With the Turks in Palestine

CHAPTER IV

ROAD-​MAK­ING AND DIS­CHARGE

The news of the ac­tu­al dec­la­ra­tion of war by Turkey caused a tremen­dous stir in our reg­iment. The pre­vail­ing feel­ing was one of great rest­less­ness and dis­con­tent. The Arabs made many bit­ter re­marks against Ger­many. “Why didn't she help us against the Ital­ians dur­ing the war for Tripoli?” they said. “Now that she is in trou­ble she is draw­ing us in­to the fight.” Their opin­ions, how­ev­er, soon un­der­went a change. In the first place, they came to re­al­ize that Turkey had tak­en up arms against Rus­sia; and Rus­sia is con­sid­ered first and fore­most the arch-​en­emy. Ger­man re­ports of Ger­man suc­cess­es al­so had a pow­er­ful ef­fect on them. They be­gan to grow boast­ful, ar­ro­gant; and the sight of the plun­der­ing of Eu­ro­peans, Jews, and Chris­tians con­vinced them that a very de­sir­able regime was set­ting in. Saffed has a large Jew­ish colony, and it was tor­ment for me to have to wit­ness the out­rages that my peo­ple suf­fered in the name of “req­ui­si­tion­ing.”

The fi­nal blow came one morn­ing when all the Jew­ish and Chris­tian sol­diers of our reg­iment were called out and told that hence­forth they were to serve in the _taboor am­lieh_, or work­ing corps. The ob­ject of this ac­tion, plain­ly enough, was to con­cil­iate and flat­ter the Mo­hammedan pop­ula­tion, and at the same time to put the Jews and Chris­tians, who for the most part fa­vored the cause of the Al­lies, in a po­si­tion where they would be least dan­ger­ous. We were dis­armed; our uni­forms were tak­en away, and we be­came hard-​driv­en “gang­sters.” I shall nev­er for­get the hu­mil­ia­tion of that day when we, who, af­ter all, were the best-​dis­ci­plined troops of the lot, were first herd­ed to our work of push­ing wheel­bar­rows and han­dling spades, by grin­ning Arabs, ri­fle on shoul­der. We were set to build­ing the road be­tween Saffed and Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee--a link in the mil­itary high­way from Dam­as­cus to the coast, which would be used for the move­ment of troops in case the rail­road should be cut off. It had no im­me­di­ate strate­gic bear­ing on the at­tack against Suez, how­ev­er.

From six in the morn­ing till sev­en at night we were hard at it, ex­cept for one hour's rest at noon. While we had mon­ey, it was pos­si­ble to get some slight re­lief by brib­ing our taskmas­ters; but this soon came to an end, and we had to en­dure their bru­tal­ity as best we could. The wheel­bar­rows we used were the prop­er­ty of a French com­pa­ny which, be­fore the war, was un­der­tak­ing a high­way to Beirut. No grease was pro­vid­ed for the wheels, so that there was a mad­den­ing squeak­ing and squeal­ing in ad­di­tion to the dif­fi­cul­ty of push­ing the bar­rows. One day I sug­gest­ed to an in­spec­tion of­fi­cer that if the wheels were not greased the axles would be burned out. He agreed with me and is­sued an or­der that the men were to pro­vide their own oil to lu­bri­cate the wheels!

I shall not dwell on the phys­ical suf­fer­ings we un­der­went while work­ing on this road, for the rea­son that the con­di­tions I have de­scribed were preva­lent over the whole coun­try; and lat­er, when I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to vis­it some con­struc­tion camps in Samaria and Ju­daea found that in com­par­ison our lot had been a hap­py one. While we were break­ing stones and trundling squeak­ing wheel­bar­rows, how­ev­er, the most dis­qui­et­ing ru­mors be­gan to drift in to us from our home vil­lages. Plun­der­ing had been go­ing on in the name of “req­ui­si­tion­ing”; the coun­try was full of sol­diery whose ca­pac­ity for mis­chief-​mak­ing was well known to us, and it was tor­ture to think of what might be hap­pen­ing in our peace­ful homes where so few men had been left for pro­tec­tion. All the barbed-​wire fences, we heard, had been torn up and sent north for the con­struc­tion of bar­ri­cades. In a wild land like Pales­tine, where the na­tive has no re­spect for prop­er­ty, where fields and crops are al­ways at the mer­cy of ma­raud­ers, the barbed-​wire fence has been a tremen­dous fac­tor for civ­iliza­tion, and with these gone the Arabs were once more free to sweep across the coun­try un­hin­dered, steal­ing and de­stroy­ing.

The sit­ua­tion grew more and more un­bear­able. One day a lit­tle Chris­tian sol­dier--a Nazarene--dis­ap­peared from the ranks. We nev­er saw him again, but we learned that his sis­ter, a very young girl, had been forcibly tak­en by a Turk­ish of­fi­cer of the Nazareth gar­ri­son. In Pales­tine, the dis­hon­or of a girl can be re­deemed by blood alone. The young sol­dier had hunt­ed for his sis­ter, found her in the bar­racks, and shot her; he then sur­ren­dered him­self to the mil­itary au­thor­ities, who un­doubt­ed­ly put him to death. He had not dared to kill the re­al crim­inal,--the of­fi­cer,--for he knew that this would not on­ly bring death to his fam­ily, but would call down ter­ri­ble suf­fer­ing on all the Chris­tians of Nazareth.

[IL­LUS­TRA­TION: NAZARETH, FROM THE NORTH­EAST]

When I learned of this tragedy, I de­ter­mined to get out of the army and re­turn to my vil­lage at all costs. Nine Turk­ish of­fi­cers out of ten can be bought, and I had rea­son to know that the of­fi­cer in com­mand at Saffed was not that tenth man. Now, ac­cord­ing to the law of the coun­try, a man has the right to pur­chase ex­emp­tion from mil­itary ser­vice for a sum equiv­alent to two hun­dred dol­lars. My case was dif­fer­ent, for I was al­ready en­rolled; but ev­ery­thing is pos­si­ble in Turkey. I set to work, and in less than two weeks I had bought half a dozen of­fi­cers, rang­ing from cor­po­ral to cap­tain, and had ob­tained con­sent of the high­er au­thor­ities to my de­par­ture, pro­vid­ed I could get a physi­cian's cer­tifi­cate declar­ing me un­fit for ser­vice.

This was ar­ranged in short or­der, al­though I am healthy-​look­ing and the doc­tor found some dif­fi­cul­ty in hit­ting on an ap­pro­pri­ate ail­ment. Fi­nal­ly he de­cid­ed that I had “too much blood”--what­ev­er that might mean. With his cer­tifi­cate in hand, I paid the reg­ular price of two hun­dred dol­lars from funds which had been sent me by my fam­ily, and walked out of the bar­racks a free man. My hap­pi­ness was min­gled with sad­ness at the thought of leav­ing the com­rades with whom I had suf­fered and hoped. The four boys from my vil­lage were splen­did. They felt that I was right in go­ing home to do what I could for the peo­ple, but when they kissed me good-​bye, in the East­ern fash­ion, the tears were run­ning down their cheeks; and they were all strong, brave fel­lows.

On my way back to Zi­cron-​Ja­cob, I passed through the town of Sheff'amr, where I got a fore­taste of the con­di­tions I was to find at home. A Turk­ish sol­dier, saun­ter­ing along the street, helped him­self to fruit from the bas­ket of an old vender, and went on with­out of­fer­ing to pay a far­thing. When the old man ven­tured to protest, the sol­dier turned like a flash and be­gan beat­ing him mer­ci­less­ly, knock­ing him down and bat­ter­ing him un­til he was bruised, bleed­ing, and cov­ered with the mud of the street. There was a hub­bub; a crowd formed, through which a Turk­ish of­fi­cer forced his way, de­mand­ing ex­pla­na­tions. The sol­dier sketched the sit­ua­tion in a few words, where­upon the of­fi­cer, turn­ing to the old man, said im­pres­sive­ly,--“If a sol­dier of the Sul­tan should choose to heap filth on your head, it is for you to kiss his hand in grat­itude.”