CHAPTER XVII. Ou L'on S'amuse

OU L'ON S'AMUSE

If I set out to make a categorical list of the things that existed or were made for our amusement in Palestine, it would, I think, consist of no more than four items, viz.: sea-bathing, military sports, sight-seeing, and concert parties; and I am not sure that the last-named ought to be included, for it was not until the final year of the campaign that they played any considerable part. Certainly Palestine was a difficult country in which to set up any of the more usual forms of relaxation. There were no neat little towns just behind the lines where a man could drink his glass of beer while he sat and watched the pictures, for example; nor were the Judaean hills exactly the ideal place wherein to set up a cinema or theatre of your own. Those who were fortunate enough to be stationed near Jaffa could, of course, visit that delectable spot, with its glorious surroundings and incredibly filthy streets; where they could see the alleged house of Simon the Tanner, or tread the sands whereon Napoleon slaughtered some three thousand prisoners in cold blood because he had no idea what else to do with them; and where, if they had a mind to renew the agony of their schooldays, they could pick out the extremely common-place rocks to which that unfortunate lady Andromeda was chained before her sensational rescue by Perseus.

These about exhausted the amusements of Jaffa, and you will notice that they do not exactly make for hilarity. A few miles away to the south were the Jewish colonies at Richon and Duran, whose inhabitants were extremely hospitable, and any troops quartered there subsequent to the fall of Jerusalem were assured of a warm welcome. At the former there was a considerable vine-growing industry and, as a natural concomitant, the troops showed commendable industry in drinking the produce.

Personally, I remember Richon chiefly because a tragedy befell me there. The village contained a real barber's shop, if one may judge from the word "Coiffeur" writ large on the sign outside, and having heard of this startling phenomenon I rode over one evening for a hair-cut and shampoo. My foot was on the very threshold when a large person clad in fine raiment and wearing an armlet inscribed with the mystic letters "A.P.M." emerged from the shop, banged the door and pinned thereon a notice: "Out of Bounds." I pointed dramatically to my tangled mop of hair. "Eight weeks," I murmured brokenly. Whether or no that young man thought I was repeating the name of an erotic novel I cannot say, but he made a very tactless answer. I retired discomfited to find that my camel, having succeeded in breaking his head-rope, had returned to home and friends, leaving me to trudge back to camp and the tender mercies of the horse-clippers. I never heard for what crime the barber had been arraigned, though it would appear that the word "Coiffeur" can be sometimes misinterpreted; but I find it hard to forgive the A.P.M. for not allowing him to continue in his nefarious career, whatever it was, for another quarter of an hour. Successfully to cut your own hair needs, I imagine, considerable agility and a complicated arrangement of mirrors; and a pair of horse-clippers, the only alternative, was a fearsome weapon in the hands of a man whose sole experience in the hair-cutting profession was a murderous performance every morning with an army razor.

Elsewhere on the western portion of the front there were one or two similar small towns, but either they were out of bounds for sanitary reasons or were negligible in the matter of amusement; the average native village offered no inducement whatever for a visit. Even Ludd, which in the spring and summer of 1918 became a mighty depot and the terminus of the Military Railway for the time being, never rose to the dignity of a cinema. Like the inhabitants of a certain country village in the North of England, if you wanted distraction at Ludd you went to the station and watched the trains shunt.

After the Turks had made the last of a series of costly but abortive counter-attacks to regain Jerusalem and were finally and for ever driven back, the city was placed strictly out of bounds until Borton Pasha and the medical authorities had thoroughly purged it of all unpleasantness: the Germans and Turks were extremely uncleanly in their habits. Later, when this had been done, Desert Corps established a Rest Camp at Enab, about six miles from Jerusalem, and from time to time organised parties to visit the tombs and other holy places in the neighbourhood. As these were very well arranged and were usually in charge of padres from the various denominations they were much appreciated by the tired men coming up from the Jordan Valley for a rest. It is no part of my purpose to take the reader on a kind of personally conducted war-time tour of Jerusalem; the guide books will supply him with all the information he wants. Besides, he would inevitably be disappointed, unless his first glimpse of the Holy City was from the summit of Nebi Samwil or, coming out of the Jordan Valley on a moonlit night, he saw the shimmering radiance of the Mosque of Omar at the top of Mount Moriah.

But the Rest Camp at Enab was strictly limited both in size and scope. It was for the use of the mounted divisions only, and men went there chiefly for a rest; amusement, such as could be had in the form of sight-seeing, was of secondary importance. A more universal camp was at Beni Saleh, on the coast near Khan Yunus, where glorious sea-bathing was to be had; it was, in fact, the only thing to do.

You started the day by a wild sprint across the short stretch of beach between the tents and the sea, finishing up with a headlong dash into the water, which was just cold enough to make the body tingle, but imparted none of the shock that comes with the morning tub at home. This gave you an appetite for breakfast, if any such aid were needed. When the sun grew hot towards the middle of the morning you went in the sea again and stayed there for an hour or two, with an occasional sprawl on the warm sand by way of a sun-bath.

If you felt particularly energetic a pair of ancient drill shorts rolled up and tied with a piece of a head-rope made quite an adequate ball for water-polo, until it became water-logged and sank to the bottom; then you had to fish it out and spread it on the sands until it was dry enough to resume duty. A few units used footballs for water-polo, but this was mere luxury. Ours, worse luck, always had a puncture somewhere in its internal economy.

Another camp on a similar but larger scale was the attractively named "Change of Air" Camp at El Arish, which could accommodate some thousands of men at a time. Here the tents were pitched almost at the water's edge. Men divided their day between lounging about in their pyjamas and bathing, whilst in the evening they could sit and listen to one of the numerous concert parties who came up the line from Egypt. There was also a library of sorts; it was, rather, an olla podrida of books, some left by the troops themselves, but largely cast-offs from the stately homes of England, ranging in variety from the admirable racing-stories of Mr. Nat Gould to a learned treatise on bee-keeping, the latter evidently intended by the sender as a guide to budding colonists in the Land of Canaan.

Many thousands of the troops in Palestine will, I fancy, have pleasant memories of these two camps, if only because you could, if you wished, bathe for twenty-four hours every day; and it was a wonderful sensation to feel really clean.

Those who had the misfortune to sojourn for a while at Deir Sineid, however, will remember the Rest Camp there with quite different feelings.

This was established during the rainy season of 1917-18, and most of the rain in Palestine fell on the Rest Camp. Troops returning from Kantara to rejoin the Desert Corps stopped at Deir Sineid en route. Sometimes, more particularly when the railway was flooded, the congestion was so great that one tent to sixteen men was considered a liberal allowance by the authorities. The men thought otherwise. Once the sixteen were safely wedged in, there they stopped for the night. There was, indeed, no encouragement to wander abroad even if you could get out without the aid of a shoe-horn.

Frequently a tent collapsed under the weight of its responsibilities, and there are few things more disconcerting to a sleeping man than suddenly to be enveloped in a mass of cold, clammy canvas. Mr. Jerome, in Three Men in a Boat, speaks amusingly of his efforts at putting up a tent; by the same token, his description as an onlooker of the efforts of sixteen sleepy but infuriated soldiers, indifferently protected by a ground-sheet against the cold blast and the pouring rain, struggling to erect a tent in ankle-deep mud would have been deliriously comic. One party acquired a number of wooden boxes--once the home of tins of "Ideal" milk--with which to make a floor for their tent. This answered satisfactorily for a time, until the heavens opened and the rain descended almost solidly for three days. On the third night the sleepers were awakened by the sound of rushing waters. Their floor was afloat, a raft on a sea of mud and rain, and in a few moments the tent made an unsuccessful attempt to act as a sail. Subsequently the use of makeshift floor-boards was strongly discouraged; it was better to sleep in the mud.

It is a relief to turn from these doubtful amusements to the more solid joy of a little horse-racing. It is safe to say that no form of relaxation was more popular amongst the troops. Considering that we made our own race-courses, with all the appurtenances thereto, the military race meetings were astonishingly successful. There was even a totalisator for those, which meant everybody who could obtain an advance on his pay-book, who liked what is called in racing circles "a flutter"; and there were always several amateur "bookies" as well. The only adjunct familiar to the race-courses at home missing from our meetings was the professional tipster, with his information "straight from the horse's nosebag." As was natural in an army largely composed of cavalry, there were several crack riders well known at home, amongst them at least one who had won the Grand National. This officer, by the way, so the story goes, was turned out of a riding-school one morning because the instructor considered that he did not know how to ride! It would be interesting to know what standard of attainment was required!

Wherever a meeting was held everybody who could beg, borrow, or steal a horse, a mule, or a camel entered it, entirely indifferent of the feelings of the animal in the matter or whether its best distance was five furlongs or five miles.

The camel races, while not exactly regarded as a medium for speculation, were the most amusing to watch. No course was too large for a camel. He zig-zagged all over the countryside, and as often as not finished the race with a fine burst into the midst of the spectators. The mules had their moments too; and some of them were nearly as fast as a horse. There was a great deal of speculation, in the literal sense of the word, over the mules; some of them would start, others "dwelt," and others whipped round and made for their stables.

One N.C.O. entered a mule whose chance was esteemed so lightly that the owner-rider was the sole purchaser of a twenty-piastre (4s.) ticket at the totalisator. In the race, however, the mule was on his best behaviour and walked away with the prize; his courageous rider received L66 for his faith and his one ticket! This glorious uncertainty was one of the features of military racing and added not a little to the excitement. Army horses, except officers' chargers, are notoriously gregarious by reason of their training, and you could generally be sure of a close finish in any race confined to horses belonging to "other ranks" of the cavalry and artillery.

I believe the infantry on the whole were a great deal worse off in the matter of amusement than were the mounted troops; regimental sports formed the staple joys of their leisure hours, except for boxing matches when they could be arranged; and the latter ran racing very close in the matter of popularity.

When all is said, however, there was singularly little beyond what we made for ourselves which could legitimately be called amusements. The wonder is not that there was actually so little but that there was so much. Our nomadic existence hardly lent itself to the more permanent forms of relaxation. Men occupying a portion of the Jordan Valley one week and the next holding the line on the banks of the river Auja, had neither the time nor the inclination for anything but sleep; we were nearly always on short rations of both water and sleep.

So in the end it came to this: if you wanted a complete change from Palestine you had to go to Egypt for it, either via hospital or on leave. In the latter case, when you had succeeded in the superhuman task of convincing the orderly-room clerk that your name was next on the roster, there came first a long trek across country to railhead. Here you were harassed by an officious person called the R.T.O. who inspected your papers and then scrutinised your person in order to satisfy himself that you were not a criminal escaping from justice. Then you were handed over to an underling who led you to a glorified cattle-truck, whose interior was an amazing jumble of boots, bare knees, helmets, rifles, packs, faces, and drill clothing, and courteously invited you to step inside.

Regardless of the howl of protest from within the truck you thrust a tentative leg over the side, to be met immediately with a muffled but earnest request that you removed your boot from the speaker's face. This little difficulty overcome, perseverance was necessary before you could add your person and kit to the heterogeneous collection already filling the truck. This resolved itself presently into some thirty fellow-sufferers, who, by dint of shuffling and squeezing, made room for yet another on the floor. Then came the thirteen-hour journey to Kantara, followed by another four hours on the Egyptian State Railway to Cairo, or seven to Alexandria. If you accomplished the whole journey without going into hospital you could, on your arrival, consider yourself on leave.

Now in seven days it was impossible to do more than touch the fringe of Cairo. The first three were occupied in accustoming yourself to sleeping in a real bed and to being caged within four walls at night. Then you set yourself to discover interesting places to visit. By the time you had made a selection for the day, it was too late to start for the place and you retired to Groppi's for a "melange," with which to console yourself for the disappointment. I knew quite a number of men who neither went to the pyramids, nor saw the Sphinx, nor climbed up to the Citadel to see the mosque of Mahomet Ali, nor penetrated into the bazaars, nor even visited the Zoo. They all said that it took them so long to make up their minds where to go that the day was spent ere they had decided, so they went nowhere. I fancy that a large number of men were so overcome by the unaccustomed sight of shops and streets and people that they did naught but wander round looking at them, breaking off at intervals to eat large and variegated meals. When you think about it this was not a bad way of spending a short leave, especially in a city like Cairo where there was so much to see and so little time to see it in. Moreover, by the time you had settled down to your leave it was over, and you had to face the cattle-trucks once more. All things considered, since home-leave was out of the question, it saved at least a bad attack of nostalgia if you stayed with your comrades up the line and made your own fun.