War in the Garden of Eden

by Kermit Roosevelt

A "Red Crescent" ambulance

During the run back to Ana we picked up the more important of our prisoners and took them with us. Twenty-two were all we could manage. I was running one of the big cars. It was always a surprise to see how easy they were to handle in spite of the weight of the armor-plate. We each took great pride in the car in which we generally rode. All had names. In the Fourteenth one section had "Silver Dart" and "Silver Ghost" and another "Gray Terror" and "Gray Knight." The car in which I rode a great deal of the time met its fate only a few days before the armistice, long after I had gone to France. Two direct hits from an Austrian "eighty-eight" ended its career.

It was after midnight when we got back to our camp in a palm-garden in Ana. Although we had not succeeded in capturing the gold convoy, we had brought in a number of valuable prisoners, and among other things I had found some papers belonging to a German political agent whom we had captured. These contained much information about the Arab situation, and through them it was all but proved that the German was the direct instigator of the murder of the political officer at Nejef. An amusing sidelight was thrown in the letters addressed by Arab sheiks through this agent to the Kaiser thanking him for the iron crosses they had been awarded. There must have been an underlying grim humor in distributing crosses to the Mohammedan Arabs in recognition of their efforts to withstand the advance into the Holy Land of the Christian invaders.

On our arrival at Ana we were told that orders had come through that the town be evacuated on the following morning. Preparations were made to blow up the ammunition dump, which was fortunately concentrated in a series of buildings that joined each other. We warned the inhabitants and advised them to hide in the caves along the hillsides. We ourselves went back to the camp which we had occupied near the bridge the night before entering Ana. During the afternoon Major Edye, a political officer, turned up, travelling alone with an Arab attendant. He pitched his camp, consisting of a saddle and blanket, close beside us. He was an extraordinarily interesting man, with a great gift for languages. In the course of a year or so's wandering in Abyssinia he had learned both ancient and modern Abyssinian. There was a famous German Orientalist with whom he corresponded in the pre-war days. He had mailed him a letter just at the outbreak, which, written in ancient Abyssinian, must have been a good deal of a puzzle to the censors.

The main explosion, taking place at the appointed time, was succeeded by smaller ones, which continued at gradually lengthening intervals throughout the night. General Cassels, who had commanded the cavalry brigade so ably throughout the advance, wished to return to Ana on the following morning in order to check up the thoroughness with which the dump had been destroyed. He took an escort of armored cars, and as I was the only one in the batteries who could speak Arabic, my services were requisitioned. As we approached the town the rattle of the small-arms ammunition sounded like a Fourth of July celebration. The general noticed that I had a kodak and asked me to go out into the dump and take some photographs. There was nothing to do but put on a bold front, but I have spent happier moments than those in which I edged my way gingerly over the smoking heaps to a ruined wall from which I could get a good view for my camera. As I came back a large shell exploded and we hastily moved the cars farther away.

I went to the mayor's house to find out how the town had fared. He was a solemn old Arab, and showed me the damage done by the shells with an absolutely expressionless face. The houses within a fair radius had been riddled, but the natives had taken our warning and no one had been killed. After a cup of coffee in a lovely garden on the river-bank, I came back to the cars and we ran on through to Haditha. Here we were to remain for a week or ten days to permit the evacuation of the captured supplies.

Thus far we had been having good luck with the weather, but it now began to threaten rain. We crawled beneath the cars with our blankets and took such precautions as were possible, but it availed us little when a veritable hurricane blew up at midnight. I was washed out from under my car, but before dark I had marked down a deserted hut, and thither I groped my way. Although it was abandoned by the Arabs, living traces of their occupancy remained. Still, even that was preferable to the rain, and the roof proved unexpectedly water-tight.

All next day the storm continued. The Wadi Hauran, a large ravine reaching back into the desert for a hundred and fifty miles, became a boiling torrent. When we crossed over, it was as dry as a bone. A heavy lorry on which an anti-aircraft gun was mounted had been swirled away and smashed to bits. The ration question had been difficult all along, but now any further supply was temporarily out of the question.