hostility towards our troops, and had to be suppressed.

When the 7th Division left Beyrout in the middle of October to march
farther north to Tripoli the situation was considerably easier. Foodships
had arrived, and arrangements had been made for regular supplies to be
given to the people, though at first they needed medical aid rather than
food, so weakened were they by long privation and want. The chief
difficulty in the distribution of supplies was the shortage of labour, for
the advance had been so rapid that it had quite outdistanced the
administrative branches of the service. Half a dozen R.A.S.C. clerks and a
small party of the Egyptian Labour Corps, assisted by the "Camels," toiled
night and day at the docks: we were dock-labourers, stevedores, and
transport all in one. The fact that Beyrout was the only real port in the
whole country nearer than Port Said did not tend to relieve the strain, for
the natural disadvantages of Jaffa as a port prevented its being utilised
to the full, while Haifa, although it possesses a magnificent harbour, had
not as yet enough accommodation for ships.

Our own men now began to feel the effects of the arduous campaign. The
rainy season was imminent, and malaria and blackwater fever claimed their
victims by the score. The troops who had spent the previous five months
stewing in the hothouse atmosphere of the Jordan Valley suffered
particularly heavily through malignant malaria, contracted during those
months, which lay dormant while operations were actually in progress and
appeared when men were run down and weakened by their tremendous exertions.
The Australian Mounted Division, who had been the first to enter Damascus,
were amongst the hardest hit by the disease, for the oldest city in the
world is also one of the most unhealthy--or was, at all events during the
time of our occupation.

The River Abana, which runs through the city, was choked with dead horses
and Turks for ten days. Hundreds of Turks wandered about, nominally
prisoners, but with no one to guard them; they were far more numerous than
our own men; and as the Turks generally had little idea of sanitation and
less of personal cleanliness they were extremely unpleasant people to have
about the place.

There were no regrets at leaving Damascus, for though the odour of sanctity
may hang over the venerable city, it is as naught compared with the other
odours, of which it has a greater and more pungent variety than a