At the beginning of April a notable arrival was that of the Tanks. We had
left them behind at Pelusium and had not seen them since, for it was a slow
business bringing them across the desert. Extraordinary precautions were
taken to hide them from observation by Turkish aircraft; indeed, so
effectually were they screened that even we failed to spot them.
Enemy machines now hovered over us daily, seeking information and dropping
powerful reminders of their presence. In this latter respect they paid
particular attention to the long trains arriving daily and also to a large
shell-dump near the station, which they bombed unmercifully. A remarkable
and, to my mind, deplorable feature here and elsewhere was the frequency
with which a field-ambulance or hospital of some sort found itself
alongside an ammunition-dump. So common was the practice that a man seeking
temporary treatment would first look for the dump, and sure enough the
hospital was hard by. We used to strafe the Turks for bringing up
ammunition to the firing-line under cover of the Red Cross, but it seems to
me that in effect we were doing much the same thing. You cannot expect the
enemy to play the game according to the Geneva Convention if you yourself
fail to observe the rules.
Turkish airmen used to drop messages asking us kindly to move our hospitals
lest they should be hit by bombs intended for the dumps. Presumably out of
pure cussedness the hospitals stayed where they were; and inevitably they
were bombed. Then they moved. As a case in point: there was a large field
ambulance alongside the main shell-dump at Belah upon which several bombs
were dropped with disastrous results. One marquee full of sick and wounded
men was completely destroyed. Several others were badly damaged, and the
occupants, many of whom were desperately ill with dysentery, while helping
their weaker comrades out of the debris were bespattered with bullets from
the low-flying machines above. Little imagination is needed to picture what
would have happened to the hospital _in toto_ had a bomb hit the fringe of
the dump.
Apart from this it was uncanny how the Turks spotted the places where our
heavy guns were concealed ready for the coming show. In broad daylight they
came over and dropped bombs with amazing precision. Under cover of darkness
the guns would be moved and profane gunners laboured half the night to make
them invisible--and in one case their work was so well done that twenty
yards away it was impossible to see any signs of a battery. Yet the Turks
found them the very next morning and made the position very hot indeed.
Obviously this was not the result of direct spotting; somewhere there was a
leakage; and presently it was found--and stopped.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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