was danger of an attack by Bedouins, whom
the English here had bribed. When it began to grow a bit light, I
already thought: 'We're through for today'; for we were tired--had
been riding eighteen hours. Suddenly I saw a line flash up before me,
and shots whizzed over our heads. Down from the camels! Form a
fighting line! You know how quickly it becomes daylight here. The
whole space around the desert hillock was occupied. Now, up with your
bayonets! Rush 'em!... They fled, but returned again, this time from
all sides. Several of the gendarmes that had been given us as an
escort are wounded; the machine gun operator, Rademacher, falls,
killed by a shot through his heart; another is wounded; Lieutenant
Schmidt, in the rear guard, is mortally wounded--he has received a
bullet in his chest and abdomen.

"Suddenly they waved white cloths. The Sheik, to whom a part of our
camels belonged, went over to them to negotiate, then Sami Bey and his
wife. In the interim we quickly built a sort of wagon barricade, a
circular camp of camel saddles, rice and coffee sacks, all of which
we filled with sand. We had no shovels, and had to dig with our
bayonets, plates, and hands. The whole barricade had a diameter of
about fifty meters. Behind it we dug trenches, which we deepened even
during the skirmish. The camels inside had to lie down, and thus
served very well as cover for the rear of the trenches. Then an inner
wall was constructed, behind which we carried the sick men. In the
very centre we buried two jars of water, to guard us against thirst.
In addition we had ten petroleum cans full of water; all told, a
supply for four days. Late in the evening Sami's wife came back from
the futile negotiations, alone. She had unveiled for the first and
only time on this day of the skirmish, had distributed cartridges, and
had conducted herself faultlessly.

"Soon we were able to ascertain the number of the enemy. There were
about 300 men; we numbered fifty, with twenty-nine guns. In the night,
Lieutenant Schmidt died. We had to dig his grave with our hands and
with our bayonets, and to eliminate every trace above it, in order to
protect the body. Rademacher had been buried immediately after the
skirmish, both of them silently, with all honors.

"The wounded had a hard time of it. We had lost our medicine chest in
the wreck; we had only little packages of bandages for skirmishes; but
no probing instrument, no scissors were at hand. On the ne