodies about Palestine were, like ourselves, rapidly melting away under the influence of these trials to the flesh, and as the blazing hours wore on with no change in the situation, we began strongly to feel that the country was vastly overrated.

All through the afternoon generals, colonels, and minor constellations charged past and disappeared, and with every fresh layer of dust on our already begrimed faces, we thought that the moment had surely come to move out of that atrocious lane. But for the entire absence of gunfire, you would have thought that a frightful battle was going on somewhere beyond our narrow prison. Not until sundown did we at last receive orders to go forward till we were clear of the village—and camp for the night!

For most of us whose imaginations had been fired by the scenes we had witnessed, this order came as a bitter disappointment. Later in the evening we learnt what has already been told earlier in this chapter: that we had still some fourteen miles of the country to cover before we could get in touch with the Turks. While we had been waiting in the lane the cavalry had made a reconnaissance in some strength, in order to see if any Turkish patrols were in the neighbourhood. Apparently the "All clear" had been reported, hence our peaceful return with the instructions to be ready to start on the longer journey at a moment's notice.