Farther east, meanwhile, another party of Australians were supplying a
little comic relief. Their function originally had been to prevent the
escape of any Turks should the town be captured, but as the refugees failed
to appear, for obvious reasons, the Australians rode forth to inquire into
the matter. A mist of obscurity hangs over their doings until the moment
when they saw before them an open landau--or gharry, as it is termed in
Egypt--with an escort bearing all the trappings of high officialdom,
proceeding at a gentle trot some distance away over the plain. This seemed
to be fair game, so with a wild "Coo-ee" the Light Horse charged down upon
the totally unsuspecting party. The driver of the gharry lost his head and
his seat simultaneously, the vehicle overturned and pinned the unfortunate
occupant underneath, and the escort surrendered hurriedly several times
over. This last was perhaps as well, for the attackers were so weak with
laughter at the sight of a very dignified Turkish general in full regalia
crawling from under the gharry that they were in no condition to put up a
serious fight. It transpired later that the general so ignominiously and
comically made prisoner was a divisional commander who, with all his staff,
was apparently proceeding to his advanced headquarters with no thought of
danger. It was humiliating for him and his entourage but was a highly
important capture for us, in that he was one of the cleverest Turkish
generals.
Another brigade of the Light Horse, under General Royston--"Galloping
Jack"--operating in this area, were fighting desperately hard to drive a
large force of Turks from a ridge, east of Gaza, which they had
unexpectedly occupied and from which they were trying to get in touch with
cavalry coming from Huj. In their successful attempt to defeat this project
the Light Horse had the spirited assistance of the armoured cars whose
utter disregard of danger saved the situation time after time. One group
of half a dozen cars ran into half a division of Turkish reinforcements and
were given up as lost by the brigade. But no! Instead of surrendering
tamely the inspired madmen in the cars ran amok and played a merry game of
follow-my-leader up and down and round and through the ranks of the enemy,
until they had fired off most of their ammunition. Whereupon they made a
final burst and got away almost unscathed--they had less than half a dozen
casualties--leaving some four hundred Turkish killed and wounded on the
field and the remainder probably wondering, like the nigger when the
meteorite hit him, "who frowed dat brick"!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account