Читать книгу Australia in Palestine онлайн

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The Australian soldier has, for a man of insular breeding, shown an extraordinary capacity for making friends. He has an easy way with peoples of all races and colours. In France he is completely at his ease among the French peasantry; and he saunters through the Arab villages in Palestine as familiarly and as confidently as he used to walk the streets of his townships and cities at home. His old enemy the Turkish ranker is his admired personal friend. But the strong bond which sprang up so quickly between the Light Horseman and the Indians was perhaps the strangest of all his new war friendships. They were divided by colour, the language barrier was absolute, and, most unpromising of all, there was the barrier of caste, which prevented the devout Indian from sharing his rations, and so made little acts of camp hospitality impossible. But the barriers, although they seemed impassable, were miraculously surmounted. The Indians made no secret of their admiration of the Light Horseman as a past-master at the game of combined mounted and dismounted fighting, while the Australian was genuinely appreciative of the splendid soldierly qualities of the highly-trained regular Indian cavalry. Moreover, nearly all the Indians rode Australian horses!