We’ll gallop our files through the shell-torn aisles of a sadly shaken throng,
And the fire of hell will grandly swell to a martial storm of song.
Swift as the tide then we shall ride for the goal that burns ahead—
When night rolls round we’ll slumber sound where God’s sweet light is shed,
And the silver eyes of the cloudless skies will watch o’er the valiant dead.
“GERARDY.”
The Little Bint of Wady Hanein
Throughout the long campaign the fighting was fairly constant, but there were occasional brief seasons of rest, and the happiest of these were spent in the neighbourhood of the Jewish orchard settlements. The 1st Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealanders favoured Richon, where the wine vaults are said to be the largest in the world; and the Jewish girls are the prettiest in all Palestine. But the 2nd Brigade was loyal to modest little Wady Hanein. The three Jewish villages of Richon, Wady Hanein and Deiran stand about three miles apart in a rough line across the sandhills. Deiran, where the polyglot lassies were wooed by the troops associated with Desert Mounted Corps headquarters, is, like Richon, a large village, almost a town, with considerable social pretentions. There the Jews hold political meetings, and the girls dress with an eye on distant Paris. But Wady Hanein is demure—a true little Arcady set amidst hills and hollows beautiful and fragrant with orange groves and orchards of almonds. In the early spring the settlement was a glory of pink and white blossoms, and, later, its lanes were scented with the breath of the flowering oranges. As I write, the 2nd Brigade is in Wady Hanein for the last time, having come down from its strenuous work around Amman, across the Jordan; and the plump round oranges are coquetting between green and golden.
