Letters from Arthur Seaforth Blackburn to his family, 1941 - Part 13

Lt Col A S Blackburn 
SX6962 
2/3 MGBn 
AIF 
Abroad 
21/7/41. 
  
My darling Wody. 
I have received several more letters from you  
since I last wrote to you & got a tremendous thrill out of them. 
You do write a good letter, my dear. Keep on writing as I can't 
get too many of your letters! The checkers certainly provided 
you with a bit of a puzzle when you found them on the  
floor after returning from the pictures. I am sure that some 
member of the family must have taken them down to play 
just before you left & forgotten all about it. That is the only 
solution I can offer! I was delighted to hear that you are 
Capt of B Team at basket-ball. Keep it up my dearest. I hope 
the house is still coming top although they seem to have 
slipped a bit when you last wrote. I will be looking 
forward immensely to getting a letter from you which you 
have typed. I think it is an excellent idea for you to 
learn typing. There is not much news to tell you about 
myself. I am still keeping very well & are now having a  
thoroughly good rest. In my last letter to Bob, I started to  
describe a trip of inspection I recently did which involved 
a tour of parts of northern Syria. So far as I remember I

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left off in his letter with reaching a place where there were some 
interesting Roman ruins. Well after that the road ran on between 
two ranges of high mountains and over country which became 
drier & dustier the further on I went. The amazing thing about 
the country is that suddenly a spring gushes out & gives a 
big flow of water which in an apparent arid desert. The water 
is then led around in channels cut out of the ground & used for 
irrigating crops, fruit trees, etc & this makes the well known 
Eastern "oasis". In one place I saw a sight about which I am  
still completely puzzled. I have always understood that water 
will not normally flow uphill i,e, to make it do so it 
must be enclosed in a pipe & forced up the pipe either by 
gravitation or mechanical power. However over here it flows 
up hill in an open channel. At one place for about a  
mile the water channel is built thus.   
It is only an open channel & I can offer no explanation 
except that it is an optical delusion and is really a 
steady down hill slope. The objection to that however is 
that the road at the place is absolutely level & the water 
channel starts & ends at approximately the same level 
as the road! The first town which I visited is a very 
ancient Arab town which was used as a French garrison 
town. Whilst it has of course many fairly modern buildings 
it has far more of the ancient Arab layout than most 
of these cities. Perhaps a more accurate way of putting it

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would be to say that the ancient Arab buildings have been extensively 
used, instead of a new European quarter being superimposed on the old. 
The result is that an ordinary visit to the town, as apart from a 
special visit to the native quarter, shows much of the genuine native 
town life. Huge massive stone buildings constitute shops - of one 
huge room & no window & a tiny narrow doorway, heavily barred. 
In the main street was an native coffee "cafe". It consisted 
of one room in which coffee - Arab & Turkish, thick & sweet, - was 
brewed and an immense number of small tables & chairs entirely 
covering the footpath & reaching out half way across the road 
to the complete discomforture of vehicles who were utterly ignored 
if a patron desired to sit in the road & drink coffee. Another 
place illustrated the reverse - the complete "washout" of the 
pedestrian for vehicular traffic. In one street of wealthier 
native dwellings there was a well made stone footpath 
about six feet wide. Opposite every gate however a  
carriageway around or rather over the footpath & up to the gate 
was built & vehicles simply drove in & stopped & made 
the pedestrians go onto the road thus.    
When I was there our forces had just taken over the town 
& we were the source of much interest, so much so that it  
was at times embarrassing as they (the inhabitants) clustered around the car &  
peered into it etc until we could scarcely proceed. I stayed 
the night at this place & next day travelled down South to

4/  
Damascus once more. Whilst there I visited per car a place which, I understand,  
is historically or biblically famous viz. "The Street called Straight". I suppose I 
ought to know what the street is, - it certainly sounds familiar - but I must 
confess that I cannot place it. That however did not alter its deep 
interest. We turned off one of the main streets into what looked like 
the entrance to a shop or big house. It was like the entrance to the Adelaide 
Arcade in Rundle Street if the entrance was circular narrow & about eight 
feet high. We drove straight across the footpath into it. We found 
ourselves then in a very narrow passageway, so narrow that two 
vehicles cannot pass. It is completely roofed in for over 1 ½ miles & 
is bounded on each side the whole length by shops, open stalls 
etc just like the Arcade again. Every conceivable sort of shop was 
there, including dozens qute quite novel to us such as "bed shops", "camel 
shops" etc The space from wall to wall or rather shop front to shop front 
was quite level, no gutters or paths or anything & was absolutely 
thronged with natives of all sorts, Arabs, Bedouins, Syrians, French & 
also donkeys & camels. The babel of noise of men bartering, crying their wares, 
arguing, laughing & shouting out was deafening. Along this we drove,  
or perhaps I should say crawled, but because we frequently actually brushed 
people with the mudguard as we passed. Everyone took it in 
thoroughly good part however & were quite pleasant. The street 
ends at the Eastern gate of Damascus, the gate through which leads the 
old caravan track to Bagdad, and I think is the most interesting 
Street I have ever seen in my life. After we left there we drove 
back through a mountain pass which had been holding 
up our men outside Damascus & it was easy to see why we

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had had such trouble in getting through. The only road ran down the 
bottom of a deep gorge entirely dominated by line after line of almost 
sheer cliff interspersed with narrow gullies & ledges on which machine 
guns & artillery could be placed. From this we emerged onto a 
big plain & then up the most western range of mountains & so back 
to the Mediterranean coast. We have now moved our bivouac to 
a village much higher up in the mountains. We are, I understand, 
well over 4000 feet up. Towering over us is a huge bare 
mountain which even now has snow on it & in winter is very 
popular as a winter sports resort. We were, in a way, sorry to 
leave our previous bivouac. The villagers there were very 
simple, kindly folk & treated us very well. They were 
Armenians, who many many years ago were brought from 
Armenia & dumped in these mountains as a refuge. Many of 
their customs etc were quite worth noting. There were three 
big churches in the town - all Greek orthodox church or some 
similar body. Each church had its own priest but everybody 
including the priests attended each church service. That is to 
say no 1 church had a service at say 7 o'clock & everyone including 
the other two priests attended. Then at 9 o'clock No 2 church 
held a service & everyone with the other two priests attended 
that service & so on. In spite of this the services were not 
the same, each being run by a slightly different sect. The  
people generally were fairly clean & seemed very enthusiastic  
at seeing us & having us there. One could not help 
wondering (perhaps unjustly) how much of the enthusiasm 

6/ 
was due to the fact that we - and not the French - were at the 
moment, the "top dogs" of the place. We are in a wonderful 
place now, Wody darling. It is very high up & is covered 
with cedars & pines. At the back of the village is a very steep & 
terrifically rocky hill. It is so rocky & sheer that it is only 
possible to travel by road about a mile up it. Just at the 
head of the road, there is an immense pile of rocks & gushing 
out from the centre of this, without a blade of greenery 
anywhere near, is a spring of icy cold pure water. It flows 
out in sufficient volume to provide water for the whole 
village & all our men, with the utmost ease. Further up 
still is one of the high mountains of Syria & one can only 
imagine that the water comes in some subterranean passage 
from this mountain which is snow capped most of the 
year. Even at present in the middle of the summer there is 
considerable snow on the very top. I am thinking of taking 
a couple of days off & trying to climb to the top, but I believe 
it is a pretty difficult climb. 
Well, dear family, I have come to the end of my allowance 
of paper for this letter. I am keeping absolutely fit - I think 
fitter than any man in the Bn - and am feeling well 
except that I am missing you all dreadfully. I am 
counting the days to when I will be with you all again. 
Keep smiling my dears 
With all my love 
Daddy 
JK Lynch