Australia in Palestine

by Unknown

SCOTTIES ON A ROUTE MARCH

ABANA GORGE

At dusk, in the Abana Pass, which leads out from Damascus towards Beirut, another disaster befell the enemy. Here, a column many miles in length was committed in a deep and narrow and singularly beautiful gorge. The floor of the gorge is less than a hundred yards across, and it is crowded with the Abana River—a rushing, mountain torrent,—a railway and a road. The river banks are overgrown with trees and bushes; the railway and road cross and re-cross the tumbling stream. On either side rise the gaunt cliffs of the desert. In this brief survey it is impossible to describe the fight between the long enemy column and the handful of dismounted Light Horsemen of the 3rd and 5th Brigades, who were perched in pockets of the cliffs on either side. The Germans, working their machine guns from the tops of motor wagons and lorries, fought to the death. Three hundred and seventy officers and men were killed, and fell among the dead and dying horses in the wild tumult of the chaotic column. We had scarcely a man hit. That ended the attempt to leave Damascus by the west; but the enemy was streaming out by the north along the road to Aleppo. Their run, however, was brief. Early next morning the 3rd Light Horse Brigade—the first force to enter Damascus—was in hot pursuit. The German machine gunners again attempted a rear-guard, but they could not withstand the charges of the elated Light Horsemen. Thousands of prisoners and hundreds of machine guns were taken by the Brigade.

On the morning of 1st October a squadron of the 4th Light Horse Regiment received orders to patrol into the city. Winding along the crooked lanes between the irrigated orchards and gardens, it came upon the great Turkish barracks, swarming with troops. The Turks did not at once surrender, and the squadron leader, before attacking, awaited the arrival of the remainder of the Regiment. Then followed a fitting termination to the wonderful, and practically bloodless, British ride. A few hundred of the 4th Light Horse took nearly 12,000 prisoners in Damascus before noon, together with dozens of field pieces and scores of machine guns. Scarcely a shot was fired. There was no formal surrender; each body of men laid down its arms as the Australians rode up.

EXULTANT ARABS

The Victorians entered the city and joined up with the exulting Arabs. These two forces, which had started hundreds of miles apart with two mountain systems intervening, were mingled together in the midst of the swirling, madly-excited populace. To the Arab, Damascus was the dazzling prize, the promised reward. Here he was to proclaim and set up his government. Riding forth from his tent on the desert, or his little mud village, he was, in Damascus, the lord of a city of 250,000 souls—the oldest city in the world, and distinguished by the richness and strange character and beauty of its surroundings. Fired with pride, his long robes touched with brilliant patches of silk, he rode the streets on his sprightly desert horse, caparisoned with richly woven Persian saddle-bags. His scabbard of gold and silver flashed in the sunlight, and he fired his rifle freely at the skies. Ameer Feisal, the third son of the Sherif of Mecca, who was soon to be proclaimed the new ruler, rode into the city. The Arabs of the city gave an almost fanatical greeting to the Prince.

THE GALLOP INTO DAMASCUS

Although the Victorians secured the great haul of prisoners, the first troops to enter Damascus were the Light Horsemen from Western Australia, who, also, had had the distinction of being the first mounted men to enter Jerusalem, in December. The Western Australians found their way into Damascus by accident, and their ride was one of the most dramatic and picturesque incidents of the campaign.

The 3rd Light Horse Brigade, to which the Western Australians belong, spent the night in the Abana Gorge, a few miles from Damascus, to the west along the Beirut Road. Brigadier-General Wilson was under orders to move at dawn and seize the road leading from the city northward towards Aleppo. It was hoped that a track would be found around the outskirts of the town, but this proved impracticable. The Brigade, therefore, with a troop of scouts leading, and the Western Australians following, came down the Abana Gorge, clearing a track through the shambles of dead Turks and Germans and hundreds of camels and horses, heaped on the road in the fighting of the evening before. It soon became plain to the officer second in command of the Western Australians, who was riding ahead with the scouts, that the only way to the Aleppo road lay through the heart of Damascus. The city had not surrendered, and he did not know how many of the enemy it contained. But he decided on the bold course, and pressed on. As the scouts passed the outskirts of the city, riding a narrow road with the river on one side and a prolonged, mud-built garden wall on the other, there was a sudden burst of Turkish rifle fire. No one was hit, and the officer in command, checking the scouts until the advanced squadron of Western Australians came up, ordered drawn swords, and dashed on at a gallop. Across the river, two or three hundred yards away, were thousands of Turks at the barracks. For a moment, the enemy decision was in the balance. But the sight of the great Australian horses coming at a gallop (the Turks and natives never ceased to marvel at the size of our horses), the flashing swords, and the ring of shoes upon the metal, turned the scale. “The shooting by the Turks,” said one of our officers, “gave way, in a second, to the clapping of hands by the citizens.”