In The Syrian City

The Fourth Australian Light Horse Regiment from Victoria captured the great garrison at Damascus, by rounding up nearly 12,000 exhausted and dispirited Turks. But the first British troops into the city were the Light Horse-men from Western Australia, who also had the distinction of being the first mounted troops to enter Jerusalem last December. The Western Australians found their way into Damascus by accident, and their ride was one of the most dramatic and picturesque incidents of the whole campaign.

The Third Light Horse Brigade, to which the Western Australians belong, spent the night in the Adana Gorge, a few miles from Damascus to the west along the Beyrout Road. The Brigadier was under orders to move at dawn and seize the road leading from the city north-wards towards A eppo. It was hoped that a track would be found around the outskir's of the town, but this proved impracticable. The Brigade therefore, with a troop of scouts leading, and the Western Australians following, came down the Adana Gurge, clearing a track through the shambles of dead Turks and Germans and hundreds of camels and horses heaped on the road in the fighting of the evening before. It soon became plain to the second in command of the Western Australians, who was riding ahead with the scouts, that the only way to the Aleppo road lay through the heart of Damascus. The city had not surrendered and we knew little of the numbers of the enemy it contained. But he decided on the bold course andpressed on. As the scouts passed the outskiris of the city, riding a narrow road with the river on one side and a prolonged mud-built garden wall on the other there was a sudden burst of Turkish rifle fire. No one was hit, the officer in command checking the scouts for the advanced squadron of Western Australians to come up, ordered drawn swords and dashed on at the gallop. Across the river, two or three hundred yards away, were thousand's of Turks at the Barracks. For a moment the enemy decision was in the balance. But the sight of the great Australian horses at the gallop (the Turks and natives never cease to marvel at the size of our horses), with flashing swords, and the ring of shoes upon the metal, turned the scale. "The shooting by the Turks," said one of our officers, "changed in a second to the clapping of hands by the citizens."

The Australians rode hard, scattering the excited people from their track. The firing increased, but its character had changed. The shots were now coming from native Arabs who were expressing their feelings in the popular Arab way by blazing at the Heavens. Across the river ahead in front of the large new Town Hall, a huge crowd was assembled, and clattering over a bridge the cavalry pulled up at the steps of the building. Instantly there were hundreds of eager horse holders and an intense demonstration of goodwill. The East was greeting the victors of the day. Three officers, all carrying their revolvers, entered the building and demanded the civil governor. They were at once taken upstairs to that personage, a trim little middle-aged Turk, who greeted them with comDlete calm and much dignity, and begged to know their wishes. He was told that a great British force of cavalry was entering the town, and that he would be held responsible for good order and the protection of property. The shooting in the streets must instantly cease. The Governor replied that there was nothing to fear from the civil population, that the shooting was merely an expression of an excess of feelings, and that the British wishes would be respected in every way. He then begged the Australian officers to accept his hospitality. A reliable guide was obtained and the party hurried forward.

The guide was an Armenian Colonel, but as the Australian officers rode away a Greek, who had been exiled by the Turks from his orange grove at Jaffa, pressed forward and said his wife was an Englishwoman, that he knew the district thoroughly, and begged to be allowed to assist. He was at once mouned on a spare horse and drawing his sword he rode in his civilian clothes at the head of the column. He was a lucky discovery and that day his guidance and advice contributed largely to the capture of 2000 enemy troops. A little further on a young man dashed out dressed as a Turk but wearing a British airmen's cap, and he proved to be one of cur observers who was recently forced down on the enemy side. He seized an Arab pony in the streets and all day fought with our advance guard in pursuit of the Turks. As the Australians continued their ride they received the honours traditionally lavished on conquerors. The stalls were emptied of their incomparable grapes and pomegranates and handed up to the

Light Horse In Damascus.

passing horsemen. Crowds hung to their stirrups and ran along with their hands on to the bridle reins. They were smothered with perfumes. Every man who smoked enjoyed a gift cigar. Dark-eyed women and pretty girls appeared in every window, some the wives, doubtless, of Turkish fighters, timidly, and showing no pleasure; others boldly waved their hands and smiled their welcome, and threw down scents and other favours.

It was a wonderful hour for our young Australian countrymen. But the long war has made them into reserved men of the world. They rode, very dusty and unshaved, their big hats battered and drooping, through the tumultuous populace of the oldest and one of the most appealing cities in the world, with the same easy casual bearing, and the same quiet self-confidence that are their distinctive characteristic on their country tracks at home They ate their grapes and smoked their cigars, and missed no pretty eyes at the windows. But they showed no excitement or elation. The streets of old Damascus were but a stage in the lone path of the war. They have become true soldiers of fortune. And their long-tailed horses, at home now, like their owners, on any road in anv country, noticed nothing in the shouting mob or banging rifles or the narrow ways and many colours of the bazaar to cause them once to start or shy or even cock an ear. The Light Horsemen rode on out to a series of ugly but highly successful actions with stout rearguards of German machine gunners. Few men in any age have passed through 24 more adventurous, and gratifying hours than they knew during this first day around Damascus after the greatest cavalry achievement in history. But the Light Horsemen are not demonstrative.

The district of Damascus is an irrigated settlement on a vast scale, set in the midst of comparative desert. So rich and close are the orchards and so tall the plantations of poplars and other decorative trees, that, looking over the city from the neighbouring hills, all you see of the city of 250,000 people are the stately minarets of the many mosques and the roofs of the larger residences of the rich. Immediately to the west of the town rises the bare glaring mountain side, and to the east and north and south of the gretn expanse of gardens, you ride out upon the harsh and treeless plains. Damascus owes all its wealth, even its very existence, to the torrential Adana (or Barada) River which surging down from Anti Lebanon, bursts from the mountain gorge on to the plain and splitting up into several beautiful streams, has made a rural paradise on the edge of the Arabian wilderness.

In Palestine the troops looked in vain for the Promised Land of milk and honey. The Philistine Plain was fertile, but apart from the few Jewish and German colonies and the orange groves about Jaffa, it was with all its natural possibilities, a land bare and neglected, a reproachful ghost of a great life that is g' ne. But Damascus is a prize worth the winning. Here after nearly three years of desert and old, exhausted, unfruitful regions, is an area good to look upon and teeming with an active people. Few of us were sorry that we had at last overrun our supplies, or rather that the huge capture of prisoners had somewhat strained the wonderful racing commissariat which had so gallantly kept at the heels of the galloping cavalry, and that a brief, halt was necessary for the Australian Mounted Division. Now the regiments were camped in the gardens around the city, and man and horse never accepted rest more gratefully. After thirteen days on bully and biscuit it is good to know fresh meat and bread again; the mutton is of the best and the bread if dark and coarse and heavy, is still a long way ahead of biscuit We were too late for the famous Damascusapricots, but there were grapes for the multitude, and pears and apples and pomegranates, and also raisins and other dried fruits and specialties in Eastern lolly and toffees. Best of all, every camp was within sight and sound of many running waters.

Noisy little streams cross your path a hundred times a day. Follow one along, and it suddenly disappears into an underground passage, to burst forth like a spring a hundred yards away. In the streets many of the gutters are river fed waterways, and to reduce the dust the tired civic authorities block the drains and cause an effective little flood, which is extended by boys splashing with their hands. You buy grapes at the stalls and carry them a few yards to dip into the waters of a mountain stream. Damas cus is dirty and insanitary. Without the purge of the Adana waters flushing through it and under it, the city would die of its filth in a single summer.