We could get no accurate information concerning it. Some said it
was behind, others ahead. We never ran it down. It may well be that it was
concealed in a ravine near the road a few yards from where we passed. Just
short of a town called Abu Kemal we caught three Germans. They were in
terror when we took them, and afterward said that they had expected to be
shot. Under decent treatment they soon became so insolent that they had to
be brought up short.
[Illustration: A "Red Crescent" ambulance]
During the run back to Ana we picked up the more important of our
prisoners and took them with us. Twenty-two were all we could manage. I
was running one of the big cars. It was always a surprise to see how easy
they were to handle in spite of the weight of the armor-plate. We each
took great pride in the car in which we generally rode. All had names. In
the Fourteenth one section had "Silver Dart" and "Silver Ghost" and
another "Gray Terror" and "Gray Knight." The car in which I rode a
great deal of the time met its fate only a few days before the armistice,
long after I had gone to France. Two direct hits from an Austrian
"eighty-eight" ended its career.
It was after midnight when we got back to our camp in a palm-garden in
Ana. Although we had not succeeded in capturing the gold convoy, we had
brought in a number of valuable prisoners, and among other things I had
found some papers belonging to a German political agent whom we had
captured.
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