We walked through a section of the Temple area and out past the Austrian
Hospice through the Damascus Gate where, according to agreement, the
carriage waited.
The road out to the spot where the Mount of Olives drops abruptly to the
plain has been repaired, stray shell holes filled in and a large section
of new road built since that wonderful day when the last line of Turks
were driven from the position they thought secure. The air was as clear
as an October day at home and the shining city “compact together” seemed
substantial and strong. It was along the high ridge of Olivet that, in
the pressure of the days when relief workers toiled twelve and fifteen
hours without respite, they came to renew their strength. In the home of
the Greek Patriarch more than one strong soul, overcome for the moment
by the ceaseless stream of dirty, hopeless, despairing human things that
he must strive to save from the wreckage of war, found, in the white
moonlight sifting down over the hill, in the kindly stars, in the
silence and in sacred memories, courage to attempt again tasks that had
been called impossible.
We had been gazing so steadily at the city that when the driver suddenly
stopped we turned in surprise. There on a gently sloping stretch of
ground, close to the road at the left, stood row after row of crosses
over the resting places of Scot and Londoner, Welshman and Irishman,
Indian and Anzac who had paid for the Holy City with his life. On some
of the crosses fresh green garlands were hanging, and on one a wreath
with English holly.
We got down from our carriage and walked slowly along, looking now at
the crosses and now at the place where in agony of soul Christ had
prayed for the strength to meet the test of Calvary that has made the
Cross forever the symbol which shall mark the spots on earth most sacred
to us. These lying out on the hillside had also been to Calvary.
A little farther on in the road we passed men in the British uniform.
They had survived the terrible test of those wind-swept hills with the
rain falling in torrents, the benumbing cold, the soft, thick, gray mud,
the night in the open with no shelter save a little wall of stones built
up with care only to be blown over by a sudden vicious blast, with
little food and only the ammunition that could reach them on the backs
of the pack donkeys. It was through this they had won that peaceful city
lying contentedly there in the sun, even the shining dome of its
Mohammedan Mosque unharmed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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