CHAPTER XX
In Full Cry
At this stage the campaign developed into a species of fox-hunt on an enormous scale, with the Turk very adequately playing the part of the fox. Although some forty thousand of the enemy had been captured in the grand attack, a similar number still remained at large who were running very hard in the direction of Beyrout and Damascus, and these it was our business to pursue. Also, the King of the Hedjaz emerged from the desert east of Amman, and in conjunction with the Australians, fell upon the 4th Turkish Army, who were still making some show of resistance in the mountains of Moab, captured most of them, and started the remainder on the long road to Damascus.
Thus the hunt was up on both flanks, the infantry for the most part following the coast route and the Hedjaz column riding via Der'aa.
In the centre, with a long start, the cavalry who had poured through the first gap in the Turkish line were still riding hard after the enemy. The cavalry travelled so quickly that they missed, I think, much of the interest of the journey, which took them through the centre of a country wherein almost every village has a history; the reader, therefore, will perhaps find the slower gait of the "Camels" more to his taste.
The prisoners were still pouring in when we left Ras el Ain, and in the eyes of those we passed was an awful glassy stare as of men who had come through great torment: these were they who had come out of the Valley of Chaos alive.
Here and there a German officer walked alone at the head of a batch of Turks, and as this was a sufficiently unusual sight, I asked one of the guards the reason. He replied that many of the Turkish battalions were commanded by German officers, whose principal asset was a firm belief in discipline as practised in the Fatherland. Hated and feared by Turkish officers, and contemptuously regarded as inferiors by officers of their own blood, in captivity neither party would own them: they were Ishmaelites.
The attitude of our camel drivers towards the Turks was somewhat amusing, though it is to be feared that pity is a quality but little understood by Eastern nations. "Turkey finish!" they would say with an indescribable shrug of the shoulders, and this expression, about the only English they knew, seemed to afford them infinite satisfaction.
In the early stages our route lay across the recent battlefield, where on every hand were the terrible signs of a routed army: dead horses, the wreckage of guns and waggons, rifles with the murderous saw-bayonet attached—a monstrous weapon for any nation to use, little clusters of shells near dismantled battery positions, long rows of sharpened stakes in front of a trench smashed almost out of recognition, and endless barbed-wire torn and blown into grotesque piles by the violence of our bombardment; and through the débris slunk the predatory Bedouin with his dingy galabeah full of loot. At one place a Turkish camel with a gaily caparisoned saddle trotted up to us and joined the column for company; he earned his keep, too, after he had recovered from the effects of his long fast and had been fattened up again. While on the subject of animals let me state that on this first day a goat, an ass, another camel, and numerous pariah dogs added themselves to our ration strength.
The goat earned opprobrium and early demise by eating one of my notebooks, which contained a nominal roll of some two hundred camel-drivers; and as each native has at least four names—Abdul Achmed Mohammed Khalil is a fair example—the fact that we made several meals off the goat was not adequate compensation for the labour of re-writing the roll. The ass performed the duty to which he has been accustomed from time immemorial in the Holy Land: he carried the aged. In the company we had a number of old men who had joined the corps probably because they had sons already serving, and we used to allow the old fellows to ride in turn upon the ass, particularly towards the end of a long day's march. The number of these "Abu's" (fathers) who developed a pronounced limp at some time or other during the day was astonishing, but the sudden and miraculous cure that was effected by the appearance of the Bash-Rais (native Sergeant-Major) completely bewildered the uninitiated. The second camel, being too young to carry a load, was killed, and gave me my first taste of camel-steak, which in flavour is not unlike veal.