During the summer of 1918 great changes took place in the personnel of the
army in Palestine. The early success of the great German offensive in
France had caused the "S.O.S." to be sent out for other and more men to
stem the tide of advance, and all the other British fronts were denuded of
white troops, in whose place, so far as Palestine was concerned, came
Indians, many of whom had only a few months' service to their credit. The
infantry of the 52nd Lowland Division, who apparently had not done
sufficient fighting for one War, left to give a hand to their comrades in
France, as did the 74th, still acting as infantry, and all the remaining
divisions sent at least one brigade; large numbers of cavalry and artillery
also went overseas. Practically all the summer, therefore, was devoted to
re-organising the forces and training the levies from India. The principle
adopted in the infantry was to brigade one British battalion to every three
Indian battalions right through the divisions; and this acted very well
indeed, for the white troops provided just that leaven of steadiness
lacking in the young Indians. In the cavalry much the same principle was
adopted, but the artillery first tried the experiment of employing
Egyptians as drivers in the ammunition-waggon teams, retaining the British
drivers for the guns.
For a time all went well with the training of these Egyptians, until, as a
test of their efficiency, night operations were ordered, which included a
dash into a wadi and out the other side. This effort produced what can only
be described as a "shemozzle": horses, waggons, and men piled themselves up
in a hopeless tangle at the bottom of the wadi, and the night operations
came to an abrupt end. In the searching inquiry which followed it was
discovered by the medical authorities that less than twenty-five per cent.
of these Egyptians could see clearly at night, a further twenty-five per
cent. were stone-blind after sunset, and of the remainder, the most that
could be said was that they could just see in the dark and that was all!
When the weeding-out process was completed the British personnel returned
as lead-drivers; Indians were added to make up the numbers, and this
curious mixture acted satisfactorily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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