In Jerusalem an infants’ welfare bureau was instituted, where mothers were seen before and after childbirth, infants’ clinics were established, a body of health was formed, and a kitchen was opened to provide food for babies and the poor.  The nurses were mainly local subjects who had to undergo an adequate training, and there was no one who did not confidently predict a rapid fall in the infant mortality rate which, to the shame of the Turkish administration, was fully a dozen times that of the highest of English towns.  The spadework was all done by the medical staff of the Occupied Enemy Territory Administration.  The call was urgent, and though labouring under war-time difficulties they got things going quickly and smoothly.  Some voluntary societies were assisting, and the enthusiasm of the American Red Cross units enabled all to carry on a great and beneficent work.

CHAPTER XX

OUR CONQUERING AIRMEN

The airmen who were the eyes of the Army in Sinai and Palestine can look back on their record as a great achievement.  Enormous difficulties were faced with stout hearts, and the Royal Flying Corps spirit surmounted them.  It was one long test of courage, endurance, and efficiency, and so triumphantly did the airmen come through the ordeal that General Allenby’s Army may truthfully be said to have secured as complete a mastery of the air as it did of the plains and hills of Southern Palestine.  Those of us who watched the airmen ‘carrying on,’ from the time when their aeroplanes were inferior to those of the Germans in speed, climbing capacity, and other qualities which go to make up first-class fighting machines, till the position during the great advance when few enemy aviators dared cross our lines, can well testify to the wonderful work our airmen performed.

With comparatively few opportunities for combat because the enemy knew his inferiority and declined to fight unless forced, the pilots and observers from the moment our attack was about to start were always aggressive, and though the number of their victims may seem small compared with aerial victories on the Western Front they were substantial and important.  In the month of January 1917 the flying men accounted for eleven aeroplanes, five of these falling victims to one pilot.  The last of these victories I myself witnessed.  In a single-seater the pilot engaged two two-seater aeroplanes of a late type, driving down one machine within our line, the pilot killed by eleven bullets and the observer wounded.  He then chased the other plane, whose pilot soon lost his taste for fighting, dropped into a heavy cloud bank, and got away.  No odds were too great for our airmen.  I have seen one aeroplane swoop down out of the blue to attack a formation of six enemy machines, sending one crashing to earth and dispersing the remainder.  In one brief fight another pilot drove down three German planes.  The airman does not talk of his work,