Barada Gorge, looking from Damascus

West of the Barada Gorge with the road and railway on the route through the eastern mountains to Syria. In 1926, some years after painting this sketch, George Lambert wrote to Charles Bean: "The original painting or sketch (one of my best) was made by me after a careful choice of place and incident and shows that part of the road through the gorge which was packed and crowded with refugees soldiers and such dead half dead and barely alive bullock carts, bullocks, horses, women, Germans, goats, babies all mushed up nasty. This road was cleared by Australians and others, chiefly by means of burning off. I did the paint record of this spot in case the mess of carnage and muddle might need to be shown. The real spot of incident is higher up the gorge... all of the gorge and hill was shown to me by a guide officer and two troopers who were actually there at the time and I literally rode the course". (Bean correspondence with Lambert, part 1 AWM 38, 3DRL 6673, item 302).