BEDOUINS CAPTURED AT HASSANIYA
STREET MARKET, JERUSALEM
BEDOUIN VILLAGE
TURKISH PRISONERS, NABLUS
The next hour or two saw us busy among the horses—removing the superfluous dirt from their coats, cleaning up the stable lines, and watering and feeding our jaded mounts. We were then marched to the Q.M.’s to be issued with an extra blanket. In the usual way of Q.M.’s, this just allowed us back in time for six o’clock breakfast. During the meal they broke the news gently to us that there was a mounted parade at seven, to go through a “little training.” More grumbles, of course, but the time was too short to allow of any delay for grousing, so we got out for our “little training.” This delightful exercise consisted of a gruelling couple of hours in the sun, after which we had to groom and stable our horses, had a quarter of an hour’s “smoke-o,” and then the pleasure of lecture for half an hour or so.
Dismissed to our tents, we distributed ourselves behind the covers of various journals—ranging, according to taste, from “War Cry” to the “Bulletin.” Hardly was our interest fixed, when there was borne in on our ears a stentorian cry which resolved itself into the voice of our two-bar artist yelling “Fall in for water!” and away we went again like lambs. A struggle with four horses, two on each side of you, and each couple desiring to go in a different direction, is not calculated to improve one’s temper; but we got the job done and returned for dinner. This meal was not the one of our dreams, but we settled down after it as though we’d lunched at “Shepheards,” and began to think that the “rest” part of the stunt was at hand. Then the orderly sergeant announced that there would be a grazing parade at two o’clock. So out we all had to turn again and spend a couple of hours on the grassy slope a mile or so away, thinking sad thoughts and uttering strong utterances.
