The long, distressing summer in Jordan Valley died hard. In September, when the Anzac Mounted Division was there, the hottest days of the whole year were endured. The various mounted troops had held the Jordan sector in turn, those in reserve enjoying brief periods of rest on the bracing uplands about Solomon’s Pools, a little to the south of Jerusalem. There the sunny days were cool, and at night men who had known little sleep down on the Jordan rejoiced in the mountain mists and the unwonted comfort of their blankets.
In the course of the year there had been another interesting change in the composition of General Allenby’s army. Many of the Yeomanry and British infantry had gone to other battle fronts, and in their place came one hundred thousand Indian horse and foot. Many of our Light Horsemen had fought beside the Gurkhas and other Indians on the Peninsula; some of us had seen the Indian cavalry in France in the early days of the war; but to most of the Australians the Indians were strangers. To-day, after a few months and a stirring campaign together, the bond between the two races is a remarkably strong one.
AUSTRALIA’S NEW FRIENDS
The Australian soldier has, for a man of insular breeding, shown an extraordinary capacity for making friends. He has an easy way with peoples of all races and colours. In France he is completely at his ease among the French peasantry; and he saunters through the Arab villages in Palestine as familiarly and as confidently as he used to walk the streets of his townships and cities at home. His old enemy the Turkish ranker is his admired personal friend. But the strong bond which sprang up so quickly between the Light Horseman and the Indians was perhaps the strangest of all his new war friendships. They were divided by colour, the language barrier was absolute, and, most unpromising of all, there was the barrier of caste, which prevented the devout Indian from sharing his rations, and so made little acts of camp hospitality impossible. But the barriers, although they seemed impassable, were miraculously surmounted. The Indians made no secret of their admiration of the Light Horseman as a past-master at the game of combined mounted and dismounted fighting, while the Australian was genuinely appreciative of the splendid soldierly qualities of the highly-trained regular Indian cavalry. Moreover, nearly all the Indians rode Australian horses!
Every trooper in Palestine knew that a great campaign would be launched in the early autumn. General Allenby would, according to the camp-fire strategists, “hop in” during the brief season between the extreme heat and the beginning of the heavy rains in November. Further, the C. in C. would, in all probability, assail the enemy line at the full of the moon, so that we should have light for the great cavalry night marches that were anticipated. But it is doubtful whether any soldier in Palestine, who was not in the official secret, forecasted a scheme so bold as that General Allenby had resolved upon. Certainly, none dared to hope for a triumph so dazzlingly swift and complete.
THE WONDERFUL FORTNIGHT
The great campaign opened at dawn on the morning of 19th September, 1918. A fortnight after General Allenby flung his artillery bombardment at the enemy line, the great Turkish and German force in Western and Eastern Palestine had been destroyed, and our prisoners numbered 75,000. Of the 4th, 7th, and 8th Turkish Armies south of Damascus only a few thousand foot-sore, hunted men escaped. Practically every gun, the great bulk of the machine guns, nearly all the small-arms, and transport, every aerodrome and its mechanical equipment and nearly every aeroplane, an intricate and widespread telephone and telegraph system, large dumps of munitions and every kind of supplies—all had, in fourteen swift and dramatic days, been stripped from an enemy who for four years had resisted our efforts to smash him. It was a military overthrow so sudden and so absolute that it is perhaps without parallel in the history of war. And it is still more remarkable because it was achieved at a cost so trifling.
TURKS MARCHING OUT OF OLD CITY OF JERUSALEM AT BEGINNING OF WAR, 1914
(Captured German Photograph)
