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Thirty
of Life
Driving up from Beersheba
a combined
force of British
Australians and New Zealanders were pressing on the rear of
the Turkish retreat over arid desert. The attack outdistanced its water
carrying camel train. Water bottles were empty. The sun blazed pitilessly out
of a sky where the vultures wheeled expectantly. "Our heads
ached
" writes Gilbert
"and our eyes became bloodshot and dim in the
blinding glare...Our tongues began to swell...Our lips turned a purplish black
and burst." Those who dropped out of the column were never seen
again
but the desperate force battled on to Sheria. There were wells at
Sheria
and had they been unable to take the place by nightfall
thousands were
doomed to die of thirst.
"We fought that day
" writes
Gilbert
"as men fight for their lives... We entered Sheria station on the
heels of the reteating Turks. The first objects which met our view were the
great stone cisterns full of cold
clear
drinking water. In the still night
air the sound of water running into the tanks could be distinctly heard
maddening in its nearness; yet not a man murmured when orders were given for
the battalions to fall in
two deep
facing the cisterns" He then
describes the stern priorities: the wounded
those on guard duty
then company
by company. It took four hours before the last man had his drink of water
and
in all that time they had been standing twenty feet from a low stone wall on
the other side of which were thousands of gallons of water.
From an account of the British
liberation of Palestine by Major V. Gilbert in The Last Crusade
quoted
in Christ's Call To Discipleship
J.M. Boice
Moody
1986
p. 143.