by Colin Smith
They went back to where two lancers had remained with the man who had caught the first bullet. His horse had been recaptured and was standing nearby, its ears twitching back. The wounded lancer was lying on the ground with a rolled blanket as a pillow. His eyes kept rolling back so that all the whites showed, and Weidinger knew that he was dying. One of the men was fanning the flies away with his helmet while the other was failing to give him water from a canteen because it kept dribbling back down his chin, so that there was a damp patch on his shirt below the collar immediately above the spreading dark red one.
‘Do you read English?’ asked the Muzalim-i-sani. He had brought the Englishman’s haversack back from the wadi and was busy spreading its contents on the ground. A franked envelope contained a handwritten letter covering both sides of a single sheet of notepaper, and some folded printed paper which turned out to be four large, white five pound notes. The letter was addressed to a Lieutenant-Colonel Bertram Coxhead, General Headquarters, Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Cairo. It started, ‘Dearest Bertie,’ and was obviously from his wife or sweetheart.
In addition there was a folded canvas-backed map with blue crayon marks on it and a spiral-bound notebook with a plain brown cardboard cover. Jammed through the metal spirals on the top of the notebook was the blue crayon pencil which had presumably made the marks on the map. There were also some slices of bully beef and hard tack biscuits wrapped in greaseproof paper which the Turk threw angrily away as if he suspected them of being poisoned.
Weidinger looked at the notebook first. On the first page was written, ‘Wadi Ghuzze, El Buggar, Abu Ghalyun – no water holes visible.’ There was little else in it apart from something about camels, and Weidinger concluded that Coxhead had intended to complete his notes when he got back. He continued to flick through its blank pages and then something fell to the ground. He looked down and saw some typewritten pages slowly unfurling at his feet.
There were only two of them, carbon copies on thin tissue paper, and both were marked SECRET at the top. Underneath was written a date – 22. 8. 17. – and ‘Report re water availability Beersheba sector. Distribution limited to –’ This was followed by various sets of initials starting with GOC and with BC coming towards the end.
Weidinger’s understanding of English was very limited. He could probably have got the gist of the main headlines in an English language newspaper but not much more. But when he examined the typewritten pages Weidinger did notice that two words constantly recurred: ‘water’ and ‘cavalry’.
The Muzalim-i-sani gave him a quizzical look.
‘You have no English at all?’ Weidinger asked.
‘No.’
‘Pity,’ said the German, trying not to look too pleased about it. ‘They might be useful.’ He jammed the notebook, map and typewritten sheets into the right pocket of his tunic.
‘Good,’ said the Turk. ‘Now I think we’d better go back before their aeroplanes arrive. The men are already too closely bunched together.’
‘What about the wounded man?’ Weidinger had almost said ‘dying’ instead of ‘wounded’.
‘He will come with us, of course.’
‘Perhaps we should wait.’
‘We can’t wait. If the aeroplanes come there will be more than one wounded.’
They both knew that what was needed was a merciful bullet in the back of the head, the way the Bedu were supposed to do it when they knew they could not afford to be slowed down. Neither man had the stomach for it.
The shot man was helped back on his horse, and then the sergeant who had been obliged to give up his palomino to the Muzalim-i-sani got up behind him and rode with his arms around him as if he was a child, while the dying lancer lolled up against the neck of the horse with his chin on his chest. Weidinger was slightly in the lead on his chestnut as they spread out line abreast and went back the way they came. Every so often the German would pause and peer above him, but that blue sky did not even contain a wisp of cloud, let alone an aeroplane – which was strange, he thought. Perhaps they had something better to do.
He hoped Maeltzer would have arrived in Beersheba as promised. Now he was keener to see him than ever, for with his good working knowledge of English the journalist might be able to tell him the value of the captured documents that were burning a hole in his pocket.
Weidinger was pleased with the audacity of his plan. Showing captured enemy documents to a civilian was highly improper under any circumstances, to a neutral civilian was practically treasonable. Yet somehow it was hard to think of Maeltzer as either a civilian or a neutral. Uncle Maeltzer was one of them. He supported them. He wrote good things about them – at least, so he’d been told. He admired the way the Corset Staves did so much with so little. (‘You pinch the Turks in the right places,’ the journalist once told him.) Besides, he didn’t want that miserable bastard Krag getting credit for spotting what he suspected was the worth of those papers, though there was no avoiding the fact that the intelligence officer would have to see them. But, if he could engineer it properly, he wanted to tell Kress about it himself.
They got back to the lancers’ camp in the early part of the afternoon unmolested by the Royal Flying Corps. The dying lancer survived a journey which jarred his dressings loose and sent blood oozing down the flanks of the horse, and was taken to a field hospital.
‘Another triumph for Anatolian stamina,’ commented Weidinger when he was telling Maeltzer about it. They had met at corps headquarters where they arrived within minutes of each other. The journalist was just as grimy as Weidinger, having driven down from Jerusalem as a passenger in an open motor car which had taken the short route through Bethlehem and Hebron. ‘The only information I want from you, young man,’ he had announced, ‘is where can I get a bath?’
9
Jerusalem: 15 October 1917
***
‘Do you have them?’ said Maeltzer. ‘Are they ready for me?’
‘Why yes, Herr Doktor,’ replied the little Jew behind the counter, one of two opticians who continued to do business in the Holy City.
Maeltzer ignored the Doktor business. It was almost impossible to convince these Yiddish-speakers from the Pale that not all German-speaking professionals merited that title.
He tried on his new reading glasses. The gun-metal frames felt comfortable enough apart from a tendency to pinch the bridge of his nose which could no doubt soon be adjusted. He produced a two-week-old edition of his own newspaper from his overcoat pocket to test them. The lenses seemed excellent. Easily as good as the reserve pair he had been using ever since that unfortunate incident above the Damascus Gate.
The journalist walked quickly back to the Grand New Hotel. He had a long despatch to finish on his recent tour of the front, which he would again be sending to his newspaper’s Vienna office by train. This time his pigeon was an Austrian nun, a middle-aged nursing sister who was accompanying a badly burned Albatross pilot.
Maeltzer’s arrival at the hotel coincided with that of the Widow Shemsi. She paused, he raised his hat. She smiled – it was obviously one of his better days. They went up the stairs together making small talk in French – he felt it presumptuous to assume she might have acquired a certain fluency in German – about the likelihood of rain and the shortage of fresh fruit. Although the entire citrus crop from the Syrian groves around Jaffa was supposed to go to the military hospitals, Maeltzer said that it was possible to find an early lemon if you knew where to look and were prepared to pay the right price.
To prove his point he produced one from his jacket pocket, spun it in the air and caught it a couple of times like a juggler warming up. Would Madame care for one? He had another. He dived into his other pocket and actually did a little juggle with them, for this was one of his party tricks and what he had been leading up to.
No, Madame wouldn’t care for one. He must keep them for himself because Madame could get lemons, couldn’t she? Ah, yes, of course, Madame had powerful friends. Yes, but it was nice
of you to offer. Not at all, we must all help each other through these difficult times.
Why yes, agreed the Widow Shemsi, and thank God they weren’t more difficult. Jerusalem could consider itself lucky that this summer’s cholera epidemic had not really been any worse than last year’s, could it not? It could indeed, Madame. On this uplifting note they came to her floor and said their goodbyes before Maeltzer strode briskly up the remaining flight in an impressive display of energy for a man of his age and weight.
‘You shouldn’t tire yourself, Herr Maeltzer,’ the Widow Shemsi called after him.
‘I have a nun to catch,’ he called back when he reached his door, slightly breathless.
‘A what?’
‘A nursing sister is taking my article to Vienna on tomorrow’s train.’
The Widow Shemsi giggled. A nun to catch indeed, whatever next. She would have to tell Erwin that Herr Maeltzer’s humour was much improved since his despair at that English boy’s death. Major Krag seemed to have an insatiable appetite for gossip about her neighbour. He had even given him a nickname: the Bear in the Attic, he called him. It was the nearest thing to a joke she had ever heard him make.
*
The burden of Maeltzer’s piece was that the beginning of the winter rains was almost upon them, and that the British had still failed to start their offensive against the Gaza–Beersheba line. This was despite the Egyptian Expeditionary Force’s undoubted numerical superiority and a new commander since they had made their last disastrous attempt to break through at Gaza six months before.
If the attack did not come soon it had to be assumed that Allenby had decided to postpone it for another year. This was because, even if the British did break through in southern Palestine, they could not hope to exploit their success for long since the tracks that climbed along the Judaean spine towards Jerusalem rapidly became bogs and impassable to wheeled transport. ‘And having recently toured the length of the Turks’ Gaza–Beersheba line your correspondent considers the prospects for a successful British offensive to be slim.’
He wrote as he always did, scratching away on lined paper with pen and ink and leaving line between each paragraph. As the light began to fade he lit one of his sardine-tin oil lamps and worked steadily on.
This state of affairs, he continued, would undoubtedly persist until the rains stopped the following spring. Maeltzer reminded his readers that Jerusalem received more rain in its five winter months than most Western European capitals did in an entire year. Considering the volume of this winter deluge it was, he wrote, ‘a great irony that water, or rather lack of it, should play such an important part in this campaign.’
He paused here. Presumably the British were aware of their lost assessment of the Beersheba water resources – unless the officer who had so carelessly allowed it to fall into enemy hands was keeping quiet in the hope that his haversack had been overlooked. Any despatch from a neutral correspondent based in enemy territory was obviously of interest to either side. Would Weidinger consider it a breach of confidence if he hinted that, after weeks of probes and cavalry manoeuvres in the Beersheba sector, the enemy had decided against switching their main push to this flank because of the lack of water?
Since he had gone on an escorted tour of the front this particular despatch required a censor’s stamp before he could give it to his nursing sister who, even if she didn’t know about such things, might well be asked if she had been given any papers to carry by somebody who did. It might even pass across the desk of Krag himself, and he didn’t want to get Weidinger into trouble. This being the case, he decided to make no hints in his article about any conclusions the English may have reached regarding the Beersheba sector. He consoled himself with the thought that, if it proved correct, nobody would recall his remarkable prescience anyway. Editors and readers only ever remembered mistakes. He would have to content himself with a note in his diary. After the war perhaps – but would anyone care after the war? He could at least postulate that previous British cavalry activity on the Beersheba flank might only be a diversion.
Once the decision was made he got up and cut himself a generous slice of lemon which he squeezed into a small glass of water. He then dropped the segment in for extra flavour, having first run it around the rim of the glass so that his lips instantly met the faint flavour of lemon. He found it very refreshing.
***
Everybody at Fast’s was delighted with Weidinger’s work down at Beersheba. Even Krag managed a word of congratulations.
The contents of the captured documents had been telegraphed to Liman von Sanders in Damascus who had wired back a ‘very well done’ to the officer concerned. And in case there was any doubt that Weidinger’s Iron Cross was on the way, Kress had remarked, with a broad grin, that it was a bit unfair that his tunic was so light when others had all this ironmongery to carry around with them.
For Kress the captured papers came as a great relief. In the last two weeks he had become so convinced that the weight of the British offensive would be delivered at Beersheba that he had been trying to persuade both von Falkenhayn and von Sanders that it would be better to withdraw their defence line into the foothills above the town. Von Falkenhayn wouldn’t hear of it.
Now it seemed that the field marshal was right. The increased British activity in front of his left flank was a bluff designed to lure troops away from the Gaza sector. That is where Allenby’s main thrust would come, just as his predecessor’s had. There was no getting around it. And Gaza was as tight as a drum. ‘Even if the Beersheba wells were captured intact,’ the typewritten pages had noted, ‘it is doubtful whether we would be able to draw enough water from them to sustain large-scale cavalry operations.’
And in the notebook were the pencilled jottings of Colonel Coxhead, reporting no sign of any water holes in the no-man’s-land of Wadi Ghuzze, El Buggar or Abu Ghalyun that might alleviate the situation for an attacking force. Kress’s heart warmed to Weidinger. He thought of him as his dashing Uhlan, the boy who had wangled himself onto his staff when he could easily have settled for pen-pushing in Berlin and strolling down the Unter den Linden with a pretty girl hanging onto his full sleeve. He had done him proud. No doubt about that! Germany had nothing to fear when it possessed young men like these!
Kress tried to imagine the anguish at Allenby’s headquarters over those lost papers. He had already noticed that there had been no reports of British cavalry manoeuvres for three days now. The Bavarian wondered whether the loss of those papers had decided them to give up their attempts at a diversion and concentrate on what their forces were going to do opposite Gaza. For it had to be soon now if Allenby was going to beat the rains.
10
Advance Intelligence Headquarters, Egyptian Expeditionary Force: 19 October 1917
***
It was dusk and the evening breeze brought a faint chill that it would not have carried a week ago. Ponting sat at the entrance to their dugout, watching the Mediterranean caress the beach and trying to keep the insects at bay with cigarette smoke. He found he increasingly preferred cigarettes to pipe tobacco – so much less fuss. He had just poured some water from his canteen into his first whisky of the evening, had stirred it with his finger and was waiting for it to ‘settle’. There was an occasional rumble of artillery from the British positions before Gaza. Nothing excessive, and certainly not that sustained grumble of one explosion merging into another, indicating that the softening-up barrage had started and that the attack Lloyd George had sent Allenby to deliver was at last on its way.
Was it possible, mused Ponting, that there would not be an offensive this year? It was getting late and the Egyptian Expeditionary Force were certainly ready enough for it. Allenby set great store by training. There was to be none of your raw Kitchener’s battalions lambs-to-the-slaughter stuff in this theatre. But most of them had been ready three months ago when they already outnumbered the enemy three to one. In fact, if Allenby kept them on the leash any longer they would get s
tale. What on earth could he be waiting for?
Perhaps Meinertzhagen would find out. His superior had been summoned to Cairo by GHQ, and if he knew the reason why he had not divulged it. Ponting recalled he was looking pretty pleased with himself when he left despite what had happened to Nili. If his latest trick had worked this was understandable enough. And if it would work for anybody it would work for Meinertzhagen, who seemed to have the luck of the devil. Earlier that month Ponting had watched him land an aeroplane more or less intact after the pilot had been shot up when they were bumped by a Hun scout during a recce flight over the Turkish lines. He had stepped out of the cockpit looking, just for a moment, like a man who had never expected to walk the earth again. After his last adventure he had been quite different: he had been simply elated.
‘Oh me! Oh my!’ he had said, diluting two generous tin mug whiskies with their last bottle of warm soda water. ‘Lost me pack, lost me rifle – good one too. Let’s drink to horse blood.’
‘Horse blood?’ For a moment Ponting had thought Meinertzhagen must have been practising one of the terrible rites he had learned in the land of the knobkerrie.
‘Had to cut me nag. Lovely Arab too. Nothing serious. Little nick in the rump with my pocket knife, squeeze a bit and then smear all the juice over the woodwork of the .303. Might do the trick eh? That and a few things you’ve seen me scribbling away at from time to time, including a very loving letter from a certain Laura Coxhead which even enclosed the twenty pounds her beloved had requested for some “special shopping” – presents for the spoilt little darling, I shouldn’t wonder.
‘Of course, Careless Coxhead, his head full of sweet nothings, throws it all into his jolly old field pack along with a copy of a typewritten report on how hopeless the water situation is on the Beersheba flank on which a chum of his at GHQ has scribbled a sharp note begging him to see whether it’s all true because he really thinks Allenby a blithering idiot for planning to attack at Gaza again. Then off he goes, doppity, doppity dop, not a care in the world until just beyond Wadi Hanafish he runs slap bang into a patrol of Turkish lancers.
