With our army in Palestine

by Antony Bluett

Of the pariah dogs I dare not trust myself to say much. They would follow the convoy all day long, with the furtive air characteristic of those to whom life means nothing but a constant dodging of half-bricks violently hurled; and at night they would sit around in a circle and perform the mournful operation known as baying the moon, which they did with prodigious enthusiasm and complete indifference as to whether there was a moon or not. It will convey much when I add that there was a deplorable lack of suitable stones along the roadside.

After leaving Tul Keram, a hill town whose white mosque was a landmark for miles, we turned westwards and struck across the plain of Sharon towards the sea. Hereabouts the country with its red soil and glorious verdure is not unlike some parts of Somerset in appearance. The harvest had been gathered in, and we passed through vast fields of stubble, which were divided one from another by strips of curious coloured grass. Indeed, this bluish grass and the cactus-hedges were the only forms of boundary used in Palestine and Syria; I never saw a wall except one built by the troops for defensive purposes.

At one part of the trek the road led through a tunnel, very nearly half a mile in length, which was formed by a double row of vines whose branches bent over a kind of trellis-work; and on either side of this leafy tunnel were orchards of pomegranate and fig-trees. Dessert was plentiful for some days. There was little evidence now of the destructive hand of war, except that no one was working in the orchards and vineries, and the inhabitants of the small native villages through which we passed mostly remained behind closed doors, with not even an inquisitive eye at the window.

Cæsarea seemed quite busy by contrast, when we arrived in the cool of evening, though it is only a tiny fishing-village whose tumbledown mud-huts are completely overshadowed by the great masses of ruins with which the rocks are covered. As with other ruined sites in this country of ruins, it was difficult to realise that Cæsarea once represented the might of Rome, as an imperial city and the most considerable port in Palestine. Jaffa must have been small and mean by comparison, for Herod the Great not only built after the pattern of Rome a great city of pillars and columns, but constructed an artificial harbour deep enough to float any ship of his time; nor were the defences neglected, for the city was once in its history besieged for seven years! Of the harbour nothing now remains, and, to come back to the present, the water was scarcely deep enough to float the lighters of the merchant-ships landing rations for the division.

We had the Mediterranean for company after leaving Cæsarea, except for an occasional brief incursion inland where the coast was too dangerous for traffic. On one of these détours we passed through Zimmerin, a German colony magnificently situated on a hillside and surrounded by a great forest. Here in times of peace lumbering was carried on, though whether the Germans followed Solomon's example, and floated rafts of timber down to Jaffa or north to Haifa, I was unable to ascertain. At any rate there seemed to be no other way to get their timber to the markets.

I wonder how many people are aware of the extent to which the Germans carried their policy of "peaceful penetration" in Palestine and Syria? Whenever in our wanderings we came across a neat, modern town or village, be sure that the inhabitants were mainly German; that in many cities they were also Jews does not, I suggest, make a great deal of difference.

The language of all was German, and their extraordinary thoroughness in devising means to overcome the climatic and other difficulties of the country was also German, with the result that they waxed fat and prosperous, while the people indigenous to the soil scraped a precarious living by tending the flocks and tilling the land of the interlopers. All through the country from Gaza, where there was actually a German school, to Haifa, of which the largest and wealthiest portion of the population was German, you will find these colonies occupying almost invariably the most commanding sites and situated in the midst of the most fertile tracts of land.

It was, I think, by contrast with these prosperous places that the ruins of Palestine and Syria took on an added desolation and loneliness: you could with difficulty visualise the past splendours of a crumbling mass of mighty pillars when on the hill opposite stood a town of bijou villas with modern appurtenances.

A mournful example of this was at Athlit, the remains of whose greatness lay half-buried almost at the foot of Mt. Carmel. For a brief moment you could capture the spirit of a bygone age; the massive walls seemed to ring again with the clash of arms and the shouts of that little band of Crusaders who were fighting their last fight in their last stronghold on holy soil. Then your eyes lit on the great barrack of a German hotel on the top of Carmel, and the great fortress dissolved into a crumbling, shapeless pile at your feet.

Beyond Athlit lay the port of Haifa, a town of considerable size, which contained the largest German colony in the country. The road leading into and out of Haifa is typical of the Eastern mind; that is, it is anything but straight.