As a result, one of the army physicians told me that in Beersheba he had
opened some medical chests consigned to him and found, to his horror,
that they were full of microscopes and gynecological instruments--for
the care of wounded soldiers in the desert!
Visits of British aeroplanes to Beersheba were common occurrences. Long
before the machine itself could be seen, its whanging, resonant hum
would come floating out of the blazing sky, seemingly from everywhere at
once. Soldiers rushed from their tents, squinting up into the heavens
until the speck was discovered, swimming slowly through the air; then
followed wholesale firing at an impossible range until the officers
forbade it. True to the policy of avoiding all unnecessary harm to the
natives, these British aviators never dropped bombs on the town,
but--what was more dangerous from the Turkish point of view--they would
unload packages of pamphlets, printed in Arabic, informing the natives
that they were being deceived; that the Allies were their only true
friends; that the Germans were merely making use of them to further
their own schemes, etc. These cleverly worded little tracts came
showering down out of the sky, and at first they were eagerly picked up.
The Turkish commanders, however, soon announced that any one found
carrying them would pay the death penalty.
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