The Desert Mounted Corps

lry. Reinforcements of men and guns were being hurried southwards from Aleppo to his aid; some had already arrived. In order to drive the e

th safety until our railway had been pushed considerably farther north. Relays of Sappers had been working on the line day and night since the fall of Gaza, and the railhead was moving forward at a pace that beat all previous rec

it could start, its transport, which had been lent to the 52nd and 75th Divisions, had t

g

irty-six hours during that time. The heat, too, had been intense, and the short ration, 9? lbs. of grain per day, without any bulk food, had weakened them greatly. Indeed the hardships endured by some of the horses were almost incredible. One of the batteries of the Australian Mounted Division had on

G.O.C. of the 5th Mounted Brigade reported on the 16th of November that he had, in his three regiments, only 690 men mounted and fit for duty. It is true t

side, according to our ideas, but hard as nails, and with beautifully clean legs and feet, their record in this war places far above the cavalry horses of any other nation. The Australians themselves can never understand our partiality for the half-bred, weight-carrying hunter, which looks to them like a cart horse. Their contention has always been that good blood will carry more weight than big bone, and the experience of this war has converted the writer, for one, entirely to their point of view. It must be remembered

r a long period, while the little Australian horses, without any special care other than good f

g plant there, and our engineers soon had rows of[Pg 96] drinking troughs erected, and a steady stream of sweet clear water flowing into them. It was good to see the horses burying their

for everything. Neat finger-posts and notice-boards directed the stranger where to go, and where not to go, and a host of the inevitable 'Verboten' signs bristled on every side. It was noticeable that these last were the only ones that were written in Turki

ntirely by the predatory genius of the gunner subaltern in command. As this officer has now returned to civilian life, and is a respected, and it is to be hoped respectable, member of society, it is, perhaps, kinder to draw a veil over his methods.[Pg 97] Suffice it to say that he brought his command of 600 horses and men into the Station, all fit and well, and no questions were asked. And if, some

n in the village, who was dressed as a native. The man was arrested, and proved to be a Turkish spy. Terrified at finding himself discovered, the miserable wretch begged for his life, and promised, if he was spared, to put us on the track of the man who, he said, was the head

y learnt that he had gone on-to quote the report of the A.P.M.-'to a place[Pg 98] called Ram Allah Rakhman, which we took to be somewhere near Bethlehem, but subsequently discovered to be the same place!' The enemy's right group was at this time in the neighbourhood of Hebron, and

ckily escaped, but we came up with it later on and destroyed it, thus leaving no trace of the enemy patrol!' A few miles farther on, they encountered another, and larger, body of enemy cavalry. 'Thi

y the inhabitants, nearly all of whom are Christians. The poor people crowded round their deliverers to k

o stay and eat with some of the notables of the town, after which they got under way again, and drov

g

Turks had no post actually on the road, and it is probable that a couple of cars coming from behind their lines attracted little attention. T

ese cars got to Beit Jibrin, where they found, and captured, the spy who was the cause of all the trouble, and who had doubled back on his tracks from Bethle

d at once flew back to Corps Headquarters and reported that the lost sheep were found, and were on their way back. The second patrol

Ulysses did finally arrive, instead of receiving a 'few kind words of praise' for carrying out an exce

added gravely, 'On the Palestine front there is no change!' At last the Germans came to the conclusion that this bluff might possibly be carried too far, so they caused to be printed in their own papers what purported to be an official Turkish communiqué, though none of the Turkish

TNO

ns carrying a machine g