Ziza practically finished the Anzacs’ brilliant little campaign. In all, some 11,000 prisoners were taken. The total battle casualties for the Division did not exceed a few score.
THE TECHNICAL SERVICES
The writer of this sketch has been obliged to keep severely to the work of the Force as a whole, and has recorded little or nothing of the great achievements of the many technical services, lacking which the victorious progress of the Light Horsemen would have been impossible. The performances of the Australian No. 1 Flying Corps Squadron, the first Commonwealth Flying Squadron engaged in the war, deserve a volume to themselves. Recruited chiefly from the Light Horse Regiments, both pilots and observers excelled in resource and daring, and in their golden chivalry to their foes, and in their many fine rescues of fallen comrades far behind the enemy lines, shone the spirit of Saladin and King Richard. They were the modern Knights of Palestine.
ANZAC RIDGE, GAZA
By Lieut. G. W. Lambert
Then there were the Engineers (no attempt is made to place these services in order of merit—a hopeless task), who found us water at will, as with a magician’s wand, beneath the blistering sands of Sinai; who bridged the Jordan under heavy fire for the crossing to Moab, and who, so often, blew enemy railroads, bridges and viaducts heavenward. Working over every kind of country from the desert to the mountains, they won through because of their indomitable spirit, and their boundless gift for improvization.
THE M.O.
In the whole war there has not been a campaign which depended so much for its success upon the native wit of the individual. Conditions changed with dramatic suddenness from battle to battle. What served to-day, was useless to-morrow. As an example of this, take the superb work of our Medical Services. The Medical Officer was, all the way, a man of many inventions. In the desert the wounded were habitually carried on sledges made of sheets of galvanized iron, and, later, upon an improvement of this device; as the campaign progressed, they were borne on camels; and once, at least, in the mountains east of Jordan, they were carried lying flat on rough beds made of greatcoats on the backs of horses; and as the road improved, they were carried in two-wheeled sand-carts, in ordinary G.S. wagons and every kind of motor. The Light Horse galloped, and those who would serve them must gallop too. The almost miraculous rapidity and efficiency with which the Medical Units would establish their various stations and communications, at the very heels of a fight, distant perhaps a hundred swiftly-covered miles from railhead, made them worthy peers of the sparkling horsemen. And, thanks to the establishment of the mobile operating theatre—a veritable galloping machine, like the rest of the force—under a gifted surgeon, it was possible for the most intricate skull and abdominal operations to be carried out at the edge of the zone of fire. All honour to our doctors and their devoted staffs! And especially dear in the memory of Light Horsemen will always be the mounted stretcher-bearers. No wounded man was beyond their gallant reach.