Dawnay met me, and we talked over our brief before going up to Allenby’s camp. There General Bols smiled happily at us, and said, “Well, we’re in Salt all right.” To our amazed stares he went on that the chiefs of the Beni Sakhr had come into Jericho one morning, to offer the immediate cooperation of their twenty thousand tribesmen at Themed; and in his bath next day he had thought out a scheme, and fixed it all right.
I asked who the chief of the Beni Sakhr was, and he said “Fahad”: triumphing in his efficient inroad into what had been my province. It sounded madder and madder. I knew that Fahad could not raise four hundred men; and, that at the moment there was not a tent on Themed: they had moved south, to Young.
We hurried to the office for the real story, and learned that it was, unfortunately, as Bols had said. The British cavalry had gone impromptu up the hills of Moab on some airy promise of the Zebn sheikhs; greedy fellows who had ridden into Jerusalem only to taste Allenby’s bounty but had there been taken at their mouth-value.
In this season there was no third partner at G.H.Q. Guy Dawnay, brother of our gladiator, he who had made the Jerusalem plan, had gone to Haig’s staff: Bartholomew, who was to work out the autumn drive upon Damascus, was still with Chetwode. So the executive of Allenby’s work in these months was unequal to the conception.
For, of course, this raid miscarried, while I was still in Jerusalem, solacing myself against the inadequacy of Bols with Storrs, now the urbane and artful Governor of the place. The Beni Sakhr were supine in their tents or away with Young. General Chauvel, without the help of one of them,