There was no question as to my eligibility for service. I was young and strong
and healthy—and even if I had not been, the physical examination of Turkish
recruits is a farce. The enlisting officers have a theory of their own that no man
is really unfit for the army—a theory which has been fostered by the ingenious
devices of the Arabs to avoid conscription. To these wild people the protracted
discipline of military training is simply a purgatory, and for weeks before the
recruiting officers are due, they dose themselves with powerful herbs and
physics and fast, and nurse sores into being, until they are in a really deplorable
condition. Some of them go so far as to cut off a finger or two. The officers,
however, have learned to see beyond these little tricks, and few Arabs succeed in
wriggling through their drag-net. I have watched dozens of Arabs being brought
in to the recruiting office on camels or horses, so weak were they, and welcomed
into the service with a severe beating—the sick and the shammers sharing the
same fate. Thus it often happens that some of the new recruits die after their first
day of garrison life.
Together with twenty of my comrades, I presented myself at the recruiting
station at Acco (the St. Jean d'Acre of history). We had been given to understand
that, once our names were registered, we should be allowed to return home to
provide ourselves with money, suitable clothing, and food, as well as to bid our
families good-bye. To our astonishment, however, we were marched off to the
Hân, or caravanserai, and locked into the great courtyard with hundreds of dirty
Arabs. Hour after hour passed; darkness came, and finally we had to stretch
ourselves on the ground and make the best of a bad situation. It was a night of
horrors. Few of us had closed an eye when, at dawn, an officer appeared and
ordered us out of the Hân. From our total number about three hundred (including
four young men from our village and myself) were picked out and told to make
ready to start at once for Saffêd, a town in the hills of northern Galilee near the
Sea of Tiberias, where our garrison was to be located. No attention was paid to
our requests that we be allowed to return to our homes for a final visit. That
same morning we were on our way to Saffêd—a motley, disgruntled crew.
It was a four days' march—four days of heat and dust and physical suffering.
The September sun smote us mercilessly as we straggled along the miserable
native trail, full of gullies and loose stones. It would not have been so bad if we
had been adequately shod or clothed; but soon we found ourselves envying the
ragged Arabs as they trudged along barefoot, paying no heed to the jagged flints.
(Shoes, to the Arab, are articles for ceremonious indoor use; when any serious
walking is to be done, he takes them off, slings them over his shoulder, and trusts
to the horny soles of his feet.)
To add to our troubles, the Turkish officers, with characteristic fatalism, had
made no commissary provision for us whatever. Any food we ate had to be
purchased by the roadside from our own funds, which were scant enough to start
with. The Arabs were in a terrible plight. Most of them were penniless, and, as
the pangs of hunger set in, they began pillaging right and left from the little
farms by the wayside. From modest beginnings—poultry and vegetables—they
progressed to larger game, unhindered by the officers. Houses were entered,
women insulted; time and again I saw a stray horse, grazing by the roadside,
seized by a crowd of grinning Arabs, who piled on the poor beast's back until he
was almost crushed to earth, and rode off triumphantly, while their comrades
held back the weeping owner. The result of this sort of "requisitioning," was that
our band of recruits was followed by an increasing throng of farmers—
imploring, threatening, trying by hook or by crook to win back the stolen goods.
Little satisfaction did they get, although some of them went with us as far as
Saffêd.
Our garrison town is not an inviting place, nor has it an inviting reputation. Lord
Kitchener himself had good reason to remember it. As a young lieutenant of
twenty-three, in the Royal Engineering Corps, he was nearly killed there by a
band of fanatical Arabs while surveying for the Palestine Exploration Fund.
Kitchener had a narrow escape of it (one of his fellow officers was shot dead
close by him), but he went calmly ahead and completed his maps, splendid large-
scale affairs which have never since been equaled—and which are now in use by
the Turkish and German armies! However, though Saffêd combines most of the
unpleasant characteristics of Palestine native towns, we welcomed the sight of it,
for we were used up by the march. An old deserted mosque was given us for
barracks; there, on the bare stone floor, in close-packed promiscuity, too tired to
react to filth and vermin, we spent our first night as soldiers of the Sultan, while
the milky moonlight streamed in through every chink and aperture, and bats
flitted round the vaulting above the snoring carcasses of the recruits.
Next morning we were routed out at five. The black depths of the well in the
center of the mosque courtyard provided doubtful water for washing, bathing,
and drinking; then came breakfast,—our first government meal,—consisting,
simply enough, of boiled rice, which was ladled out into tin wash-basins holding
rations for ten men. In true Eastern fashion we squatted down round the basin
and dug into the rice with our fingers. At first I was rather upset by this sort of
table manners, and for some time I ate with my eyes fixed on my own portion, to
avoid seeing the Arabs, who fill the palms of their hands with rice, pat it into a
ball and cram it into their mouths just so, the bolus making a great lump in their
lean throats as it reluctantly descends.
In the course of that same morning we were allotted our uniforms. The Turkish
uniform, under indirect German influence, has been greatly modified during the
past five years. It is of khaki—a greener khaki than that of the British army, and
of conventional European cut. Spiral puttees and good boots are provided; the
only peculiar feature is the headgear—a curious, uncouth-looking combination
of the turban and the German helmet, devised by Enver Pasha to combine
religion and practicality, and called in his honor enverieh. (With commendable
thrift, Enver patented his invention, and it is rumored that he has drawn a
comfortable fortune from its sale.) An excellent uniform it is, on the whole; but,
to our disgust, we found that in the great olive-drab pile to which we were led,
there was not a single new one. All were old, discarded, and dirty, and the mere
thought of putting on the clothes of some unknown Arab legionary, who,
perhaps, had died of cholera at Mecca or Yemen, made me shudder. After some
indecision, my friends and I finally went up to one of the officers and offered to
buy new uniforms with the money we expected daily from our families. The
officer, scenting the chance for a little private profit, gave his consent.
The days and weeks following were busy ones. From morning till night, it was
drill, drill, and again drill. We were divided into groups of fifty, each of which
was put in charge of a young non-commissioned officer from the Military
School of Constantinople or Damascus, or of some Arab who had seen several
years' service. These instructors had a hard time of it; the German military
system, which had only recently been introduced, was too much for them. They
kept mixing up the old and the new methods of training, with the result that it
was often hopeless to try and make out their orders. Whole weeks were spent in
grinding into the Arabs the names of the different parts of the rifle; weeks more
went to teaching them to clean it—although it must be said that, once they had
mastered these technicalities, they were excellent shots. Their efficiency would
have been considerably greater if there had been more target-shooting. From the
very first, however, we felt that there was a scarcity of ammunition. This
shortage the drill-masters, in a spirit of compensation, attempted to make up by
abundant severity. The whip of soft, flexible, stinging leather, which seldom
leaves the Turkish officer's hand, was never idle. This was not surprising, for the
Arab is a cunning fellow, whose only respect is for brute force. He exercises it
himself on every possible victim, and expects the same treatment from his
superiors.
So far as my comrades and I were concerned, I must admit that we were
generally treated kindly. We knew most of the drill-exercises from the gymnastic
training we had practiced since childhood, and the officers realized that we were
educated and came from respectable families. The same was also true with
regard to the native Christians, most of whom can read and write and are of a
better class than the Mohammedans of the country. When Turkey threw in her lot
with the Germanic powers, the attitude toward the Jews and Christians changed
radically; but of this I shall speak later.
It was a hard life we led while in training at Saffêd; evening would find us dead
tired, and little disposed for anything but rest. As the tremendous light-play of
the Eastern sunsets faded away, we would gather in little groups in the courtyard
of our mosque—its minaret towering black against a turquoise sky—and talk
fitfully of the little happenings of the day, while the Arabs murmured gutturally
around us. Occasionally, one of them would burst into a quavering, hot-blooded
tribal love-song. It happened that I was fairly well known among these natives
through my horse Kochba—of pure Maneghi-Sbeli blood—which I had
purchased from some Anazzi Bedouins who were encamped not far from
Aleppo: a swift and intelligent animal he was, winner of many races, and in a
land where a horse is considerably more valuable than a wife, his ownership cast
quite a glamour over me.
The Author on His Horse Kochba
In the evenings, then, the Arabs would come up to chat. As they speak seldom of
their children, of their women-folk never, the conversation was limited to
generalities about the crops and the weather, or to the recitation of never-ending
tales of Abou-Zeid, the famous hero of the Beni-Hilal, or of Antar the glorious.
Politics, of which they have amazing ideas, also came in for discussion.
Napoleon Bonaparte and Queen Victoria are still living figures to them; but
(significantly enough) they considered the Kaiser king of all the kings of this
world, with the exception of the Sultan, whom they admitted to equality.
Seldom did an evening pass without a dance. As darkness fell, the Arabs would
gather in a great circle around one of their comrades, who squatted on the
ground with a bamboo flute; to a weird minor music they would begin swaying
and moving about while some self-chosen poet among them would sing
impromptu verses to the flute obbligato. As a rule the themes were homely.
"To-morrow we shall eat rice and meat," the singer would wail.
"Yaha lili-amali" (my endeavor be granted), came the full-throated response of
all the others. The chorus was tremendously effective. Sometimes the singer
would indulge in pointed personalities, with answering roars of laughter.
These dances lasted for hours, and as they progressed the men gradually worked
themselves up into a frenzy. I never failed to wonder at these people, who,
without the aid of alcohol, could reproduce the various stages of intoxication. As
I lay by and watched the moon riding serenely above these frantic men and their
twisting black shadows, I reflected that they were just in the condition when one
word from a holy man would suffice to send them off to wholesale murder and
rapine.
It was my good fortune soon to be released from the noise and dirt of the
mosque. I had had experience with corruptible Turkish officers; and one day,
when barrack conditions became unendurable, I went to the officer commanding
our division—an old Arab from Latakieh who had been called from retirement at
the time of the mobilization. He lived in a little tent near the mosque, where I
found him squatting on the floor, nodding drowsily over his comfortable paunch.
As he was an officer of the old régime, I entered boldly, squatted beside him and
told him my troubles. The answer came with an enormous shrug of the
shoulders.
"You are serving the Sultan. Hardship should be sweet!"
"I should be more fit to serve him if I got more sleep and rest."
He waved a fat hand about the tent.
"Look at me! Here I am, an officer of rank and"—shooting a knowing look at me
—"I have not even a nice blanket."
"A crime! A crime!" I interrupted. "To think of it, when I, a humble soldier, have
dozens of them at home! I should be honored if you would allow me—" My
voice trailed off suggestively.
"How could you get one?" he asked.
"Oh, I have friends here in Saffêd but I must be able to sleep in a nice place."
"Of course; certainly. What would you suggest?"
"That hotel kept by the Jewish widow might do," I replied.
More amenities were exchanged, the upshot of which was that my four friends
and I were given permission to sleep at the inn—a humble place, but infinitely
better than the mosque. It was all perfectly simple.
Soldiers' Tents in Samaria.