← catalogue

How Jerusalem Was Won

by W. T. Massey · English · Gutenberg #10098 · 523,339 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of How Jerusalem Was Won
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: How Jerusalem Was Won

Author: W. T. Massey


        
Release date: November 1, 2003 [eBook #10098]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10098

Credits: Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Lazar Liveanu and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HOW JERUSALEM WAS WON ***

HOW JERUSALEM WAS WON

BEING THE RECORD OF ALLENBY'S CAMPAIGN IN PALESTINE

by

W.T. MASSEY

OFFICIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE LONDON NEWSPAPERS WITH THE EGYPTIAN
EXPEDITIONARY FORCE




WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS




LONDON 1919



PREFACE


This narrative of the work accomplished for civilisation by General
Allenby's Army is carried only as far as the occupation of Jericho.
The capture of that ancient town, with the possession of a line of
rugged hills a dozen miles north of Jerusalem, secured the Holy City
from any Turkish attempt to retake it. The book, in fact, tells
the story of the twenty-third fall of Jerusalem, one of the most
beneficent happenings of all wars, and marking an epoch in the
wonderful history of the Holy Place which will rank second only to
that era which saw the birth of Christianity. All that occurred in the
fighting on the Gaza-Beersheba line was part and parcel of the taking
of Jerusalem, the freeing of which from four centuries of Turkish
domination was the object of the first part of the campaign. The Holy
City was the goal sought by every officer and man in the Army; and
though from the moment that goal had been attained all energies were
concentrated upon driving the Turk out of the war, there was not a
member of the Force, from the highest on the Staff to the humblest
private in the ranks, who did not feel that Jerusalem was the greatest
prize of the campaign.

In a second volume I shall tell of that tremendous feat of arms which
overwhelmed the Turkish Armies, drove them through 400 miles of
country in six weeks, and gave cavalry an opportunity of proving that,
despite all the arts and devices of modern warfare, with fighters
and observers in the air and an entirely new mechanism of war, they
continued as indispensable a part of an army as when the legions
of old took the field. This is too long a story to be told in this
volume, though the details of that magnificent triumph are so firmly
impressed on the mind that one is loth to leave the narration of them
to a future date. For the moment Jerusalem must be sufficient, and if
in the telling of the British work up to that point I can succeed in
giving an idea of the immense value of General Allenby's Army to the
Empire, of the soldier's courage and fortitude, of his indomitable
will and self-sacrifice and patriotism, it will indeed prove the most
grateful task I have ever set myself.

_April 1919._



CONTENTS


Chap.

    I. PALESTINE'S INFLUENCE ON THE WAR

    II. OLD BATTLEGROUNDS

    III. DIFFICULTIES OF THE ATTACK

    IV. TRAINING THE ARMY

    V. RAILWAYS, ROADS, AND THE BASE

    VI. PREPARING FOR 'ZERO DAY'

    VII. THE BEERSHEBA VICTORY

    VIII. GAZA DEFENCES

    IX. CRUSHING THE TURKISH LEFT

    X. THROUGH GAZA INTO THE OPEN

    XI. TWO YEOMANRY CHARGES

    XII. LOOKING TOWARDS JERUSALEM

    XIII. INTO THE JUDEAN HILLS

    XIV. THE DELIVERANCE OF THE HOLY CITY

    XV. GENERAL ALLENBY'S OFFICIAL ENTRY

    XVI. MAKING JERUSALEM SECURE

    XVII. A GREAT FEAT OF WAR

    XVIII. BY THE BANKS OF THE JORDAN

    XIX. THE TOUCH OF THE CIVILISING HAND

    XX. OUR CONQUERING AIRMEN

    APPENDICES

    INDEX


LIST OF MAPS


PLAN OF SOUTHERN PALESTINE

PLAN OF GAZA-BEERSHEBA LINE

PLAN OF THE BETH-HORON COUNTRY

PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF JERUSALEM


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

OFFICIAL ENTRY INTO THE HOLY CITY. GENERAL ALLENBY RECEIVED BY THE
MILITARY GOVERNOR OP JERUSALEM, DECEMBER 11, 1917

KANTARA TERMINUS OF THE DESERT MILITARY RAILWAY

EAST FORCE H.Q. DUG-OUTS NEAR GAZA

WADI GHUZZE NEAR SHELLAL

OUR WATERWORKS AT SHELLAL

ON THE MOVE IN THE DESERT

THE GREAT MOSQUE AT GAZA

TURKISH HEADQUARTERS AT GAZA. Note the Crusader Lion in Wall.

A DESERT MOTOR ROAD NEAR SHELLAL

TURKISH DUG-OUTS AT GAZA

BEERSHEBA RAILWAY STATION WITH MINED ROLLING STOCK

LIEUT.-GEN. SIR HARRY CHAUVEL OUTSIDE BEERSHEBA MOSQUE, NOVEMBER 1,
1917

EL MUGHAR. THE SCENE OF A YEOMANRY CHARGE

BURIAL-PLACE OF ST. GEORGE, PATRON SAINT OF ENGLAND (AT LUDD)

YEOMANRY GRAVES AT BETH-HORON THE UPPER, WHERE JOSHUA COMMANDED
THE SUN TO REMAIN STILL TO ENABLE THE ISRAELITES TO OVERTHROW THE
PHILISTINES

IN THE JUDEAN HILLS

A ROMAN CENTURION'S TOMB, KURYET EL ENAB

ONE OF KING SOLOMON'S POOLS

A TYPICAL NEW ZEALANDER

WADI SURAR, CROSSED BY LONDON TERRITORIALS ON THE MORNING OF THEIR
ASSAULT ON THE JERUSALEM DEFENCES

THE DEIR YESIN POSITION WEST OF JERUSALEM

EASTERN FACE OF NEBI SAMWIL MOSQUE, SHOWING DESTRUCTION BY TURKISH
SHELL-FIRE

OFFICIAL ENTRY INTO THE HOLY CITY. GENERAL ALLENBY ARRIVING OUTSIDE
THE JAFFA GATE

OFFICIAL ENTRY. GENERAL ALLENBY RECEIVING THE MAYOR OF JERUSALEM (A
DESCENDANT OF MAHOMET)

JERUSALEM FROM MOUNT OF OLIVES

JERUSALEM FROM GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE

PANEL IN THE CHAPEL OF THE KAISERIN AUGUSTA VICTORIA HOSPICE ON THE
MOUNT OF OLIVES

BETHLEHEM

CHURCH OF THE NATIVITY, BETHLEHEM

AIN KARIM, PART OF THE JERUSALEM DEFENCES

RIVER AUJA, CROSSED AT NIGHT BY LOWLAND TERRITORIALS

JERISHEH MILL, RIVER AUJA, ONE OF THE LOWLANDERS' CROSSINGS

BARREL BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER AUJA

DESTROYED BRIDGE ON THE JERICHO ROAD

THE WILDERNESS, WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE DEAD SEA

LONDONERS' BRIDGE OVER THE JORDAN. THE RIVER IS IN FLOOD

GERMAN PRISONERS CROSSING THE JORDAN

NEW ZEALAND MOUNTED RIFLES AT BETHLEHEM

A HAIRPIN BEND ON THE JERUSALEM ROAD



CHAPTER I

PALESTINE'S INFLUENCE ON THE WAR


In a war which involved the peoples of the four quarters of the globe
it was to be expected that on the world's oldest battleground would
be renewed the scenes of conflict of bygone ages. There was perhaps a
desire of some elements of both sides, certainly it was the unanimous
wish of the Allies, to avoid the clash of arms in Palestine, and to
leave untouched by armies a land held in reverence by three of the
great religions of the world. But this ancient cockpit of warring
races could not escape. The will of those who broke the peace
prevailed. Germany's dream of Eastern Empires and world domination,
the lust of conquest of the Kaiser party, required that the tide of
war should once more surge across the land, and if the conquering
hosts left fewer traces of war wreckage than were to be expected in
their victorious march, it was due not to any anxiety of our foes
to avoid conflict about, and damage to, places with hallowed
associations, but to the masterly strategy of the British
Commander-in-Chief who manoeuvred the Turkish Armies out of positions
defending the sacred sites.

The people of to-day who have lived through the war, who have had
their view bewildered by ever-recurring anxieties, by hopes shattered
and fears realised, by a succession of victories and defeats on a
colossal scale, and by a sudden collapse of the enemy, may fail to see
the Palestine campaign in true perspective. But in a future generation
the calm judgment of the historian in reviewing the greatest of all
wars will, if I mistake not, pay a great tribute to General Allenby's
strategy, not only as marking the commencement of the enemy's
downfall, but as preserving from the scourge of war those holy places
which symbolise the example by which most people rule their lives.
Britons who value the good name of their country will appreciate what
this means to those who shall come after us--that the record of a
great campaign carried out exclusively by British Imperial troops was
unsullied by a single act to disturb the sacred monuments, and left
the land in the full possession of those rich treasures which stand
for the principles that guided our actions and which, if posterity
observes them, will make a better and happier world.

A few months after the Turks entered the war it was obvious that
unaided they could never realise the Kaiser's hope of cutting the Suez
Canal communications of the British Empire. The German commitments in
Europe were too overwhelming to permit of their rendering the Turks
adequate support for a renewed effort against Egypt after the failure
of the attack on the Canal in February 1915. There was an attempt
by the Turks in August 1916, but it was crushed by Anzac horse and
British infantry at Romani,[1] a score of miles from Port Said, and
thereafter the Turks in this theatre were on the defensive. Some
declare the Dardanelles enterprise to have been a mistake; others
believe that had we not threatened the Turks there Egypt would
have had to share with us the anxieties that war brings alike upon
attackers and defenders. Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, however we regard
those expeditions in the first years of the struggle, undoubtedly
prevented the Turks employing a large army against Egypt, and the
possibilities resulting from a defeat there were so full of danger to
us, not merely in that half-way house of the Empire but in India and
the East generally, that if Gallipoli served to avert the disaster
that ill-starred expedition was worth undertaking. We had to drive
the Turks out of the Sinai Peninsula--Egyptian territory--and, that
accomplished, an attack on the Turks through Palestine was imperative
since the Russian collapse released a large body of Turkish troops
from the Caucasus who would otherwise be employed in Mesopotamia.

[Footnote 1: _The Desert Campaigns_: London, Constable and Co., Ltd.]

When General Allenby took over the command of the Egyptian
Expeditionary Force the British public as a whole did not fully
realise the importance of the Palestine campaign. Most of them
regarded it as a 'side show,' and looked upon it as one of those minor
fields of operations which dissipated our strength at a time when it
was imperative we should concentrate to resist the German effort on
the Western Front. They did not know the facts. In our far-flung
Empire it was essential that we should maintain our prestige among
the races we governed, some of them martial peoples who might remain
faithful to the British flag only so long as we could impress them
with our power to win the war. They were more influenced by a triumph
in Mesopotamia, which was nearer their doors, than by a victory in
France, and the occupation of Bagdad was a victory of greater import
to the King's Indian subjects than the German retirement from the
Hindenburg line. If there ever was a fear of serious trouble in India
the advance of General Maude in Mesopotamia dispelled it, and made it
easier not only to release a portion of our white garrison in India
for active service elsewhere, but to recruit a large force of Indians
for the Empire's work in other climes. Bagdad was a tremendous blow to
German ambitions. The loss of it spelt ruin to those hopes of Eastern
conquest which had prompted the German intrigues in Turkey, and it was
certain that the Kaiser, so long as he believed in ultimate victory,
would refuse to accept the loss of Bagdad as final. Russia's
withdrawal as a belligerent released a large body of Turkish troops
in the Caucasus, and set free many Germans, particularly 'technical
troops' of which the Turks stood in need, for other fronts. It was
then that the German High Command conceived a scheme for retaking
Bagdad, and the redoubtable von Falkenhayn was sent to Constantinople
charged with the preparations for the undertaking. Certain it is that
it would have been put into execution but for the situation created by
the presence of a large British Army in the Sinai Peninsula. A large
force was collected about Aleppo for a march down the Euphrates
valley, and the winter of 1917-18 would have witnessed a stern
struggle for supremacy in Mesopotamia if the War Cabinet had not
decided to force the Turks to accept battle where they least wanted
it.

The views of the British War Cabinet on the war in the East, at any
rate, were sound and solid. They concentrated on one big campaign,
and, profiting from past mistakes which led to a wastage of strength,
allowed all the weight they could spare to be thrown into the Egyptian
Expeditionary Force under a General who had proved his high military
capacity in France, and in whom all ranks had complete confidence, and
they permitted the Mesopotamian and Salonika Armies to contain the
enemies on their fronts while the Army in Palestine set out to crush
the Turks at what proved to be their most vital point. As to whether
the force available on our Mesopotamia front was capable of defeating
the German scheme I cannot offer an opinion, but it is beyond all
question that the conduct of operations in Palestine on a plan at once
bold, resolute, and worthy of a high place in military history saved
the Empire much anxiety over our position in the Tigris and Euphrates
valleys, and probably prevented unrest on the frontiers of India and
in India itself, where mischief makers were actively working in the
German cause. Nor can there be any doubt that the brilliant campaign
in Palestine prevented British and French influence declining among
the Mahomedan populations of those countries' respective spheres of
control in Africa. Indeed I regard it as incontrovertible that the
Palestine strategy of General Allenby, even apart from his stupendous
rush through Syria in the autumn of the last year of war, did as much
to end the war in 1918 as the great battles on the Western Front,
for if there had been failure or check in Palestine some British and
French troops in France might have had to be detached to other fronts,
and the Germans' effort in the Spring might have pushed their line
farther towards the Channel and Paris. If Bagdad was not actually
saved in Palestine, an expedition against it was certainly stopped by
our Army operating on the old battlegrounds in Palestine. We lost many
lives, and it cost us a vast amount of money, but the sacrifices
of brave men contributed to the saving of the world from German
domination; and high as the British name stood in the East as the
upholder of the freedom of peoples, the fame of Britain for justice,
fair dealing, and honesty is wider and more firmly established to-day
because the people have seen it emerge triumphantly from a supreme
test.

In the strategy of the world war we made, no doubt, many mistakes, but
in Palestine the strategy was of the best, and in the working out of a
far-seeing scheme, victories so influenced events that on this front
began the final phase of the war--once Turkey was beaten, Bulgaria and
Austria-Hungary submitted and Germany acknowledged the inevitable.
Falkenhayn saw that the Bagdad undertaking was impossible so long as
we were dangerous on the Palestine front, and General Allenby's attack
on the Gaza line wiped the Bagdad enterprise out of the list of German
ambitions. The plan of battle on the Gaza-Beersheba line resembled
in miniature the ending of the war. If we take Beersheba for Turkey,
Sheria and Hareira for Bulgaria and Austria, and Gaza for Germany,
we get the exact progress of events in the final stage, except that
Bulgaria's submission was an intelligent anticipation of the laying
down of their arms by the Turks. Gaza-Beersheba was a rolling up from
our right to left; so was the ending of the Hun alliance.



CHAPTER II

OLD BATTLEGROUNDS


It was in accordance with the fitness of things that the British Army
should fight and conquer on the very spots consecrated by the memories
of the most famous battles of old. From Gaza onwards we made our
progress by the most ancient road on earth, for this way moved
commerce between the Euphrates and the Nile many centuries before the
East knew West. We fought on fields which had been the battlegrounds
of Egyptian and Assyrian armies, where Hittites, Ethiopians, Persians,
Parthians, and Mongols poured out their blood in times when kingdoms
were strong by the sword alone. The Ptolemies invaded Syria by this
way, and here the Greeks put their colonising hands on the country.
Alexander the Great made this his route to Egypt. Pompey marched over
the Maritime Plain and inaugurated that Roman rule which lasted for
centuries; till Islam made its wide irresistible sweep in the seventh
century. Then the Crusaders fought and won and lost, and Napoleon's
ambitions in the East were wrecked just beyond the plains.

Up the Maritime Plain we battled at Gaza, every yard of which had
been contested by the armies of mighty kings in the past thirty-five
centuries, at Akir, Gezer, Lydda, and around Joppa. All down the ages
armies have moved in victory or flight over this plain, and General
Allenby in his advance was but repeating history. And when the
Turks had been driven beyond the Plain of Philistia, and the
Commander-in-Chief had to decide how to take Jerusalem, we saw the
British force move along precisely the same route that has been taken
by armies since the time when Joshua overcame the Amorites and the day
was lengthened by the sun and moon standing still till the battle
was won. Geography had its influence on the strategy of to-day as
completely as it did when armies were not cumbered with guns and
mechanical transport. Of the few passes from the Maritime Plain over
the Shephelah into the Judean range only that emerging from the green
Vale of Ajalon was possible, if we were to take Jerusalem, as the
great captains of old took it, from the north. The Syrians sometimes
chose this road in preference to advancing through Samaria, the Romans
suffered retreat on it, Richard Coeur de Lion made it the path for his
approach towards the Holy City, and, precisely as in Joshua's day and
as when in the first century the Romans fell victims to a tremendous
Jewish onslaught, the fighting was hardest about the Beth-horons, but
with a different result--the invaders were victorious. The corps which
actually took Jerusalem advanced up the new road from Latron through
Kuryet el Enab, identified by some as Kirjath-jearim where the
Philistines returned the Ark, but that road would have been denied to
us if we had not made good the ancient path from the Vale of Ajalon to
Gibeon. Jerusalem was won by the fighting at the Beth-horons as
surely as it was on the line of hills above the wadi Surar which
the Londoners carried. There was fighting at Gibeon, at Michmas, at
Beeroth, at Ai, and numerous other places made familiar to us by the
Old Testament, and assuredly no army went forth to battle on more
hallowed soil.

Of all the armies which earned a place in history in Palestine,
General Allenby's was the greatest--the greatest in size, in
equipment, in quality, in fighting power, and not even the invading
armies in the romantic days of the Crusades could equal it in
chivalry. It fought the strong fight with clean hands throughout, and
finished without a blemish on its conduct. It was the best of all the
conquering armies seen in the Holy Land as well as the greatest.
Will not the influence of this Army endure? I think so. There is an
awakening in Palestine, not merely of Christians and Jews, but of
Moslems, too, in a less degree. During the last thirty years there
have grown more signs of the deep faiths of peoples and of their
veneration of this land of sacred history. If their institutions and
missions could develop and shed light over Palestine even while the
slothful and corrupt Turk ruled the land, how much faster and more in
keeping with the sanctity of the country will the improvement be under
British protection? The graves of our soldiers dotted over desert
wastes and cornfields, on barren hills and in fertile valleys, ay, and
on the Mount of Olives where the Saviour trod, will mark an era more
truly grand and inspiring, and offer a far greater lesson to future
generations than the Crusades or any other invasion down the track of
time. The Army of General Allenby responded to the happy thought of
the Commander-in-Chief and contributed one day's pay for the erection
of a memorial near Jerusalem in honour of its heroic dead. Apart from
the holy sites, no other memorial will be revered so much, and future
pilgrims, to whatever faith they belong, will look upon it as a
monument to men who went to battle to bring lasting peace to a land
from which the Word of Peace and Goodwill went forth to mankind.

In selecting General Sir Edmund Allenby as the Palestine Army's chief
the War Cabinet made a happy choice. General Sir Archibald Murray
was recalled to take up an important command at home after the two
unsuccessful attempts to drive the Turks from the Gaza defences. The
troops at General Murray's disposal were not strong enough to take
the offensive again, and it was clear there must be a long period of
preparation for an attack on a large scale. General Allenby brought to
the East a lengthy experience of fighting on the Western Front, where
his deliberate methods of attack, notably at Arras, had given the
Allies victories over the cleverest and bravest of our enemies.
Palestine was likely to be a cavalry, as well as an infantry,
campaign, or at any rate the theatre of war in which the mounted arm
could be employed with the most fruitful of results. General Allenby's
achievements as a cavalry leader in the early days of the war marked
him as the one officer of high rank suited for the Palestine command,
and his proved capacity as a General both in open and in trench
warfare gave the Army that high degree of confidence in its
Commander-in-Chief which it is so necessary that a big fighting force
should possess. A tremendously hard worker himself, General Allenby
expected all under him to concentrate the whole of their energies
on their work. He had the faculty for getting the best out of his
officers, and on his Staff were some of the most enthusiastic soldiers
in the service. There was no room for an inefficient leader in any
branch of the force, and the knowledge that the Commander-in-Chief
valued the lives and the health of his men so highly that he would not
risk a failure, kept all the staffs tuned up to concert pitch. We
saw many changes, and the best men came to the top. His own vigour
infected the whole command, and within a short while of arriving at
the front the efficiency of the Army was considerably increased.

The Palestine G.H.Q. was probably nearer the battle front than any
G.H.Q. in other theatres of operations, and when the Army had broken
through and chased the enemy beyond the Jaffa-Jerusalem line, G.H.Q.
was opened at Bir Salem, near Ramleh, and for several months was
actually within reach of the long-range guns which the Turks
possessed. The rank and file were not slow to appreciate this. They
knew their Commander-in-Chief was on the spot, keeping his eye and
hand on everything, organising with his organisers, planning with
his operation staff, familiar with every detail of the complicated
transport system, watching his supply services with the keenness of a
quartermaster-general, and taking that lively interest in the medical
branch which betrayed an anxious desire for the welfare and health of
the men. The rank and file knew something more than this. They saw the
Commander-in-Chief at the front every day. General Allenby did not
rely solely on reports from his corps. He went to each section of the
line himself, and before practically every major operation he saw the
ground and examined the scheme for attack. There was not a part of the
line he did not know, and no one will contradict me when I say that
the military roads in Palestine were known by no one better than the
driver of the Commander-in-Chief's car. A man of few words, General
Allenby always said what he meant with soldierly directness, which
made the thanks he gave a rich reward. A good piece of work brought a
written or oral message of thanks, and the men were satisfied they
had done well to deserve congratulations. They were proud to have the
confidence of such a Chief and to deserve it, and they in their turn
had such unbounded faith in the military judgment of the General and
in the care he took to prevent unnecessary risk of life, that there
was nothing which he sanctioned that they would not attempt. Such
mutual confidence breeds strength, and it was the Commander-in-Chief's
example, his tact, energy, and military genius which made his Army a
potent power for Britain and a strong pillar of the Allies' cause.

Let it not be imagined that General Allenby in his victorious campaign
shone only as a great soldier. He was also a great administrator. In
England little was known about this part of the General's work, and
owing to the difficulties of the task and to the consideration which
had, and still has, to be shown to the susceptibilities of a number of
friendly nations and peoples, it may be long before the full story of
the administration of the occupied territory in Palestine is unfolded
for general appreciation. It is a good story, worthy of Britain's
record as a protector of peoples, and though from the nature of his
conquest over the Turks in the Bible country the name of General
Allenby will adorn the pages of history principally as a victor, it
will also stand before the governments of states as setting a model
for a wise, prudent, considerate, even benevolent, administration of
occupied enemy territory. In days when Powers driven mad by military
ambition tear up treaties as scraps of paper, General Allenby observed
the spirit as well as the letter of the Hague Convention, and found
it possible to apply to occupied territory the principles of
administration as laid down in the Manual of Military Law.

The natives marvelled at the change. In place of insecurity,
extortion, bribery and corruption, levies on labour and property and
all the evils of Turkish government, General Allenby gave the country
behind the front line peace, justice, fair treatment of every race and
creed, and a firm and equitable administration of the law. Every man's
house became his castle. Taxes were readily paid, the tax gatherers
were honest servants, and, none of the revenue going to keep fat
pashas in luxury in Constantinople, there came a prospect of
expenditure and revenue balancing after much money had been usefully
spent on local government. Until the signing of peace international
law provided that Turkish laws should apply. These, properly
administered, as they never were by the Turks, gave a basis of good
government, and, with the old abuses connected with the collection
of revenue removed, and certain increased taxation and customs dues
imposed by the Turks during the war discontinued, the people resumed
the arts of peace and enjoyed a degree of prosperity none of them had
ever anticipated. What the future government of Palestine may be is
uncertain at the time of writing. There is talk of international
control--we seem ever ready to lose at the conference table what a
valiant sword has gained for us--but the careful and perfectly correct
administration of General Allenby will save us from the criticism of
many jealous foreigners. Certainly it will bear examination by any
impartial investigator, but the best of all tributes that could be
paid to it is that it satisfied religious communities which did not
live in perfect harmony with one another and the inhabitants of a
country which shelters the people of many different races.

The Yilderim undertaking, as the Bagdad scheme was described, did not
meet with the full acceptance of the Turks. The 'mighty Jemal', as the
Germans sneeringly called the Commander of the Syrian Army, opposed it
as weakening his prospects, and even Enver, the ambitious creature and
tool of Germany, postponed his approval. It would seem the taking over
of the command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force by General Allenby
set the Turks thinking, and made the German Military Mission in
Constantinople reconsider their plans, not with a view to a complete
abandonment of the proposal to advance on Bagdad, as would have been
wise, but in order to see how few of the Yilderim troops they could
allot to Jemal's army to make safe the Sinai front. There was an
all-important meeting of Turkish Generals in the latter half of
August, and Jemal stood to his guns. Von Falkenhayn could not get
him to abate one item of his demands, and there can be no doubt that
Falkenhayn, obsessed though he was with the importance of getting
Bagdad, could see that Jemal was right. He admitted that the Yilderim
operation was only practicable if it had freedom for retirement
through the removal of the danger on the Palestine front. With that
end in view he advocated that the British should be attacked, and
suggested that two divisions and the 'Asia Corps' should be sent from
Aleppo to move round our right. Jemal was in favour of defensive
action; Enver procrastinated and proposed sending one division to
strengthen the IVth Army on the Gaza front and to proceed with the
Bagdad preparations. The wait-and-see policy prevailed, but long
before we exerted our full strength Bagdad was out of the danger zone.
General Allenby's force was so disposed that any suggestion of
the Yilderim operation being put into execution was ruled out of
consideration.

Several documents captured at Yilderim headquarters at Nazareth in
September 1918, when General Allenby made his big drive through Syria,
show very clearly how our Palestine operations changed the whole of
the German plans, and reading between the lines one can realise how
the impatience of the Germans was increasing Turkish stubbornness
and creating friction and ill-feeling. The German military character
brooks no opposition; the Turks like to postpone till to-morrow what
should be done to-day. The latter were cocksure after their two
successes at Gaza they could hold us up; the Germans believed that
with an offensive against us they would hold us in check till the wet
season arrived.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Appendices I., II., and III.]

Down to the south the Turks had to bring their divisions. Their line
of communications was very bad. There was a railway from Aleppo
through Rayak to Damascus, and onwards through Deraa (on the Hedjaz
line) to Afule, Messudieh, Tul Keram, Ramleh, Junction Station to Beit
Hanun, on the Gaza sector, and through Et Tineh to Beersheba. Rolling
stock was short and fuel was scarce, and the enemy had short rations.
When we advanced through Syria in the autumn of 1918 our transport was
nobly served by motor-lorry columns which performed marvels in getting
up supplies over the worst of roads. But as we went ahead we, having
command of the sea, landed stores all the way up the coast, and unless
the Navy had lent its helping hand we should never have got to Aleppo
before the Turk cried 'Enough.' Every ounce of the Turks' supplies had
to be hauled over land. They managed to put ten infantry divisions and
one cavalry division against us in the first three weeks, but they
were not comparable in strength to our seven infantry divisions and
three cavalry divisions. In rifle strength we outnumbered them by two
to one, but if the enemy had been well led and properly rationed he,
being on the defensive and having strong prepared positions, should
have had the power to resist us more strongly. The Turkish divisions
we attacked were: 3rd, 7th, 16th, 19th, 20th, 24th, 26th, 27th, 53rd,
and 54th, and the 3rd Cavalry Division. The latter avoided battle, but
all the infantry divisions had heavy casualties. That the moral of the
Turkish Army was not high may be gathered from a very illuminating
letter written by General Kress von Kressenstein, the G.O.C. of the
Sinai front, to Yilderim headquarters on September 29, 1917.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Appendix IV.]

The troops who won Palestine and made it happier than it had been for
four centuries were exclusively soldiers of the British Empire.
There was a French detachment and an Italian detachment with General
Allenby's Army. The Italians for a short period held a small portion
of the line in the Gaza sector, but did not advance with our force;
the French detachment were solely employed as garrison troops. The
French battleship _Requin_ and two French destroyers cooperated with
the ships of the Royal Navy in the bombardment of the coast. Our Army
was truly representative of the Empire, and the units composing it
gave an abiding example that in unity rested our strength. From over
the Seven Seas the Empire's sons came to illustrate the unanimity
of all the King's subjects in the prosecution of the war. English,
Scottish, Irish, and Welsh divisions of good men and true fought side
by side with soldiers of varying Indian races and castes. Australia's
valiant sons constituted many brigades of horse and, with New Zealand
mounted regiments, became the most hardened campaigners in the
Egyptian and Palestine theatre of operations. Their powerful support
in the day of anxiety and trial, as well as in the time of triumph,
will be remembered with gratitude. South Africa contributed good
gunners; our dark-skinned brethren in the West Indies furnished
infantry who, when the fierce summer heat made the air in the Jordan
Valley like a draught from a furnace, had a bayonet charge which
aroused an Anzac brigade to enthusiasm (and Colonial free men can
estimate bravery at its true value). From far-away Hong Kong and
Singapore came mountain gunners equal to any in the world, Kroomen
sent from their homes in West Africa surf boatmen to land stores,
Raratongas from the Southern Pacific vied with them in boat craft and
beat them in physique, while Egypt contributed a labour corps and
transport corps running a long way into six figures. The communion of
the representatives of the Mother and Daughter nations on the stern
field of war brought together people with the same ideals, and if
there are any minor jealousies between them the brotherhood of arms
will make the soldiers returning to their homes in all quarters of the
globe the best of missionaries to spread the Imperial idea. Instead of
wrecking the British Empire the German-made war should rebuild it
on the soundest of foundations, affection, mutual trust, and common
interest.



CHAPTER III

DIFFICULTIES OF THE ATTACK


General Allenby's first problem was of vital consequence. He had to
pierce the Gaza line. Before his arrival there had been, as already
stated, two attempts which failed. A third failure, or even a
check, might have spelt disaster for us in the East. The Turks held
commanding positions, which they strengthened and fortified under the
direction of German engineers until their country, between the sea and
Beersheba, became a chain of land works of high military value, well
adapted for defence, and covering almost every line of approach.
The Turk at the Dardanelles had shown no loss of that quality of
doggedness in defence which characterised him in Plevna, and though we
know his commanders still cherished the hope of successfully attacking
us before we could attempt to crush his line, it was on his system of
defence that the enemy mainly relied to break the power of the British
force. On arriving in Egypt General Allenby was given an appreciation
of the situation written by Lieut.-General Sir Philip Chetwode, who
had commanded the Desert Column in various stages across the sands of
Sinai, was responsible for forcing the Turks to evacuate El Arish,
arranged the dash on Magdaba by General Sir Harry Chauvel's mounted
troops, and fought the brilliant little battle of Rafa. This
appreciation of the position was the work of a master military mind,
taking a broad comprehensive view of the whole military situation in
the East, Palestine's position in the world war, the strategical and
tactical problems to be faced, and, without making any exorbitant
demands for troops which would lessen the Allies' powers in other
theatres, set out the minimum necessities for the Palestine force.
General Allenby gave the fullest consideration to this document, and
after he had made as complete an examination of the front as any
Commander-in-Chief ever undertook--the General was in one or other
sector with his troops almost every day for four months--General
Chetwode's plan was adopted, and full credit was given to his
prescience in General Allenby's despatch covering the operations up to
the fall of Jerusalem.

It was General Chetwode's view at the time of writing his
appreciation, that both the British and Turkish Armies were
strategically on the defensive. The forces were nearly equal in
numbers, though we were slightly superior in artillery, but we had no
advantage sufficient to enable us to attack a well-entrenched enemy
who only offered us a flank on which we could not operate owing to
lack of water and the extreme difficulty of supply. General Chetwode
thought it was possible the enemy might make an offensive against
us--we have since learned he had such designs--but he gave weighty
reasons against the Turk embarking upon a campaign conducted with
a view to throwing us beyond the Egyptian frontier into the desert
again. If the enemy contemplated even minor operations in the Sinai
Desert he had not the means of undertaking them. We should be retiring
on positions we had prepared, for, during his advance across the
desert, General Chetwode had always taken the precaution of having his
force dug in against the unlikely event of a Turkish attack. Every
step we went back would make our supply easier, and there was no water
difficulty, the pipe line, then 130 miles long, which carried the
purified waters of the Nile to the amount of hundreds of thousands
of gallons daily, being always available for our troops. It would be
necessary for the Turks to repair the Beersheba-Auja railway. They
had lifted some of the rails for use north of Gaza, and a raid we had
carried out showed that we could stop this railway being put into a
state of preparedness for military traffic. An attack which aimed at
again threatening the Suez Canal was therefore ruled as outside the
range of possibilities.

On the other hand, now that the Russian collapse had relieved the Turk
of his anxieties in the Caucasus and permitted him to concentrate his
attention on the Mesopotamian and Palestine fronts, what hope had he
of resisting our attack when we should be in a position to launch it?
The enemy had a single narrow-gauge railway line connecting with the
Jaffa-Jerusalem railway at Junction Station about six miles south-east
of Ramleh. This line ran to Beersheba, and there was a spur line
running past Deir Sineid to Beit Hanun from which the Gaza position
was supplied. There was a shortage of rolling stock and, there being
no coal for the engines, whole olive orchards had been hacked down to
provide fuel. The Hebron road, which could keep Beersheba supplied if
the railway was cut, was in good order, but in other parts there were
no roads at all, except several miles of badly metalled track from
Junction Station to Julis. We could not keep many troops with such
ill-conditioned communications, but Turkish soldiers require far less
supplies than European troops, and the enemy had done such remarkable
things in surmounting supply difficulties that he was given credit for
being able to support between sixty and seventy battalions in the line
and reserve, with an artillery somewhat weaker than our own.

If we made another frontal attack at Gaza we should find ourselves up
against a desperately strong defensive system, but even supposing we
got through it we should come to another halt in a few miles, as
the enemy had selected, and in most cases had prepared, a number of
positions right up to the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, where he would be in
a land of comparative plenty, with his supply and transport troubles
very considerably reduced. No one could doubt that the Turks intended
to defend Jerusalem to the last, not only because of the moral effect
its capture would have on the peoples of the world, but because its
possession by us would threaten their enterprise in the Hedjaz, and
the enormous amount of work we afterwards found they had done on the
Judean hills proved that they were determined to do all in their
power to prevent our driving them from the Holy City. The enemy, too,
imagined that our progress could not exceed the rate at which our
standard gauge railway could be built. Water-borne supplies were
limited as to quantity, and during the winter the landing of supplies
on an open beach was hazardous. In the coastal belt there were no
roads, and the wide fringe of sand which has accumulated for centuries
and still encroaches on the Maritime Plain can only be crossed by
camels. Wells are few and yield but small volumes of water. With the
transport allotted to the force in the middle of 1917 it was not
possible to maintain more than one infantry division at a distance of
twenty to twenty-five miles beyond railhead, and this could only be
done by allotting to them all the camels and wheels of other divisions
and rendering these immobile. This was insufficient to keep the enemy
on the move after a tactical success, and he would have ample time to
reorganise.

General Chetwode held that careful preliminary arrangements, suitable
and elastic organisation of transport, the collection of material at
railhead, the training of platelaying gangs provided by the troops,
the utilisation of the earthwork of the enemy's line for our own
railway, luck as regards the weather and the fullest use of sea
transport, should enable us to give the enemy less breathing time than
appeared possible on paper. It was beyond hope, however, whatever
preparations were made, that we should be able to pursue at a speed
approaching that which the river made possible in Mesopotamia. General
Chetwode considered it would be fatal to attempt an offensive with
forces which might permit us to attack and occupy the enemy's Gaza
line but which would be insufficient to inflict upon him a really
severe blow, and to follow up that blow with sufficient troops. No
less than seven infantry divisions at full strength and three cavalry
divisions would be adequate for the purpose, and they would be
none too many. Further, if the Turks began to press severely in
Mesopotamia, or even to revive their campaign in the Hedjaz, a
premature offensive might be necessitated on our part in Palestine.

The suggestion made by General Chetwode for General Allenby's
consideration was that the enemy should be led to believe we intended
to attack him in front of Gaza, and that we should pin him down to
his defences in the centre, while the real attack should begin on
Beersheba and continue at Hareira and Sheria, and so force the enemy
by manoeuvre to abandon Gaza. That plan General Allenby adopted after
seeing all the ground, and the events of the last day of October and
the first week of November supported General Chetwode's predictions to
the letter. Indeed it would be hard to find a parallel in history for
such another complete and absolute justification of a plan drawn up
several months previously, and it is doubtful if, supposing the Turks
had succeeded in doing what their German advisers advocated, namely
forestalling our blow by a vigorous attack on our positions, there
would have been any material alteration in the working out of the
scheme. The staff work of General Headquarters and of the staffs of
the three corps proved wholly sound. Each department gave of its best,
and from the moment when Beersheba was taken in a day and we secured
its water supply, there was never a doubt that the enemy could be kept
on the move until we got into the rough rocky hills about Jerusalem.
And by that time, as events proved, his moral had had such a
tremendous shaking that he never again made the most of his many
opportunities.

The soundness of the plan can quite easily be made apparent to the
unmilitary eye. Yet the Turk was absolutely deceived as to General
Allenby's intentions. If it be conceded that to deceive the enemy is
one of the greatest accomplishments in the soldier's art, it must be
admitted that the battle of Gaza showed General Allenby's consummate
generalship, just as it was proved again, and perhaps to an even
greater extent, in the wonderful days of September 1918, in Northern
Palestine and Syria. A glance at the map of the Gaza-Beersheba line
and the country immediately behind it will show that if a successful
attack were delivered against Gaza the enemy could withdraw his whole
line to a second and supporting position where we should have to begin
afresh upon an almost similar operation. The Turk would still have his
water and would be slightly nearer his supplies.

Since the two unsuccessful attacks in March and April, Gaza had been
put into a powerful state of defence. The houses of the town are
mostly on a ridge, and enclosing the place is a mass of gardens fully
a mile deep, each surrounded by high cactus hedges affording complete
cover and quite impossible for infantry to penetrate. To reduce
Gaza would require a prolonged artillery bombardment with far more
batteries than General Allenby could ever expect to have at his
command, and it is certain that not only would the line in front of
the town have had to be taken, but also the whole of the western end
of the Turks' trench system for a length of at least 12,000 yards.
And, as has been said, with Gaza secured we should still have had to
face the enemy in a new line of positions about the wadi Hesi. Gaza
was the Turks' strongest point. To attack here would have meant a
long-drawn-out artillery duel, infantry would have had to advance over
open ground under complete observation, and, while making a frontal
attack, would have been exposed to enfilade fire from the 'Tank'
system of works to the south-east. It would have proved a costly
operation, its success could only have been partial in that it did not
follow that we should break the enemy's line, and it would not have
enabled us to contain the remainder of the Turkish force.

Nor would an attack on the centre have promised more favourably. Here
the enemy had all the best of the ground. At Atawineh, Sausage Ridge,
Hareira, and Teiaha there were defences supporting each other on high
ground overlooking an almost flat plain through which the wadi Ghuzze
runs. All the observation was in enemy possession, and to attack over
this ground would have been inviting disaster. There was little fear
that the Turks would attack us across this wide range of No Man's
Land, for we held secure control of the curiously shaped heaps of
broken earth about Shellal, and the conical hill at Fara gave an
uninterrupted view for several miles northward and eastward. The
position was very different about Beersheba. If we secured that place
with its water supply, and in this dry country the battle really
amounted to a fight for water, we should be attacking from high ground
and against positions which had not been prepared on so formidable
a scale as elsewhere, with the prospect of compelling the enemy to
abandon the remainder of the line for fear of being enveloped by
mounted troops moving behind his weakened left. That, in brief
outline, was the gist of General Chetwode's report, and with its full
acceptance began the preparations for the advance. These preparations
took several months to complete, and they were as thorough as the
energy of a capable staff could make them.



CHAPTER IV

TRAINING THE ARMY


Those of us who were fortunate enough to witness the nature of the
preparations for the first of General Allenby's great and triumphant
moves in Palestine can speak of the debt Britain and her Allies owe
not merely to the Commander-in-Chief and his Headquarters Staff,
but to the three Corps Commanders, the Divisional Commanders, the
Brigadiers, and the officers responsible for transport, artillery,
engineer, and the other services. The Army had to be put on an
altogether different footing from that which had twice failed to drive
the Turks from Gaza. It serves nothing to ignore the fact that the
moral of the troops was not high in the weeks following the second
failure. They had to be tuned up and trained for a big task. They knew
the Turk was turning his natural advantages of ground about Gaza into
a veritable fortress, and that if their next effort was to meet with
more success than their last, they had to learn all that experience on
the Western Front had taught as to systems of trench warfare.

And, more than that, they had to prepare to apply the art of open
warfare to the full extent of their powers.

A couple of months before General Allenby took over command, General
Chetwode had taken in hand the question of training, and in employing
the knowledge gained during the strenuous days he had spent in France
and Flanders, he not only won the confidence of the troops but
improved their tone, and by degrees brought them up to something
approaching the level of the best fighting divisions of our Army in
France.

This was hard work during hot weather when our trench systems on a
wide front had to be prepared against an active enemy, and men could
ill be spared for the all-important task of training behind the front
line. It was not long, however, before troops who had got into that
state of lassitude which is engendered by a belief that they were
settling down to trench warfare for the duration of the war--that,
in fact, there was a stalemate on this front--became inspired by the
energy of General Chetwode. They saw him in the front line almost
every day, facing the risks they ran themselves, complimenting them
on any good piece of work, suggesting improvements in their defences,
always anxious to provide anything possible for their comfort, and
generally looking after the rank and file with a detailed attention
which no good battalion commander could exceed.

The men knew that the long visits General Chetwode paid them formed
but a small part of his daily task. It has been said that a G.O.C. of
a force has to think one hour a day about operations and five hours
about beef. In East Force, as this part of the Egyptian Expeditionary
Force was then called, General Chetwode, having to look months ahead,
had also six worrying hours a day to think about water. For any one
who did not love his profession, or who had not an ardent soldierly
spirit within him, such a daily task would have been impossible. I had
the privilege of living in General Chetwode's camp for some time, and
I have seen him working at four o'clock in the morning and at nine
o'clock at night, and the notes on a writing tablet by the side of his
rough camp-bed showed that in the hours when sleep forsook him he was
planning the next day's work.

His staff was entirely composed of hard workers, and perhaps no
command in this war ever had so small a staff, but there was no
officer in East Force who laboured so long or with such concentration
and energy and determination as its Chief. This enthusiasm was
infectious and spread through all ranks. The sick rate declined,
septic sores, from which many men suffered through rough life in the
desert on Army rations, got better, and the men showed more interest
in their work and were keener on their sport. The full effects had not
been wholly realised when the War Cabinet selected General Allenby
for the control of the big operations, but the improvement in the
condition of the troops was already most marked, and when General
Allenby arrived and at once directed that General Headquarters should
be moved from Cairo, which was pleasant but very far away from the
front, to Kelab, near Khan Yunus, there was not a man who did not see
in the new order of things a sign that he was to be given a chance of
testing the Briton's supremacy over the Turk.

The improvement in the moral of the troops, the foundations of which
were thus begun and cemented by General Chetwode, was rapidly carried
on under the new Chief. Divisions like the 52nd, 53rd, and 54th, which
had worked right across the desert from the Suez Canal, toiling in a
torrid temperature, when parched throats, sun-blistered limbs, and
septic sores were a heavy trial, weakened by casualties in action and
sickness, were brought up to something like strength. Reinforcing
drafts joined a lot of cheery veterans. They were taught in the
stern field of experience what was expected of them, and they worked
themselves up to the degree of efficiency of the older men.

The 74th Division, made up of yeomanry regiments which had been doing
excellent service in the Libyan Desert, watching for and harassing the
elements of the Senussi Army, had to be trained as infantry. These
yeomen did not take long to make themselves first-rate infantry, and
when, after the German attack on the Somme in March 1918, they went
away from us to strengthen the Western Front, a distinguished General
told me he believed that man for man the 74th would prove the finest
division in France. They certainly proved themselves in Palestine,
and many an old yeomanry regiment won for itself the right to bear
'Jerusalem, 1917' on its standard.

The 75th Division had brought some of the Wessex Territorials from
India with two battalions of Gurkhas and two of Rifles. The 1/4th Duke
of Cornwall's Light Infantry joined it from Aden, but for some months
the battalion was not itself. It had spent a long time at that dreary
sunburnt outpost of the Empire, and the men did not regain their
physical fitness till close upon the time it was required for the Gaza
operations.

The 60th Division came over from Salonika and we were delighted to
have them, for they not only gave us General Bulfin as the XXIst Corps
Commander, but set an example of efficiency and a combination of dash
and doggedness which earned for them a record worthy of the best
in the history of the great war. These London Territorials were
second-line men, men recruited from volunteers in the early days of
the war, when the County of London Territorial battalions went across
to France to take a part on a front hard pressed by German legions.
The 60th Division men had rushed forward to do their duty before
the Derby scheme or conscription sought out the cream of Britain's
manhood, and no one had any misgivings about that fine cheery crowd.

The 10th Division likewise came from Salonika. Unfortunately it had
been doing duty in a fever-stricken area and malaria had weakened its
ranks. A little while before the autumn operations began, as many as
3000 of its men were down at one time with malaria, but care and tonic
of the battle pulled the ranks together, and the Irish Division, a
purely Irish division, campaigned up to the glorious traditions of
their race. They worked like gluttons with rifle and spade, and their
pioneer work on roads in the Judean hills will always be remembered
with gratitude.

The cavalry of the Desert Mounted Corps were old campaigners in
the East. The Anzac Mounted Division, composed of six regiments of
Australian Light Horse and three regiments of New Zealand Mounted
Rifles, had been operating in the Sinai Desert when they were not
winning fame on Gallipoli, since the early days of the war. They had
proved sterling soldiers in the desert war, hard, full of courage,
capable of making light of the longest trek in waterless stretches of
country, and mobile to a degree the Turks never dreamed of. There were
six other regiments of Australian Light Horse and three first-line
regiments of yeomanry in the Australian Mounted Division, and nine
yeomanry regiments in the Yeomanry Mounted Division. The 7th Mounted
Brigade was attached to Desert Corps, as was also the Imperial Camel
Corps Brigade, formed of yeomen and Australians who had volunteered
from their regiments for work as camelry. They, too, were veterans.

All these divisions had to be trained hard. Not only had the four
infantry divisions of XXth Corps to be brought to a pitch of physical
fitness to enable them to endure a considerable period of open
fighting, but they had to be trained in water abstinence, as, in the
event of success, they would unquestionably have long marches in a
country yielding a quite inadequate supply of drinking water, and this
problem in itself was such that fully 6000 camels were required to
carry drinking water to infantry alone. Water-abstinence training
lasted three weeks, and the maximum of half a gallon a man for all
purposes was not exceeded, simply because the men had been made
accustomed to deny themselves drink except when absolutely necessary.
But for a systematic training they would have suffered a great deal.
The disposition of the force is given in the Appendix.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Appendix v].



CHAPTER V

RAILWAYS, ROADS, AND THE BASE


To ease the supply problem a spur line was laid from Rafa to Shellal,
on the wadi Ghuzze. In that way supplies, stores, and ammunition were
taken up to our right flank. Shellal was a position of great strategic
importance. At one time it appeared as if we should have to fight hard
to gain it. The Turks had cut an elaborate series of trenches on
Wali Sheikh Nuran, a hill covering Shellal, but they evacuated
this position before we made the first attack on Gaza, and left an
invaluable water supply in our hands.

At Shellal the stony bed of the wadi Ghuzze rests between high mud
banks which have been cut into fantastic shapes by the rushing waters
descending from the southern extremities of the Judean range of hills
during the winter rains. In the summer months, when the remainder
of the wadi bed is dry, there are bubbling springs of good water at
Shellal, and these have probably been continuously flowing for many
centuries, for close above the spot where the water issues Anzac
cavalry discovered a beautiful remnant of the mosaic flooring of an
ancient Christian church, which, raised on a hundred-feet mound, was
doubtless the centre of a colony of Christians, hundreds of years
before Crusaders were attracted to the Holy Land. Our engineers
harnessed that precious flow. A dam was put across the wadi bed and at
least a million gallons of crystal water were held up by it,
whilst the overflow went into shallow pools fringed with grass (a
delightfully refreshing sight in that arid country) from which horses
were watered. Pumping sets were installed at the reservoir and pipes
were laid towards Karm, and from these the Camel Transport Corps were
to fill fanatis--eight to twelve gallon tanks--for carriage of water
to troops on the move.

The railway staff, the department which arranged the making up and
running of trains, as well as the construction staff, had heavy
responsibilities. It was recognised early in 1917 that if we were to
crush the Turk out of the war, provision would have to be made for a
larger army than a single line from the Suez Canal could feed. It
was decided to double the track. The difficulties of the Director of
Railway Transport were enormous. There was great shortage of railway
material all over the world. Some very valuable cargoes were lost
through enemy action at sea, and we had to call for more from
different centres, and England deprived herself of rolling stock she
badly needed, to enable her flag of freedom to be carried (though it
was not to be hoisted) through the Holy Land. And incidentally I may
remark that, with the solitary exception of a dirty little piece of
Red Ensign I saw flying in the native quarter in Jerusalem, the only
British flag the people saw in Palestine and Syria was a miniature
Union Jack carried on the Commander-in-Chief's motor car and by his
standard-bearer when riding. Thus did the British Army play the game,
for some of the Allied susceptibilities might have been wounded if the
people had been told (though indeed they knew it) that they were under
the protection of the British flag. They had the most convincing
evidence, however, that they were under the staunch protection of the
British Army. The doubling of the railway track went on apace. To save
pressure at the Alexandria docks and on the Egyptian State railway,
which, giving some of its rolling stock and, I think, the whole of
its reserve of material for the use of the military line east of the
Canal, was worked to its utmost capacity, and also to economise
money by saving railway freights, wharves were built on the Canal at
Kantara, and as many as six ocean-going steamers could be unloaded
there at one time. By and by a railway bridge was thrown over the
Canal, and when the war was over through trains could be run from
Cairo to Jerusalem and Haifa. Kantara grew into a wonderful town with
several miles of Canal frontage, huge railway sidings and workshops,
enormous stores of rations for man and horse, medical supplies,
ordnance and ammunition dumps, etc. Probably the enemy knew all about
this vast base. Any one on any ship passing through the Canal could
see the place, and it is surprising, and it certainly points to a lack
of enterprise on the part of the Germans, that no attempt was made to
bomb Kantara by the super-Zeppelin which in November 1917 left its
Balkan base and got as far south as the region of Khartoum on its way
to East Africa, before being recalled by wireless. This same Zeppelin
was seen about forty miles from Port Said and a visit by it was
anticipated. Aeroplanes with experienced pilots and armed with the
latest anti-Zeppelin devices were stationed at Port Said and Aboukir
ready to ascend on any moonlight night when the hum of aerial motor
machinery could be heard. The super-Zeppelin never came and Kantara's
progress was unchecked.

The doubled railway track was laid as far as El Arish by the time
operations commenced, and this was a great aid to the railway staff.
Every engine and truck was used to its fullest capacity, and an
enormous amount of time was saved by the abolition of passing stations
for some ninety miles of the line's length. Railhead was at Deir el
Belah, about eight miles short of Gaza, and here troops and an army
of Egyptian labourers were working night and day, week in week out,
off-loading trucks with a speed that enabled the maximum amount of
service to be got out of rolling stock. There were large depôts down
the line too. At Rafa there was a big store of ammunition, and at
Shellal large quantities not only of supplies but of railway material
were piled up in readiness for pushing out railhead immediately the
advance began. A Decauville, or light, line ran out towards Gamli from
Shellal to make the supply system easier, and I remember seeing
some Indian pioneers lay about three miles of light railway with
astonishing rapidity the day after we took Beersheba. Every mile the
line advanced meant time saved in getting up supplies, and the radius
of action of lorries, horse, and camel transport was considerably
increased.

To supply the Gaza front we called in aid a small system of light
railways. From the railhead at Deir el Belah to the mouth of the wadi
Ghuzze, and from that point along the line of the wadi to various
places behind the line held by us, we had a total length of 21
kilometres of light railway. Before this railway got into full
operation horses had begun to lose condition, and during the summer
ammunition-column officers became very anxious about their horses. The
light railway was almost everywhere within range of the enemy's guns,
and in some places it was unavoidably exposed, particularly where it
ran on the banks of the wadi due south of Gaza. I recollect while the
track was being laid speaking to an Australian in charge of a gang of
natives preparing an earthwork, and asked why it was that a trench was
dug before earth was piled up. He pointed to the hill of Ali Muntar,
the most prominent feature in the enemy's system, and said that from
the Turks' observation post on that eminence every movement of the
labourers could be seen, and the men were often forced by gunfire to
the refuge of the trenches.

When the railway was in running order trains had to run the gauntlet
of shell-fire on this section on bright moonlight nights, and no
camouflage could hide them. But they worked through in a marvellously
orderly and efficient fashion, and on one day when our guns were
hungry this little line carried 850 tons of ammunition to the
batteries. The horses became fit and strong and were ready for the war
to be carried into open country. In christening their tiny puffing
locomotives the Tommy drivers showed their strong appreciation of
their comrades on the sea, and the 'Iron Duke' and 'Lion' were always
tuned up to haul a maximum load. But the pride of the engine yard was
the 'Jerusalem Cuckoo'--some prophetic eye must have seen its future
employment on the light line between Jerusalem and Ramallah--though in
popularity it was run close by the 'Bulfin-ch,' a play upon the
name of the Commander of the XXIst Corps, for which it did sterling
service.

The Navy formed part of the picture as well. Some small steamers of
1000 to 1500 tons burden came up from Port Said to a little cove north
of Belah to lighten the railway's task. They anchored about 150 yards
off shore and a crowd of boats passed backwards and forwards with
stores. These were carried up the beach to trucks on a line connected
with the supply depôts, and if you wished to see a busy scene where
slackers had no place the Belah beach gave it you. The Army tried all
sorts of boatmen and labourers. There were Kroo boys who found the
Mediterranean waters a comparative calm after the turbulent surf on
their own West African shore. The Maltese were not a success. The
Egyptians were, both here and almost everywhere else where their
services were called for. The best of all the fellows on this beach,
however, were the Raratongas from the Cook Islands, the islands from
which the Maoris originally came. They were first employed at El
Arish, where they made it a point of honour to get a job done well and
quickly, and, on a given day, it was found that thirty of them had
done as much labourers' work as 170 British soldiers. They were men of
fine physical strength and endurance, and some one who knew they had
the instincts of sportsmen, devised a simple plan to get the best out
of them. He presented a small flag to be won each day by the crew
accomplishing the best work with the boats. The result was amazing.
Every minute the boats were afloat the Raratongas strained their
muscles to win the day's competition, and when the day's task was
ended the victorious crew marched with their flag to their camp,
singing a weird song and as proud as champions. Some Raratongas worked
at ammunition dumps, and it was the boast of most of them that they
could carry four 60-pounder shells at a time. A few of these stalwart
men from Southern Seas received a promotion which made them the
most envied men of their race--they became loading numbers in heavy
howitzer batteries, fighting side by side with the Motherland gunners.

However well the Navy and all associated with it worked, only a very
small proportion of the Army's supplies was water borne. The great
bulk had to be carried by rail. Enormously long trains, most of them
hauled by London and South-Western locomotives, bore munitions, food
for men and animals, water, equipment, medical comforts, guns, wagons,
caterpillar tractors, motor cars, and other paraphernalia required for
the largest army which had ever operated about the town of Gaza in the
thousands of years of its history. The main line had thrown out from
it great tentacles embracing in their iron clasp vital centres for the
supply of our front, and over these spur lines the trains ran with
the regularity of British main-line expresses. Besides 96,000 actual
fighting men, there was a vast army of men behind the line, and there
were over 100,000 animals to be fed. There were 46,000 horses, 40,000
camels, 15,000 mules, and 3500 donkeys on Army work east of the
Canal, and not a man or beast went short of rations. We used to
think Kitchener's advance on Khartoum the perfection of military
organisation. Beside the Palestine expedition that Soudan campaign
fades into insignificance. In fighting men and labour corps, in
animals and the machinery of war, this Army was vastly larger and more
important, and the method by which it was brought to Palestine and was
supplied, and the low sick rate, constitute a tribute to the master
minds of the organisers. The Army had fresh meat, bread, and
vegetables in a country which under the lash of war yielded nothing,
but which under our rule in peace will furnish three times the produce
of the best of past years of plenty.

A not inconsiderable portion of the front line was supplied with Nile
water taken from a canal nearly two hundred miles away. But the Army
once at the front depended less upon the waters of that Father of
Rivers than it had to do in the long trek across the desert. Then all
drinking water came from the Nile. It flowed down the sweet-water
canal (if one may be pardoned for calling 'sweet' a volume of water
so charged with vegetable matter and bacteria that it was harmful for
white men even to wash in it), was filtered and siphoned under the
Suez Canal at Kantara, where it was chlorinated, and passed through
a big pipe line and pumped through in stages into Palestine. The
engineers set about improving all local resources over a wide stretch
of country which used to be regarded as waterless in summer. Many
water levels were tapped, and there was a fair yield. The engineers'
greatest task in moving with the Army during the advance was always
the provision of a water supply, and in developing it they conferred
on the natives a boon which should make them be remembered with
gratitude for many generations.

In the months preceding our attack Royal Engineers were also concerned
in improving the means of communication between railway depôts and the
front line. Before our arrival in this part of Southern Palestine,
wheeled traffic was almost unknown among the natives. There was not
one metalled roadway, and only comparatively light loads could be
transported in wheeled vehicles. The soil between Khan Yunus and Deir
el Belah, especially on the west of our railway line, was very sandy,
and after the winter rains had knitted it together it began to crumble
under the sun's heat, and it soon cut up badly when two or three
limbers had passed over it. The sandy earth was also a great nuisance
in the region between Khan Yunus and Shellal, but between Deir el
Belah and our Gaza front, excepting on the belt near the sea which was
composed of hillocks of sand precisely similar to the Sinai Desert,
the earth was firmer and yielded less to the grinding action of
wheels. For ordinary heavy military traffic the engineers made good
going by taking off about one foot of the top soil and banking it
on either side of the road. These tracks lasted very well, but they
required constant attention. Ambulances and light motor cars had
special arrangements made for them. Hundreds of miles of wire netting
were laid on sand in all directions, and these wire roads, which,
stretching across bright golden sand, appeared like black bands to
observers in aircraft, at first aroused much curiosity among enemy
airmen, and it was not until they had made out an ambulance convoy on
the move that they realised the purpose of the tracks.

The rabbit wire roads were a remarkable success. Motor wheels held
firmly to the surface, and when the roads were in good condition cars
could travel at high speed. Three or four widths of wire netting were
laced together, laid on the sand and pegged down. After a time loose
pockets of sand could not resist the weight of wheels and there became
many holes beneath the wire, and the jolting was a sore trial alike to
springs and to a passenger's temper. But here again constant attention
kept the roads in order, and if one could not describe travelling over
them as easy and comfortable they were at least sure, and one could
be certain of getting to a destination at an average speed of twelve
miles an hour. In sand the Ford cars have performed wonderful feats,
but remarkable as was the record of that cheap American car with
us--it helped us very considerably to win the war--you could never
tell within hours how long a journey would take off the wire roads.
Once leave the netting and you might with good luck and a skilful
driver get across the sand without much trouble, but it often meant
much bottom-gear work and a hot engine, and not infrequently the
digging out of wheels. The drivers used to try to keep to the tracks
made by other cars. These were never straight, and the swing from side
to side reminded you of your first ride on a camel's back. The wire
roads were a great help to us, and the officer who first thought out
the idea received our daily blessings. I do not know who he was, but I
was told the wire road scheme was the outcome of a device suggested
by a medical officer at Romani in 1916, when infantry could not march
much more than six miles a day through the sand. This officer made a
sort of wire moccasin which he attached to the boot and doubled the
marching powers of the soldier. A sample of those moccasins should
find a place in our War Museum.



CHAPTER VI

PREPARING FOR 'ZERO DAY'


About the middle of August it was the intention that the attack on the
Turks' front line in Southern Palestine should be launched some time
in September. General Allenby knew his force would not be then at
full strength, but what was happening at other points in the Turkish
theatres of operations might make it necessary to strike an early blow
at Gaza to spoil enemy plans elsewhere. However, it was soon seen that
a September advance was not absolutely necessary. General Allenby
decided that instead of making an early attack it would be far more
profitable to wait until his Army had been improved by a longer period
of training, and until he had got his artillery, particularly some of
his heavy batteries, into a high state of efficiency. He would risk
having to take Jerusalem after bad weather had set in rather than be
unable, owing to the condition of his troops, to exploit an initial
success to the fullest extent. How wholly justified was this decision
the subsequent fighting proved, and it is doubtful if there was ever a
more complete illustration of the wisdom of those directing war policy
at home submitting to the cool, balanced calculations of the man on
the spot. The extra six weeks spent in training and preparation were
of incalculable service to the Allies. I have heard it said that
a September victory in Palestine would have had its reflex on the
Italian front, and that the Caporetto disaster would not have assumed
the gigantic proportions which necessitated the withdrawal to Italy
of British and French divisions from the Western Front and prevented
Cambrai being a big victory. That is very doubtful. On the contrary, a
September battle in Palestine before we were fully ready to follow
the Turks after breaking and rolling up their line, even if we had
succeeded in doing this completely, might have deprived us of the
moral effect of the capture of Jerusalem and of the wonderful
influence which that victory had on the whole civilised world by
reason of the sacrifices the Commander-in-Chief made to prevent any
fighting at all in the precincts of the Holy City. Of this I shall
speak later, giving the fullest details at my command, for there is no
page in the story of British arms which better upholds the honour and
chivalry of the soldier than the preservation of the Holy Place from
the clash of battle.

That last six weeks of preparation were unforgettable. The London
newspapers I had the honour to represent as War Correspondent knew
operations were about to begin, but I did not cable or mail them one
word which would give an indication that big things were afoot. They
never asked for news, but were content to wait till they could tell
the public that victory was ours. In accordance with their practice
throughout the war the London Press set an example to the world by
refraining from publishing anything which would give information of
the slightest value to the enemy. It was a privilege to see that
victory in the making. Some divisions which had allotted to them the
hardest part of the attack on Beersheba were drawn out of the line,
and forming up in big camps between Belah and Shellal set about a
course of training such as athletes undergo. They had long marches
in the sand carrying packs and equipment. They were put on a short
allowance of water, except for washing purposes. They dug, they had
bombing practice, and with all this extra exercise while the days were
still very hot they needed no encouragement to continue their games.
Football was their favourite sport, and the British Tommy is such a
remarkable fellow that it was usual to see him trudge home to camp
looking 'fed up' with exercise, and then, after throwing off his pack
and tunic, run out to kick a ball. The Italian and French detachments
used to look at him in astonishment, and doubtless they thought his
enthusiasm for sport was a sore trial. He got thoroughly fit for
marches over sand, over stony ground, over shifting shingle. During
the period of concentration he had to cross a district desperately bad
for marching, and it is more than probable the enemy never believed
him capable of such endurance. He was often tired, no doubt, but he
always got to his destination, was rarely footsore, and laughed at the
worst parts of his journey. The sand was choking, the flies were an
irritating pest, equipment became painfully heavy; but a big, brave
heart carried Tommy through his training to a state of perfect
condition for the heavy test.

To enable about two-thirds of the force to carry on a moving battle
while the remainder kept half the enemy pinned down to his trench
system on his right-centre and right, it was necessary to reinforce
strongly the transport service for our mobile columns. The XXIst Corps
gave up most of its lorries, tractors, and camels to XXth Corps. These
had to be moved across from the Gaza sector to our right as secretly
as possible, and they were not brought up to load at the supply depôts
at Shellal and about Karm until the moment they were required to carry
supplies for the corps moving to attack.

It is not easy to convey to any one who has not seen an army on the
move what a vast amount of transport is required to provision two
corps. In France, where roads are numerous and in comparatively good
condition, the supply problem could be worked out to a nicety, but in
a roadless country where there was not a sound half-mile of track, and
where water had to be developed and every gallon was precious, the
question of supply needed most anxious consideration, and a big margin
had to be allowed for contingencies. It will give some idea of the
requirements when I state that for the supply of water alone the XXth
Corps had allotted to it 6000 camels and 73 lorries. To feed these
water camels alone needed a big convoy.

We got an impression of the might and majesty of an army in the field
as we saw it preparing to take the offensive. The camp of General
Headquarters where I was located was situated north of Rafa. The
railway ran on two sides of the camping ground, one line going to
Belah and the other stretching out to Shellal, where everything was in
readiness to extend the iron road to the north-east of Karm, on the
plain which, because the Turks enjoyed complete observation over it,
had hitherto been No Man's Land. We saw and heard the traffic on this
section of the line. It was enormous. Heavily laden trains ran night
and day with a mass of stores and supplies, with motor lorries, cars,
and tractors; and the ever-increasing volume of traffic told those of
us who knew nothing of the date of 'Zero day' that it was not far off.
The heaviest trains seemed to run at night, and the returning empty
trains were hurried forward at a speed suggesting the urgency of
clearing the line for a fully loaded train awaiting at Rafa the signal
to proceed with its valuable load to railhead. Perfect control not
only on the railway system but in the forward supply yards prevented
congestion, and when a train arrived at its destination and was split
up into several parts, well-drilled gangs of troops and Egyptian
labourers were allotted to each truck, and whether a lorry or a
tractor had to be unshipped and moved down a ramp, or a truck had to
be relieved of its ten tons of tibbin, boxes of biscuit and bully, or
of engineers' stores, the goods were cleared away from the vicinity of
the line with a celerity which a goods-yard foreman at home would have
applauded as the smartest work he had ever seen. There was no room for
slackers in the Army, and the value of each truck was so high that
it could not be left standing idle for an hour. The organisation was
equally good at Kantara, where the loading and making up of trains had
to be arranged precisely as the needs at the front demanded. Those
remarkable haulers, the caterpillar tractors, cut many a passage
through the sand, tugging heavy guns and ammunition, stores for the
air and signal services, machinery for engineers and mobile workshops,
and sometimes towing a weighty load of petrol to satisfy their
voracious appetites for that fuel. The tractors did well. Sand was no
trouble to them, and when mud marooned lorries during the advance in
November the rattling, rumbling old tractor made fair weather of it.
The mechanical transport trains will not forget the service of the
tractors on the morning after Beersheba was taken. From railhead to
the spot where Father Abraham and his people fed their flocks the
country was bare and the earth's crust had yielded all its strength
under the influence of the summer sun. Loaded lorries under their own
power could not move more than a few yards before they were several
inches deep in the sandy soil, but a Motor Transport officer devised
a plan for beating down a track which all lorries could use. He got a
tractor to haul six unladen lorries, and with all the vehicles using
their own power the tractor managed to pull them through to Beersheba,
leaving behind some wheel tracks with a hard foundation. A hundred
lorries followed, the drivers steering them in the ruts, and they made
such good progress that by the afternoon they had deposited between
200 and 300 tons of supplies in Beersheba. The path the tractor cut
did not last very long, but it was sound enough for the immediate and
pressing requirements of the Army.

Within a month of his arrival in Egypt, General Allenby had visited
the whole of his front line and had decided the form his offensive
should take. As soon as his force had been made up to seven infantry
divisions and the Desert Mounted Corps, and they had been brought up
to strength and trained, he would attack, making his main offensive
against the enemy's left flank while conducting operations vigorously
and on an extensive scale against the Turkish right-centre and right.
The principal operation against the left was to be conducted by
General Chetwode's XXth Corps, consisting of four infantry divisions
and the Imperial Camel Brigade, and by General Chauvel's Desert
Mounted Corps. General Bulfin's XXIst Corps was to operate against
Gaza and the Turkish right-centre south-east of that ancient town.
If the situation became such as to make it necessary to take the
offensive before the force had been brought up to strength, the XXIst
Corps would have had to undertake its task with only two divisions,
but in those circumstances its operations were to be limited to
demonstrations and raids. By throwing forward his right, the XXIst
Corps Commander was to pin the enemy down in the Atawineh district,
and on the left he would move against the south-western defences of
Gaza so as to lead the Turks to suppose an attack was to come in this
sector. That movement being made, the XXth Corps and Desert Mounted
Corps were to advance against Beersheba, and, having taken it, to
secure the valuable water supply which was known to have existed there
since Abraham dug the well of the oath which gave its name to the
town. Because of water difficulties it was considered vital that
Beersheba should be captured in one day, a formidable undertaking
owing to the situation of the town, the high entrenched hills around
it and the long marches for cavalry and infantry before the attack;
and in drawing up the scheme based on the Commander-in-Chief's plan,
the commanders of XXth Corps and Desert Mounted Corps had always to
work on the assumption that Beersheba would be in their hands by
nightfall of the first day of the attack. General Barrow's Yeomanry
Mounted Division was to remain at Shellal in the gap between XXth
Corps and XXIst Corps in case the enemy should attempt to attack the
XXth Corps' left flank. Having dealt with the enemy in Beersheba,
General Chetwode with mounted troops protecting his right was to move
north and north-west against the enemy's left flank, to drive him from
his strong positions at Sheria and Hareira, enveloping his left flank
and striking it obliquely.

While the XXth Corps was moving against this section of the enemy
line, Desert Mounted Corps was to bring up the mounted division left
at Shellal, and passing behind the XXth Corps to march on Nejile,
where there was an excellent water supply, and the wadi Hesi, so as to
threaten the left rear and the line of retreat of the Turkish Army.

It was always doubtful whether XXth Corps would be able to close up
the gap between it and the XXIst Corps owing to the length of its
marches and the distance it was from railhead, and the scheme
therefore provided that the XXIst Corps should confirm successes
gained on our right by forcing its way through the tremendously strong
Gaza position to the line of the wadi Hesi and joining up with Desert
Mounted Corps. A considerable number of XXth Corps troops would then
return to the neighbourhood of railhead and release the greater
part of its transport for the infantry of XXIst Corps moving up the
Maritime Plain.

This, in summary form, was the scheme General Allenby planned before
the middle of August, and though the details were not, and could not
be, worked out until a couple of months had passed, it is noteworthy
as showing that, notwithstanding the moves an enterprising enemy had
at his command in a country where positions were entirely favourable
to him, where he had water near at hand, where the transport of
supplies was never so serious a problem for him as for us when we got
on the move, and where he could make us fight almost every step of
the way, the Commander-in-Chief foresaw and provided for every
eventuality, and his scheme worked out absolutely and entirely
'according to plan,' to use the favourite phrase of the German High
Command.

When the Corps Commanders began working out the details two of the
greatest problems were transport and water. Only patience and skilful
development of known sources of supply would surmount the water
difficulty, and we had to wait till the period of concentration before
commencing its solution. But to lighten the transport load which must
have weighed heavily on Corps Staffs, the Commander-in-Chief agreed to
allow the extension of the railway east of Shellal to be begun sooner
than he had provided for. It was imperative that railway construction
should not give the enemy an indication of our intentions. If he had
realised the nature and scope of our preparations he would have done
something to counteract them and to deny us that element of surprise
which exerted so great an influence on the course of the battle.
General Allenby, however, was willing to take some risks to simplify
supply difficulties, and he ordered that the extension to a railway
station north-east of Karm should be completed by the evening of the
third day before the attack, that a Decauville line from Gamli, not to
be begun before the sixth day prior to the attack, was to be completed
to Karm by the day preceding the opening of the fighting at Beersheba,
and that a new Decauville line should be started at Karm when fighting
had begun, and should be carried nearly three miles in the Beersheba
direction early on the following morning. These new lines, though of
short length, were an inestimable boon to the conductors of supply
trains. The new railheads both of the standard gauge and light lines
were well placed, and they not only saved time and shortened the
journeys of camel convoys and lorry transport columns, but prevented
congestion at depôts in one central spot.

A big effort was made to escape detection by enemy aircraft. For the
first time since the Egyptian Expeditionary Force took the field we
had obtained mastery in the air. On the 8th and 15th October two enemy
planes were shot down behind our lines, and the keenness of our airmen
for combat made the German aviators extremely careful. They had been
bold and resolute, taking their observations several thousand feet
higher than our pilots, it is true, but neither anti-aircraft fire nor
the presence of our machines in the air had up to this time deterred
them. However, just at the moment when airwork was of extreme
importance to the Turks, the German flying men, recognising that our
pilots had new battle planes and were full of resource and daring,
showed an unusual lack of enterprise, and we profited from their
inactivity. The concentration of the force in the positions from which
it was to attack Beersheba was to have taken seven days, but owing
to the difficulties attending the development of water at Asluj and
Khalasa the time was extended to ten days. During this period the
uppermost thought of commanders was to conceal their movements. All
marching was done at night and no move of any kind was permitted till
nearly six o'clock in the evening, when enemy aircraft were usually at
rest and the light was sufficiently dull to prevent the Fritzes seeing
much if they had made an exceptionally late excursion. All the tents
and temporary shelters which had been occupied for weeks were left
standing. Cookhouses, horse lines, canteens, and so on were untouched,
and one had an eerie feeling in passing at night through these
untenanted camping grounds, deserted and lifeless, and a prey to the
jackal and pariah dog. A vast area of many square miles which had held
tens of thousands of troops and animals almost became a wilderness
again, and the few natives hereabouts who had made large profits
from the sale of eggs, fruit, and vegetables looked disconsolate and
bewildered at the change, hoping and believing that the empty tents
merely denoted a temporary absence. But the great majority of the Army
never came that way again.

When the infantry started on the march, divisions and brigades had
allotted to them particular areas for their march routes, and all over
that country, where scarcely a tree or native hut existed to make
a landmark, there were dotted small arrow-pointed boards with the
direction 'A road,' 'B road,' 'Z road,' as the case might be. Marching
in the dark hours when a refreshing air succeeded the heat of the day,
the troops halted as soon as a purple flush threw into high relief the
southern end of the Judean hills, and they hid themselves in the wadis
and broken ground; and on one unit vacating a bivouac area it was
occupied by another, thus making the areas in which the troops rested
as few as possible.

The concentration was worked to a time-table. Not only were brigades
allotted certain marches each night, but they were given specified
times to cover certain distances, and these were arranged according to
the condition of the ground. In parts it was very broken and covered
with loose stones, and the pace of infantry by night was very slightly
more than one mile per hour. The routes for guns were not chosen
until the whole country had been reconnoitred, and it was a highly
creditable performance for artillery to get their field guns and
heavy howitzer batteries through to the time-table. But the clockwork
precision of the movements reflected even more highly on the staff
working out the details than on the infantry and artillery, and it may
be said with perfect truth that the staff made no miscalculation
or mistake. The XXth Corps staff maps and plans, and the details
accompanying them, were masterpieces of clearness and completeness.
The men who fought out the plans to a triumphant finish were glad to
recognise this perfection of staff work.[1]

[Footnote 1: See Appendix VI.]



CHAPTER VII

THE BEERSHEBA VICTORY


The XXth Corps began its movement on the night of 20-21st October.
The whole Corps was not on the march, but a sufficient force was sent
forward to form supply dumps and to store water at Esani for troops
covering Desert Mounted Corps engineers engaged on the development of
water at Khalasa and Asluj. Some of the Australian and New Zealand
troops engaged on this work had previously been at these places.

In the early summer it was thought desirable to destroy the Turkish
railway which ran from Beersheba to Asluj and on to Kossaima, in order
to prevent an enemy raid on our communications between El Arish and
Rafa, and the mounted troops with the Imperial Camel Corps had had
a most successful day in destroying many miles of line and several
bridges. The Turks were badly in need of rails for the line they were
then constructing down to Deir Sineid, and they had lifted some of the
rails between Asluj and Kossaima, but during our raid we broke every
rail over some fifteen miles of track. Khalasa and Asluj being water
centres became the points of concentration for two mounted divisions,
and the splendid Colonials in the engineer sections worked at the
wells as if the success of the whole enterprise depended upon their
efforts, as, indeed, to a very large extent it did. Theirs was not an
eight hours day. They worked under many difficulties, often thigh deep
in water and mud, cleaning out and deepening wells and installing
power pumps, putting up large canvas tanks for storage, and
making water troughs. The results exceeded anticipations, and the
Commander-in-Chief, on a day when the calls on his time were many and
urgent, made a long journey to thank the officers and men for the work
they had done and to express his high appreciation of their skill and
energy.

The principal work carried out by the XXth Corps during the period of
concentration consisted in laying the standard gauge line to Imara
and opening the station at that place on October 28; prolonging the
railway line to a point three-quarters of a mile north-north-east
of Karm, where the station was opened on November 3; completing by
October 30 the light railway from the east bank of the wadi Ghuzze at
Gamli _via_ Karm to Khasif; and developing water at Esani, Malaga, and
Abu Ghalyun for the use first by cavalry detachments and then by the
60th Division. Cisterns in the Khasif and Imsiri area were stocked
with 60,000 gallons of water to be used by the 53rd and 74th
Divisions, and this supply was to be supplemented by camel convoys.
Apparently the enemy knew very little about the concentration until
about October 26, and even then he could have had only slight
knowledge of the extent of our movements, and probably knew nothing at
all of where the first blow was to fall. In the early hours of October
27 he did make an attempt to interfere with our concentration, and
there was a spirited little action on our outpost line which had been
pushed out beyond the plain to a line of low hills near the wadi
Hanafish. The Turks in overwhelming force met a most stubborn defence
by the Middlesex Yeomanry, and if the enemy took these London yeomen
as an average sample of General Allenby's troops, this engagement must
have given them a foretaste of what was in store for them.

The Middlesex Yeomanry (the 1st County of London Yeomanry, to give
the regiment the name by which it is officially known, though the men
almost invariably use the much older Territorial title) and the 21st
Machine Gun Squadron, held the long ridge from El Buggar to hill 630.
There was a squadron dismounted on hill 630, three troops on hill 720,
the next and highest point on the ridge, and a post at El Buggar. At
four o'clock in the morning the latter post was fired on by a Turkish
cavalry patrol, and an hour later it was evident that the enemy
intended to try to drive us off the ridge, his occupation of which
would have given him the power to harass railway construction parties
by shell-fire, even if it did not entirely stop the work. Some 3000
Turkish infantry, 1200 cavalry, and twelve guns had advanced from the
Kauwukah system of defences to attack our outpost line on the ridge.
They heavily engaged hill 630, working round both flanks, and brought
heavy machine-gun and artillery fire to bear on the squadron holding
it. The Royal Flying Corps estimated that a force of 2000 men attacked
the garrison, which was completely cut off.

A squadron of the City of London Yeomanry sent to reinforce was held
up by a machine-gun barrage and had to withdraw. The garrison held
out magnificently all day in a support trench close behind the crest
against odds of twenty to one, and repeatedly beat off rushes,
although the bodies of dead Turks showed that they got as close as
forty yards from the defenders. Two officers were wounded, and four
other ranks killed and twelve wounded.

The attack on hill 720 was made by 1200 cavalry supported by a heavy
volume of shell and machine-gun fire. During the early morning two
desperate charges were beaten off, but in a third charge the enemy
gained possession of the hill after the detachment had held out for
six hours. All our officers were killed or wounded and all the men
were casualties except three. At six o'clock in the evening the Turks
were holding this position in strength against the 3rd Australian
Light Horse, but two infantry brigades of the 53rd Division were
moving towards the ridge, and during the evening the enemy retired and
we held the ridge from this time on quite securely. The strong defence
of the Middlesex Yeomanry undoubtedly prevented the Turks establishing
themselves on the ridge, and saved the infantry from having to make a
night attack which might have been costly. Thereafter the enemy made
no attempt to interfere with the concentration. The yeomanry losses in
this encounter were 1 officer and 23 other ranks killed, 5 officers
and 48 other ranks wounded, 2 officers and 8 other ranks missing.

On the night of October 30-31 a brilliant moon lit up the whole
country. The day had been very hot, and at sunset an entire absence of
wind promised that the night march of nearly 40,000 troops of all
arms would be attended by all the discomforts of dust and heat. The
thermometer fell, but there was not a breath of wind to shift the pall
of dust which hung above the long columns of horse, foot, and guns.
Where the tracks were sandy some brigades often appeared to be
advancing through one of London's own particular fogs. Men's faces
became caked with yellow dust, their nostrils were hot and burning,
and parched throats could not be relieved because of the necessity
of conserving the water allowance. A hot day was in prospect on the
morrow, and the fear of having to fight on an empty water-bottle
prevented many a gallant fellow broaching his supply before daybreak.
Most of the men had had a long acquaintance with heat in the Middle
East, and the high temperature would have caused them scarcely any
trouble if there had been wind to carry away the dust clouds. The
cavalry marched over harder and more stony ground than the infantry.
They advanced from Khalasa and Asluj a long way south of Beersheba to
the east of the town. It was a big night march of some thirty miles,
but it was well within the powers of the veterans of the Anzac Mounted
Division and Australian Mounted Division, whose men and horses were in
admirable condition.

The infantry were ordered to be on their line of deployment by four
o'clock on the morning of October 31, and in every case they were
before time. There had been many reconnaissances by officers who were
to act as guides to columns, and they were quite familiar with the
ground; and the guns and ammunition columns were taken by routes which
had been carefully selected and marked. In places the banks of
wadis had been cut into and ramps made to enable the rough stony
watercourses to be practicable for wheels, and, broken as the country
was, and though all previous preparations had to be made without
arousing the suspicions of Turks and wandering Bedouins, there was no
incident to check the progress of infantry or guns. Occasional rifle
fire and some shelling occurred during the early hours, but at a
little after three A.M. the XXth Corps advanced headquarters had the
news that all columns had reached their allotted positions.

The XXth Corps plan was to attack the enemy's works between the
Khalasa road and the wadi Saba with the 60th and 74th Divisions, while
the defences north of the wadi Saba were to be masked by the Imperial
Camel Corps Brigade and two battalions of the 53rd Division, the
remainder of the latter division protecting the left flank of the
Corps from any attack by enemy troops who might move south from the
Sheria area. The first objective was a hill marked on the map as
'1070,' about 6000 yards south-west of Beersheba. It was a prominent
feature, 500 yards or perhaps a little more from a portion of the
enemy's main line, and the Turks held it strongly and were supported
by a section of German machine-gunners. We had to win this height in
order to get good observation of the enemy's main line of works, and
to allow of the advance of field artillery within wire-cutting range
of an elaborate system of works protecting Beersheba from an advance
from the west. At six the guns began to bombard 1070, and the volume
of fire concentrated on that spot must have given the Turks a big
surprise. On a front of 4500 yards we had in action seventy-six
18-pounders, twenty 4.5-inch howitzers, and four 3.7-inch howitzers,
while eight 60-pounders, eight 6-inch howitzers, and four 4.5-inch
howitzers were employed in counter battery work. The absence of wind
placed us at a heavy disadvantage. The high explosive shells bursting
about the crest of 1070 raised enormous clouds of dust which obscured
everything, and after a short while even the flames of exploding
shells were entirely hidden from view. The gunners had to stop firing
for three-quarters of an hour to allow the dust to settle. They then
reopened, and by half-past eight, the wire-cutting being reported
completed, an intense bombardment was ordered, under cover of which,
and with the assistance of machine-gun fire from aeroplanes, the 181st
Infantry Brigade of the 60th Division went forward to the assault.
They captured the hill in ten minutes, only sustaining about one
hundred casualties, and taking nearly as many prisoners. A German
machine-gunner who fell into our hands bemoaned the fact that he had
not a weapon left--every one of the machine guns had been knocked out
by the artillery, and a number were buried by our fire.

The first phase of the operations having thus ended successfully quite
early in the day, the second stage was entered upon. Field guns were
rushed forward at the gallop over ground broken by shallow wadis and
up and down a very uneven stony surface. The gun teams were generally
exposed during the advance and were treated to heavy shrapnel fire,
but they swung into action at prearranged points and set about
wire-cutting with excellent effect. The first part of the second phase
consisted in reducing the enemy's main line from the Khalasa road to
the wadi Saba, though the artillery bombarded the whole line. The 60th
Division on the right had two brigades attacking and one in divisional
reserve, and the 74th Division attacking on the left of the 60th
likewise had a brigade in reserve. The 74th, while waiting to advance,
came under considerable shell-fire from batteries on the north of the
wadi, and it was some time before their fire could be silenced. As
a rule the enemy works were cut into rocky, rising ground and the
trenches were well enclosed in wire fixed to iron stanchions.
They were strongly made and there were possibilities of prolonged
opposition, but by the time the big assault was launched the Turks
knew they were being attacked on both sides of Beersheba and they must
have become anxious about a line of retreat. General Shea reported
that the wire in front of him was cut before noon, but General
Girdwood was not certain that the wire was sufficiently broken on the
74th Division's front, though he intimated to the Corps Commander
that he was ready to attack at the same time as the 60th. It
still continued a windless day, and the dust clouds prevented any
observation of the wire entanglements. General Girdwood turned this
disadvantage to account, and ordering his artillery to raise their
fire slightly so that it should fall just in front of and about the
trenches, put up what was in effect a dust barrage, and under cover
of it selected detachments of his infantry advanced almost into the
bursting shell to cut passages through the wire with wire-cutters. The
dismounted yeomanry of the 231st and 230th Infantry Brigades rushed
through, and by half-past one the 74th Division had secured their
objectives. The 179th and 181st Brigades of the 60th Division had won
their trenches almost an hour earlier, and about 5000 yards of works
were in our hands south of the wadi Saba. The enemy had 3000 yards of
trenches north of the wadi, and though these were threatened from the
south and west, it was not until five o'clock that the 230th Brigade
occupied them, the Turks clearing out during the bombardment. During
the day, on the left of the 74th Division, the Imperial Camel Corps
Brigade and two battalions of the 53rd Division held the ground to
the north of the wadi Saba to a point where the remainder of the 53rd
Division watched for the approach of any enemy force from the
north, while the 10th Division about Shellal protected the line of
communications east of the wadi Ghuzze, and the Yeomanry Mounted
Division was on the west side of the wadi Ghuzze in G.H.Q. reserve.
The XXth Corps' losses were 7 officers killed and 42 wounded,
129 other ranks killed, 988 wounded and 5 missing, a light total
considering the nature of the works carried during the day. It was
obvious that the enemy was taken completely by surprise by the
direction of the attack, and the rapidity with which we carried his
strongest points was overwhelming. The Turk did not attempt anything
in the nature of a counter-attack by the Beersheba garrison, nor did
he make any move from Hareira against the 53rd Division. Had he done
so the 10th Division and the Yeomanry Mounted Division would have
seized the opportunity of falling on him from Shellal, and the Turk
chose the safer course of allowing the Beersheba garrison to stand
unaided in its own defences. The XXth Corps' captures included 25
officers, 394 other ranks, 6 guns, and numerous machine guns.

The Desert Mounted Corps met with stubborn opposition in their
operations south-east and east of Beersheba, but they were carried
through no less successfully than those of the XXth Corps. The mounted
men had had a busy time. General Ryrie's 2nd Australian Light Horse
Brigade and the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade had moved southwards
on October 2, and on them and on the 1st and 2nd Field Squadrons
Australian Engineers the bulk of the work fell of developing water and
making and marking tracks which, in the sandy soil, became badly cut
up. On the evening of October 30 the Anzac Mounted Division was at
Asluj, the Australian Mounted Division at Khalasa, the 7th Mounted
Brigade at Esani, Imperial Camel Brigade at Hiseia, and the Yeomanry
Mounted Division in reserve at Shellal. The Anzac Division commanded
by General Chaytor left Asluj during the night, and in a march of
twenty-four miles round the south of Beersheba met with only slight
opposition on the way to Bir el Hamam and Bir Salim abu Irgeig,
between five and seven miles east of the town. The 2nd Australian
Light Horse Brigade during the morning advanced north to take the high
hill Tel el Sakaty, a little east of the Beersheba-Hebron road, which
was captured at one o'clock, and the brigade then swept across
the metalled road which was in quite fair condition, and which
subsequently was of great service to us during the advance of one
infantry division on Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The 1st Australian Light
Horse Brigade commanded by General Cox, and the New Zealand Mounted
Rifles Brigade under General Meldrum, moved against Tel el Saba, a
1000-feet hill which rises very precipitously on the northern bank
of the wadi Saba, 4000 yards due east of Beersheba. Tel el Saba is
believed to be the original site of Beersheba. It had been made into a
strong redoubt and was well held by a substantial garrison adequately
dug in and supported by nests of machine-gunners. The right bank of
the wadi Khalil was also strongly held, and between the Hebron road
and Tel el Saba some German machine-gunners in three houses offered
determined opposition. The New Zealanders and a number of General
Cox's men crept up the wadi Saba, taking full advantage of the cover
offered by the high banks, and formed up under the hill of Saba. They
then dashed up the steep sides while the horse artillery lashed the
crest with their fire, and driving the Turks from their trenches had
captured the hill by three o'clock. At about the same time the 1st
Light Horse Brigade suitably dealt with the machine-gunners in the
houses. Much ground east of Beersheba had thus been made good, and
the Hebron road was denied to the garrison of the town as a line of
retreat. The Anzac Mounted Division was then reinforced by General
Wilson's 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigade, and by six P.M. the
Division held a long crescent of hills from Point 970, a mile north
of Beersheba, through Tel el Sakaty, round south-eastwards to Bir el
Hamam.

General Hodgson's Australian Mounted Division had a night march of
thirty-four miles from Khalasa to Iswawin, south-east of Beersheba,
and after the 3rd Light Horse Brigade had been detached to assist the
Anzac Division, orders were given to General Grant's 4th Australian
Light Horse Brigade to attack and take the town of Beersheba from the
east. The orders were received at four o'clock, and until we had
got an absolute hold on Tel el Saba an attack on the town from this
direction would have been suicidal, as an attacking force would have
been between two fires. The shelling of the cavalry during the day had
been rather hot, and enemy airmen had occasionally bombed them. It was
getting late, and as it was of the greatest importance that the town's
available water should be secured that night, General Grant was
directed to attack with the utmost vigour. His brigade worthily
carried out its orders. The ground was very uneven and was covered
with a mass of large stones and shingle. The trenches were well manned
and strongly held, but General Grant ordered them to be taken at the
gallop. The Australians carried them with an irresistible charge;
dismounted, cleared the first line of all the enemy in it, ran on and
captured the second and third system of trenches, and then, their
horses having been brought up, galloped into the town to prevent any
destruction of the wells. The first-line eastern trenches of Beersheba
were eight feet deep and four feet wide, and as there were many of the
enemy in them they were a serious obstacle to be taken in one rush.
This charge was a sterling feat, and unless the town had been occupied
that night most, if not all, of the cavalry would have had to withdraw
many miles to water, and subsequent operations might have been
imperilled. Until we had got Beersheba there appeared small prospect
of watering more than two brigades in this area.

Luckily there had been two thunderstorms a few days before the attack,
and we found a few pools of sweet water which enabled the whole of the
Corps' horses to be watered during the night. These pools soon dried
up and the water problem again became serious. The Commander-in-Chief
rewarded General Grant with the D.S.O. as an appreciation of his work,
and the brigade was gratified at a well-earned honour. The 7th Mounted
Brigade was held up for some time in the afternoon by a flanking fire
from Ras Ghannam, south of Beersheba, but this was silenced in time
to enable the brigade to assist in the occupation of Beersheba at
nightfall. The 4th Light Horse Brigade's captures in the charge were
58 officers, 1090 other ranks, and 10 field guns, and the total 'bag'
of the Desert Mounted Corps was 70 officers and 1458 other ranks.

The loss of Beersheba was a heavy blow to the Turk. Yet he did not
even then realise to the full the significance of our capture of the
town. He certainly failed to appreciate that we were to use it as
a jumping-off place to attack his main line from Gaza to Sheria by
rolling it up from left to right. In this plan there is no doubt that
General Allenby entirely deceived his enemy, for in the next few
days there was the best of evidence to show that General Kress von
Kressenstein believed we were going to advance from Beersheba to
Jerusalem up the Hebron road, and he made his dispositions to oppose
us here. It was not merely the moral effect of the loss of Beersheba
that disturbed the Turks; they had been driven out of a not
unimportant stronghold.

All through the many centuries since Abraham and his people led a
pastoral life near the wells, Beersheba had been a meanly appointed
place. There were no signs as far as I could see of any elaborate
ruins to indicate anything larger than a native settlement. Elsewhere
we saw crumbling walls of ancient castles and fortresses to tell of
conquerors and glories long since faded away, of relics of an age when
great captains led martial men into new worlds to conquer, of the
time when the Crusading spirit was abroad and the flower of Western
chivalry came East to hold the land for Christians. Here the native
quarter suggested that trade in Beersheba was purely local and not
ambitious, that it provided nothing for the world's commerce save a
few skins and hides, and that the inhabitants were content to live the
rude, simple lives of their forefathers. But the enterprising German
arrived, and you could tell by his work how he intended to compel a
change in the unchanging character of the people. He built a handsome
Mosque--but before he was driven out he wired and mined it for
destruction. He built a seat of government, a hospital, and a
barracks, all of them pretentious buildings for such a town, well
designed, constructed of stone with red-tiled roofs, and the gardens
were nicely laid out. There were a railway station and storehouses on
a scale which would not yield a return on capital expenditure for many
years, and the water tower and engine sheds were built to last longer
than merely military necessities demanded. They were fashioned by
European craftsmen, and the solidity of the structures offered strange
contrast to the rough-and-ready native houses. The primary object of
the Hun scheme was, doubtless, to make Beersheba a suitable base for
an attack on the Suez Canal, and the manner of improving the Hebron
road, of setting road engineers to construct zigzags up hills so that
lorries could move over the road, was part of the plan of men whose
vision was centred on cutting the Suez Canal artery of the British
Empire's body. The best laid schemes....

When I entered Beersheba our troops held a line of outposts
sufficiently far north of the town to prevent the Turks shelling it,
and the place was secure except from aircraft bombs, of which a number
fell into the town without damaging anything of much consequence. Some
of the troops fell victims to booby traps. Apparently harmless whisky
bottles exploded when attempts were made to draw the corks, and
several small mines went up. Besides the mines in the Mosque there
was a good deal of wiring about the railway station, and some rolling
stock was made ready for destruction the instant a door was opened.
The ruse was expected; some Australian engineers drew the charges,
and the coaches were afterwards of considerable service to the supply
branch.



CHAPTER VIII

GAZA DEFENCES


Meanwhile there were important happenings at the other end of the
line. Gaza was about to submit to the biggest of all her ordeals. She
had been a bone of contention for thousands of years. The Pharaohs
coveted her and more than 3500 years ago made bloody strife within the
environs of the town. Alexander the Great besieged her, and Persians
and Arabians opposed that mighty general. The Ptolemies and the
Antiochi for centuries fought for Gaza, whose inhabitants had a
greater taste for the mart than for the sword, and when the Maccabees
were carrying a victorious war through Philistia, the people of Gaza
bought off Jonathan, but the Jews occupied the city itself about a
century before the Christian era. Later on the place was captured
after a year's siege and destroyed, and for long it remained a mass
of mouldering ruins. Pompey revived it, making it a free city, and
Gabinius extended it close to the harbour, whilst under Caesar and
Herod its prosperity and fame increased. In succeeding centuries
Gaza's commerce flourished under the Greeks, who founded schools
famous for rhetoric and philosophy, till the Mahomedan wave swept
over the land in the first half of the seventh century, when the town
became a shadow of its former self, though it continued to exist as a
centre for trade. The Crusaders made their influence felt, and many
are the traces of their period in this ancient city, but Askalon
always had more Crusader support. Napoleon's attack on Gaza found
Abdallah's army in a very different state of preparedness from von
Kress's Turkish army. Nearly all Abdallah's artillery was left behind
in a gun park at Jaffa owing to lack of transport, and though he had
a numerically superior force he did not like Napoleon's dispositions,
and retreated when Kleber moved up the plain to pass between Gaza and
the sea, and the cavalry advanced east of the Mound of Hebron, or Ali
Muntar, as we know the hill up which Samson is reputed to have carried
the gates and bar of Gaza. For nearly a century and a quarter since
Napoleon passed forwards and backwards through the town, Gaza pursued
the arts of peace in the lethargic spirit which suits the native
temperament, but in eight months of 1917 it was the cockpit of strife
in the Middle East, and there was often crammed into one day as
much fighting energy as was shown in all the battles of the past
thirty-five centuries, Napoleon's campaign included.

Fortunately after the battles of March and April nearly all the
civilian population left the town for quieter quarters. Some of them
on returning must have had difficulty in identifying their homes. In
the centre of the town, where bazaars radiated from the quarter of
which the Great Mosque was the hub, the houses were a mass of stones
and rubble, and the narrow streets and tortuous byways were filled
with fallen walls and roofs. The Great Mosque had entirely lost its
beauty. We had shelled it because its minaret, one of those delicately
fashioned spires which, seen from a distance, lead a traveller to
imagine a native town in the East to be arranged on an artistic and
orderly plan, was used as a Turkish observation post, and the Mosque
itself as an ammunition store. I am told our guns were never laid on
to this objective until there was an accident within it which exploded
the ammunition. Be that as it may, there was ample justification for
shelling the Mosque. I went in to examine the structure a few hours
after the Turks had been compelled to evacuate the town, and whilst
they were then shelling it with unpleasant severity. Amid the wrecked
marble columns, the broken pulpit, the torn and twisted lamps and
crumbling walls were hundreds of thousands of rounds of small-arms
ammunition, most of it destroyed by explosion. A great shell had cut
the minaret in half and had left exposed telephone wires leading
direct to army headquarters and to the Turkish gunners' fire control
station. Most of the Mosque furniture and all the carpets had
been removed, but a few torn copies of the Koran, some of them in
manuscript with marginal notes, lay mixed up with German newspapers
and some typical Turkish war propaganda literature. That Mosque, which
Saladin seized from the Crusaders and turned from a Christian into
a Mahomedan place of worship, was unquestionably used for military
purposes, and the Turks cared as little for its religious character or
its venerable age as they did for the mosque on Nebi Samwil, where the
remains of the Prophet Samuel are supposed to rest. Their stories of
the trouble taken to avoid military contact with holy places and sites
were all bunkum and eyewash. They would have fought from the walls of
the Holy City and placed machine-gun nests in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre and the Mosque of Omar if they had thought it would spare
them the loss of Jerusalem.

Gaza had, as I have said, been turned into a fortress with a mass of
field works, in places of considerable natural strength. If our force
had been on the defensive at Gaza the Germans would not have attacked
without an army of at least three times our strength. It is doubtful
if the Turks put as much material in use on Gallipoli as they did
here. Their trenches were deeply cut and were protected by an immense
amount of wire. In the sand-dune area they used a vast quantity of
sandbags, and they met the shortage of jute stuffs by making small
sacks of bedstead hangings and curtains which, in the dry heat of the
summer, wore very well. Looking across No Man's Land one could easily
pick out a line of trenches by a red, a vivid blue, or a saffron
sandbag. The Turkish dug-outs were most elaborate places of security.
The excavators had gone down into the hard earth well beneath the
deep strata of sand, and they roofed these holes with six, eight, and
sometimes ten layers of palm logs. We had seen these beautiful
trees disappearing and had guessed the reason. But an even greater
protection than the devices of military engineers had been provided
for the Turks by Dame Nature. Along the southern outskirts of the town
all the fields were enclosed by giant cactus hedges, sometimes with
stems as thick as a man's body and not infrequently rearing their
strong limbs and prickly leaves twenty feet above the ground. The
hedges were deep as well as high. They were at once a screen for
defending troops and a barrier as impenetrable as the walls of a
fortress. If one line of cactus hedges had been cut through, infantry
would have found another and yet another to a depth of nearly two
miles, and as the whole of these thorny enclosures were commanded by
a few machine guns the possibility of getting through was almost
hopeless. There were similar hedges on the eastern and western sides
of Gaza, but they were not quite so deep as on the south. On the
western side, and extending south as far as the desert which the Army
had crossed with such steady, methodical, and one may also say painful
progression, was a wide belt of yellow sand, sometimes settled down
hard under the weight of heavy winds, and in other places yielding to
the pressure of feet. The Turks had laboured hard in this mile and
a half width of sand, right down to the sea, to protect their right
flank. There was a point about 4000 yards due west from the edge of
the West Town of Gaza which we called Sea Post. It was the western
extremity of the enemy's exceedingly intricate system of defences. The
beach was below the level of the Post. From Sea Post for about 1500
yards the Turkish front line ran to Rafa Redoubt. There were wired-in
entrenchments with strong points here and there, and a series of
communication trenches and redoubts behind them for 3000 yards to
Sheikh Hasan, which was the port of Gaza, if you can so describe an
open roadstead with no landing facilities. From Rafa Redoubt the
contour of the sand dunes permitted the enemy to construct an
exceedingly strong line running due south for 2000 yards, the
strongest points being named by us Zowaid trench, El Burj trench,
Triangle trench, Peach Orchard, and El Arish Redoubt, the nomenclature
being reminiscent of the trials of the troops in the desert march.
Behind this line there was many a sunken passageway and shelter from
gunfire, while backing the whole system, and, for reasons I have
given, an element of defence as strong as the prepared positions, were
cactus hedges enclosing the West Town's gardens.

From El Arish Redoubt the line ran east again to Mazar trench with
a prodigal expenditure of wire in front of it, and then south for
several hundred yards, when it was thrown out to the south-west to
embrace a position of high importance known as Umbrella Hill, a dune
of blazing yellow sand facing, about 500 yards away, Samson's Ridge,
which we held strongly and on which the enemy often concentrated his
fire. This ended the Turks' right-half section of the Gaza defences.
Close by passed what from time immemorial has been called the Cairo
Road, a track worn down by caravans of camels moving towards Kantara
on their way with goods for Egyptian bazaars. But there was no break
in the trench system which ran across the plain, a beautiful green
tinted with the blooms of myriads of wild flowers when we first
advanced over it in March, now browned and dried up by absolutely
cloudless summer days. In the gardens on the western slopes of the
hills running south from Ali Muntar the Turk had achieved much
spadework, but he had done far more work on the hills themselves, and
these were a frame of fortifications for Ali Muntar, on which we once
sat for a few hours, and the possession of which meant the reduction
of Gaza. By the end of summer the hill of Muntar had lost its shape.
When we saw it during the first battle of Gaza it was a bold feature
surmounted by a few trees and the whitened walls and grey dome of a
sheikh's tomb. In the earlier battles of 1917 much was done to ruffle
Muntar's crest. We saw trees uprooted, others lose their limbs, and
naval gunfire threatened the foundations of the old chief's burying
place. But Ali Muntar stoutly resisted the heavy shells' attack. As
if Samson's feat had endowed it with some of the strong man's powers,
Muntar for a long time received its daily thumps stoically; but by
degrees the resistance of the old hill declined, and when agents
reported that the sheikh's tomb was used as an observation post,
8-inch howitzers got on to it and made it untenable. There was a bit
of it left at the end, but not more than would offer protection from a
rifle bullet, and the one tree left standing was a limbless trunk. The
crest of the hill lost its roundness, and the soil which had worked
out through the shell craters had changed the colour of the summit.
Old Ali Muntar had had the worst of the bombardment, and if some
future sheikh should choose the site for a summer residence he will
come across a wealth of metal in digging his foundations.

To capture Gaza the Formidable it was proposed first to take the
western defences from Umbrella Hill to Sea Post, to press on to Sheikh
Hasan and thus turn the right flank of the whole position. That would
compel the enemy to reinforce his right flank when he was being
heavily attacked elsewhere, and if he had been transferring his
reserves to meet the threat against the left of his main line after
Beersheba had been won for the Empire he would be in sore trouble.
Gaza had already tasted a full sample of the war food we intended it
should consume. Before the attack on Beersheba had developed, ships of
war and the heavy guns of XXIst Corps had rattled its defences. The
warships' fire was chiefly directed on targets our land guns could
not reach. Observers in aircraft controlled the fire and notified the
destruction of ammunition dumps at Deir Sineid and other places. The
work of the heavy batteries was watched with much interest. Some were
entirely new batteries which had never been in action against any
enemy, and they only arrived on the Gaza front five weeks before the
battle. These were not allowed to register until shortly before the
battle began, and they borrowed guns from other batteries in order to
train the gun crews. So desirous was General Bulfin to conceal the
concentration of heavies that the wireless code calls were only those
used by batteries which were in position before his Corps was formed,
and the volume of fire came as an absolute surprise to the enemy. It
came as a surprise also to some of us in camp at G.H.Q. one night at
the end of October. Suddenly there was a terrific burst of fire on
about four miles of front. Vivid fan-shaped flashes stabbed the sky,
the bright moonlight of the East did not dim the guns' lightning, and
their thunderous voices were a challenge the enemy was powerless to
refuse. He took it up slowly as if half ashamed of his weakness. Then
his fire increased in volume and in strength, but it ebbed again and
we knew the reason. We held some big 'stuff' for counter battery work,
and our fire was effective.

The preliminary bombardment began on October 27 and it grew in
intensity day by day. The Navy co-operated on October 29 and
subsequent days. The whole line from Middlesex Hill (close to Outpost
Hill) to the sea was subjected to heavy fire, all the routes to the
front line were shelled during the night by 60-pounder and field-gun
batteries. Gas shells dosed the centres of communication and bivouac
areas, and every quarter of the defences was made uncomfortable. The
sound-ranging sections told us the enemy had between sixteen and
twenty-four guns south of Gaza, and from forty to forty-eight north of
the town, and over 100 guns were disclosed, including more than thirty
firing from the Tank Redoubt well away to the eastward. On October 29
some of the guns south of Gaza had been forced back by the severity of
our counter battery work, and of the ten guns remaining between us and
the town on that date all except four had been removed by November
2. For several nights the bombardment continued without a move by
infantry. Then just at the moment von Kress was discussing the loss of
Beersheba and his plans to meet our further advance in that direction,
some infantry of the 75th Division raided Outpost Hill, the southern
extremity of the entrenched hill system south of Ali Muntar, and
killed far more Turks than they took prisoners. There was an
intense bombardment of the enemy's works at the same time. The next
night--November 1-2--was the opening of XXIst Corps' great attack on
Gaza, and though the enemy did not leave the town or the remainder of
the trenches we had not assaulted till nearly a week afterwards, the
vigour of the attack and the bravery with which it was thrust home,
and the subsequent total failure of counter-attacks, must have made
the enemy commanders realise on the afternoon of November 2 that Gaza
was doomed and that their boasts that Gaza was impregnable were thin
air. Their reserves were on the way to their left where they were
urgently wanted, there was nothing strong enough to replace such heavy
wastage caused to them by the attack of the night of November 1 and
the morning of the 2nd, and our big gains of ground were an enormous
advantage to us for the second phase in the Gaza sector, for we had
bitten deeply into the Turks' right flank.

Like the concentration of the XXth Corps and the Desert Mounted Corps
for the jump off on to Beersheba, the preparations against the Turks'
extreme right had to be very secretly made. The XXIst Corps Commander
had to look a long way ahead. He had to consider the possibility of
the enemy abandoning Gaza when Beersheba was captured, and falling
back to the line of the wadi Hesi. His troops had been confined to
trench warfare for months, digging and sitting in trenches, putting
out wire, going out on listening patrols, sniping and doing all the
drudgery in the lines of earthworks. They were hard and strong, their
health having considerably improved since the early summer, but at the
end of September the infantry were by no means march fit. Realising
that, if General Allenby's operations were successful, and no one
doubted that, we should have a period of open warfare when troops
would be called upon to make long marches and undergo the privations
entailed by transport difficulties, General Bulfin brought as many
men as he could spare from the trenches back to Deir el Belah and the
coast, where they had route marches over the sand for the restoration
of their marching powers. Gradually he accumulated supplies in
sheltered positions just behind the front. In three dumps were
collected seven days' mobile rations, ammunition, water, and
engineers' material. Tracks were constructed, cables buried, concealed
gun positions and brigade and battalion headquarters made, and from
the 25th October troops were ready to move off with two days' rations
on the man. Should the enemy retire, General Hill's 52nd (Lowland)
Division was to march up the shore beneath the sand cliffs, get across
the wadi Hesi at the mouth, detach a force to proceed towards Askalon,
and then move eastward down to the ridge opposite Deir Sineid, and, by
securing the bridge and crossings of the wadi Hesi, prevent the enemy
establishing himself on the north bank of the wadi. The operations
on the night of November 1-2 were conducted by Major-General Hare,
commanding the 54th Division, to which General Leggatt's 156th
Infantry Brigade was temporarily attached. The latter brigade was
given the important task of capturing Umbrella Hill and El Arish
Redoubt. Umbrella Hill was to be taken first, and as it was
anticipated the enemy would keep up a strong artillery fire for a
considerable time after the position had been taken, and that his fire
would interfere with the assembly and advance of troops detailed
for the second phase, the first phase was timed to start four hours
earlier than the second. For several days the guns had opened intense
fire at midnight and again at 3 A.M. so that the enemy should not
attach particular importance to our artillery activity on the night of
action, and a creeping barrage nightly swept across No Man's Land to
clear off the chain of listening posts established 300 yards in front
of the enemy's trenches. Some heavy banks of cloud moved across the
sky when the Scottish Rifle Brigade assembled for the assault, but the
moon shed sufficient light at intervals to enable the Scots to file
through the gaps made in our wire and to form up on the tapes laid
outside. At 11 P.M. the 7th Scottish Rifles stormed Umbrella Hill with
the greatest gallantry. The first wave of some sixty-five officers and
men was blown up by four large contact mines and entirely destroyed.
The second wave passed over the bodies of their comrades without a
moment's check and, moving through the wire smashed by our artillery,
entered Umbrella Hill trenches and set about the Turks with their
bayonets. They had to clear a maze of trenches and dug-outs, but they
bombed out of existence the machine-gunners opposing them and had
settled the possession of Umbrella Hill in half an hour.

The 4th Royal Scots led the attack on El Arish Redoubt. It was a
bigger and noisier 'show' than the Royal Scots had had some months
before, when in a 'silent' raid they killed with hatchets only, for
the Scots had seen the condition of some of their dead left in Turkish
hands and were taking retribution. Not many Turks in El Arish Redoubt
lived to relate that night's story. The Scots were rapidly in the
redoubt and were rapidly through it, cleared up a nasty corner known
as the 'Little Devil,' and were just about to shelter from the shells
which were to answer their attack when they caught a brisk fire from a
Bedouin hut. A platoon leader disposed his men cleverly and rushed
the hut, killing everybody in it and capturing two machine guns. The
vigorous resistance of the Turks on Umbrella Hill and El Arish Redoubt
resulted in our having to bury over 350 enemy dead in these positions.

The second phase was to attack the enemy's front-line system from El
Arish Redoubt to the sea at Sea Post. At 3 A.M., after the enemy
guns had plentifully sprinkled Umbrella Hill and had given it up as
irretrievably lost, we opened a ten-minutes' intense bombardment of
the front line, exactly as had been done on preceding mornings, but
this time the 161st and 162nd Infantry Brigades followed up our shells
and carried 3000 yards of trenches at once. Three-quarters of an
hour afterwards the 163rd Infantry Brigade tried to get the support
trenches several hundred yards in rear, but the difficulties were too
many and the effort failed. Having secured Sea Post and Beach Post the
162nd Brigade completed the programme by advancing up the coast and
capturing the 'port' of Gaza, Sheikh Hasan, with a considerable body
of prisoners.

The enemy's guns remained active until seven o'clock, when they
reserved their fire till the afternoon. Then a heavy counter-attack
was seen to be developing by an aerial observer, whose timely
warning enabled the big guns and warships to smash it up. Another
counter-attack against Sheikh Hasan was repulsed later in the day, and
a third starting from Crested Rock which aimed at getting back El
Burj trench was a complete failure. After the second phase our troops
buried 739 enemy dead. Without doubt there were many others killed and
wounded in the unsuccessful counter-attacks, particularly the first
against Sheikh Hasan, when many heavy shells were seen to fall in the
enemy's ranks. We took prisoners 26 officers, including two battalion
commanders, and 418 other ranks. Our casualties were 30 officers and
331 other ranks killed, 94 officers and 1869 other ranks wounded, and
10 officers and 362 other ranks missing. Considering the enormous
strength of the positions attacked, the numbers engaged, and the fact
that we secured enemy front 5000 yards long and 3000 yards deep, the
losses were not more severe than might have been expected.

The Turks clung to their trenches with a tenacity equal to that which
characterised their defences on Gallipoli, and officer prisoners told
us they had been ordered to hold Gaza at all costs. That was good
news, though even if they had got back to the wadi Hesi line it is
doubtful if, when Sheria was taken, they could have done more than
temporarily hold us up there. During the next few days the work
against the enemy's right consisted of heavy bombardments on the line
of hills running from the north-east to the south of Gaza, and on the
prominent position of Sheikh Redwan, east of the port. The enemy made
some spirited replies, notably on the 4th, but his force in Gaza was
getting shaken, and prisoners reluctantly admitted that the heavy
naval shells taking them in flank and rear were affecting the moral
of the troops. The gunfire of Rear-Admiral Jackson's fleet of H.M.S.
_Grafton_, _Raglan_, Monitors 15, 29, 31, and 32, river-gunboats
_Ladybird_ and _Amphis_, and the destroyers _Staunch_ and _Comet_, was
worthy of the King's Navy. They were assisted by the French battleship
_Requin_. We lost a monitor and destroyer torpedoed by a submarine,
but the marks of the Navy's hard hitting were on and about Gaza, and
we heard, if we could not see, the best the ships were doing. On one
day there was a number of explosions about Deir Sineid indicating the
destruction of some of the enemy's reserve of ammunition, and while
the Turks were still in Gaza they received a shock resembling
nothing more than an earthquake. One of the ships--the _Raglan_, I
believe--taking a signal from a seaplane, got a direct hit on an
ammunition train at Beit Hanun, the railway terminus north of Gaza.
The whole train went up and its load was scattered in fragments over
an area of several hundred square yards, an extraordinary scene of
wreckage of torn and twisted railway material and destroyed ammunition
presenting itself to us when we got on the spot on November 7. There
was another very fine example of the Navy's indirect fire a short
distance northward of this railway station. A stone road bridge had
been built over the wadi Hesi and it had to carry all heavy traffic,
the banks of the wadi being too steep and broken to permit wheels
passing down them as they stood. During our advance the engineers had
to build ramps here. A warship, taking its line from an aeroplane,
fired at the bridge from a range of 14,000 yards, got two direct hits
on it and holed it in the centre, and there must have been thirty or
forty shell craters within a radius of fifty yards. The confounding of
the Turks was ably assisted by the Navy.



CHAPTER IX

CRUSHING THE TURKISH LEFT


Now we return to the operations of XXth Corps and Desert Mounted Corps
on our right. After the capture of Beersheba this force was preparing
to attack the left of the Turkish main line about Hareira and Sheria,
the capture of which would enable the fine force of cavalry to get
to Nejile and gain an excellent water supply, to advance to the
neighbourhood of Huj and so reach the plain and threaten the enemy's
line in rear, and to fall on his line of retreat. It was proposed
to make the attack on the Kauwukah and Rushdi systems at Hareira on
November 4, but the water available at Beersheba had not been equal
to the demands made upon it and was petering out, and mounted troops
protecting the right flank of XXth Corps had to be relieved every
twenty-four hours. The men also suffered a good deal from thirst. The
weather was unusually hot for this period of the year, and the dust
churned up by traffic was as irritating as when the khamseen wind
blew. The two days' delay meant much in favour of the enemy, who was
enabled to move his troops as he desired, but it also permitted our
infantry to get some rest after their long marches, and supplies were
brought nearer the front. 'Rest' was only a comparative term. Brigades
were on the move each day in country which was one continual rise and
fall, with stony beds of wadis to check progress, without a tree to
lend a few moments' grateful relief from a burning sun, and nothing
but the rare sight of a squalid native hut to relieve the monotony of
a sun-dried desolate land.

The troops were remarkably cheerful. They were on their toes, as the
cavalry told them. They had drawn first blood profusely from the Turk
after many weary months of waiting and getting fit, and they knew that
those gaunt mountain ridges away on their right front held behind them
Bethlehem and Jerusalem, goals they desired to reach more than any
other prizes of war. They had seen the Turk, and had soundly thrashed
him out of trenches which the British could have held against a much
stronger force. Their confidence was based on the proof that they were
better men, and they were convinced that once they got the enemy into
the open their superiority would be still more marked. The events of
the next six weeks showed their estimate of the Turkish soldier was
justified.

The 53rd Division with the Imperial Camel Corps on its right moved to
Towal Abu Jerwal on November 1 to protect the flank guard of the XXth
Corps during the pending attack on the Kauwukah system. The infantry
had some fighting on that day, but it was mild compared with the
strenuous days before them. The 10th Division attacked Irgeig railway
station north-west of Beersheba and secured it, and waited there with
the 74th Division on its right while the Welsh Division went forward
to fight for Khuweilfeh on November 3. The Welshmen could not obtain
the whole of the position on that day, and it was not until the 6th
that it became theirs. Khuweilfeh is about ten miles due east of
Sheria, the same distance north of Beersheba, and some five miles west
of the Hebron road. It is in the hill country, difficult to approach,
with nothing in the nature of a road or track leading to it, and there
was no element in the position to suggest the prospect of an easy
capture. When General Mott advanced to these forbidding heights the
strength of the enemy in these parts was not realised. Prisoners
taken during the day proved that there were portions of three or four
Turkish divisions in the neighbourhood, and the strong efforts made to
prevent the Welsh troops gaining the position and the furious attempts
to drive them out of it suggested that most of the Turkish reserves
had been brought over to their left flank to guard against a wide
movement intended to envelop it. It afterwards turned out that von
Kressenstein believed General Allenby intended to march on Jerusalem
up the Hebron road, and he threw over to his left all his reserves to
stop us. That was a supreme mistake, for when we had broken through at
Hareira and Sheria the two wings of his Army were never in contact,
and their only means of communication was by aeroplane.

The magnificent fight the 53rd Division put up at Khuweilfeh against
vastly superior forces and in the face of heavy casualties played a
very important part in the overwhelming defeat of the Turks. For four
days and nights the Welsh Division fought without respite and with the
knowledge that they could not be substantially reinforced, since the
plan for the attack on Hareira and Sheria entailed the employment of
all the available infantry of XXth Corps. Attack after attack was
launched against them with extreme violence and great gallantry, their
positions were raked by gunfire, whilst water and supplies were not
over plentiful. But the staunch Division held on grimly to what it had
gained, and its tenacity was well rewarded by what was won on other
portions of the field.

During the night of November 5-6 and the day of the 6th, the 74th,
60th, and 10th Divisions concentrated for the attack on the Kauwukah
system. The enemy's positions ran from his Jerusalem-Beersheba railway
about five miles south-east of Hareira, across the Gaza-Beersheba road
to the wadi Sheria, on the northern bank of which was an exceedingly
strong redoubt covering Hareira. The eastern portion of this line
was known as the Kauwukah system, and between it and Hareira was
the Rushdi system, all being connected up by long communication and
support trenches, while a light railway ran from the Rushdi line to
dumps south of Sheria. At the moment of assembly for attack our line
from right to left was made up as follows: the 158th Infantry Brigade
was on the right, south of Tel Khuweilfeh. Then came the 160th Brigade
and 159th Brigade. The Yeomanry Mounted Division held a long line
of country and was the connecting link between the 53rd and 74th
Divisions. The latter division disposed from right to left the 231st
Brigade, the 229th Brigade, and 230th Brigade, who were to march from
the south-east to the north-west to attack the right of the Kauwukah
system of entrenchments on the railway. The 181st Brigade, 180th
Brigade, and 179th Brigade of the 60th Division were to march in the
same direction to attack the next portion of the system on the left of
the 74th Division's objectives, then swinging to the north to march
on Sheria. The 31st Brigade, 30th Brigade, and 29th Brigade were to
operate on the 60th Division's left, with the Australian Mounted
Division watching the left flank of XXth Corps. The Turkish VIIth
Army and 3rd Cavalry Division were opposing the XXth Corps, another
Division was opposite the 53rd Division and the Imperial Camel Corps
with the 12th Depôt Regiment at Dharahiyeh on the Hebron road, the
16th Division opposite our 74th, the 24th and 26th Divisions opposite
our 69th, and the 54th against the 10th Division. The 3rd, 53rd, and
7th Turkish Divisions were in the Gaza area.

At daybreak the troops advanced to the attack. The first part of the
line in front of the 231st Brigade was a serious obstacle. Two or
three small outlying rifle pits had to be taken before the Division
could proceed with its effort to drive the enemy out of Sheria and
protect the flank of the 60th Division, which had to cross the railway
where a double line of trenches was to be tackled, the rear line above
the other with the flank well thrown back and protected by small
advanced pits to hold a few men and machine guns. The Turks held on
very obstinately to their ground east of the railway, and kept the
74th Division at bay till one o'clock in the afternoon, but the
artillery of that Division had for some time been assisting in the
wire-cutting in front of the trenches to be assaulted by the 60th
Division, and the latter went ahead soon after noon, and with the
assistance of one brigade of the 10th Division, had won about 4000
yards of the complicated trench system and most of the Rushdi system
by half-past two. The Londoners then swung to the north and occupied
the station at Sheria, while the dismounted yeomanry worked round
farther east, taking a series of isolated trenches on the way, the
Irish troops relieving the 60th in the captured trenches at Kauwukah.
The 60th Division, having possession of the larger part of Sheria,
intended to attack the hill there at nightfall, and the attack was in
preparation when an enemy dump exploded and a huge fire lighted up the
whole district, so that all troops would have been exposed to the
fire of the garrison on the hill. General Shea therefore stopped the
attack, but the hill was stormed at 4.30 next morning and carried at
the point of the bayonet. A bridgehead was then formed at Sheria, and
the Londoners fought all day and stopped one counter-attack when it
was within 200 yards of our line. On that same morning the Irish
troops had extended their gains westwards from the Rushdi system till
they got to Hareira Tepe Redoubt, a high mound 500 yards across the
top, which had been criss-crossed with trenches with wire hanging
about some broken ground at the bottom. Here there was a hot tussle,
but the Irishmen valiantly pushed through and not only gave XXth Corps
the whole of its objectives and completed the turn of the enemy's left
flank, but joined up with the XXIst Corps. The working of XXth Corps'
scheme had again been admirable, and once more the staff work had
enabled the movements to be timed perfectly.

The Desert Mounted Corps was thus able to draw up to Sheria in
readiness to take up the pursuit and to get the water supply at
Nejile. This ended the XXth Corps' task for a few days, though the
60th Division became temporarily attached to Desert Mounted Corps.
XXth Corps had nobly done its part. The consummate ability, energy,
and foresight of the corps commander had been supported throughout by
the skill of divisional and brigade commanders. For the men no praise
could be too high. The attention given to their training was well
repaid. They bore the strain of long marches on hard food and a small
allowance of water in a way that proved their physique to be only
matched by their courage, and that was of a high order. Their
discipline was admirable, their determination alike in attack and
defence strong and well sustained. To say they were equal to the
finest troops in the world might lay one open to a charge of
exaggeration when it was impossible to get a fair ground of
comparison, seeing the conditions of fighting on different fronts
was so varied, but the trials through which the troops of XXth
Corps passed up to the end of the first week of November, and their
magnificent accomplishments by the end of the year, make me doubt
whether any other corps possessed finer soldierly qualities. The men
were indeed splendid. The casualties sustained by the XXth Corps from
October 31 to November 16 were: killed, officers 63, other ranks 869;
wounded, officers 198, other ranks 4246; missing, no officers, 108
other ranks--a total of 261 officers and 5223 other ranks.

During the period after Beersheba when the XXth Corps troops were
concentrating to break up the Turks' defensive position on the left,
the Desert Mounted Corps was busily engaged holding a line eight or
ten miles north and north-east of Beersheba, and watching for any
movement of troops down the Hebron road. The 2nd Australian Light
Horse Brigade and 7th Mounted Brigade tried to occupy a line from
Khuweilfeh to Dharahiyeh, but it was not possible to reach it--a fact
by no means surprising, as in the light of subsequent knowledge it was
clear that the Turks had put much of their strength there. A patrol
of Light Horsemen managed to work round to the north of Dharahiyeh,
a curious group of mud houses on a hill-top inhabited by natives who
have yet to appreciate the evils of grossly overcrowded quarters as
well as some of the elementary principles of sanitation, and they saw
a number of motor lorries come up the admirably constructed hill road
designed by German engineers. The lorries were hurrying from the
Jerusalem area with reinforcements. Prisoners--several hundreds of
them in all--were brought in daily, but no attempt was made to force
the enemy back until November 6, when the 53rd Division, which for the
time being was attached to the Desert Mounted Corps, drove the Turks
off the whole of Khuweilfeh, behaving as I have already said with
fine gallantry and inflicting severe losses. There were also
counter-attacks launched against the 5th Mounted Brigade, the New
Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, and the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade,
but these were likewise beaten off with considerable casualties to
the enemy. When the XXth Corps had captured the Khauwukah system, a
detachment for the defence of the right flank of the Army was formed
under the command of Major-General G. de S. Barrow, the G.O.C.
Yeomanry Mounted Division, consisting of the Imperial Camel Corps
Brigade, 53rd Division, Yeomanry Mounted Division, New Zealand Mounted
Rifles Brigade, and two squadrons and eight machine guns of the 2nd
Australian Light Horse Brigade. The Australian Mounted Division
marched from Karm, whither it had been sent on account of water
difficulties, to rejoin Desert Mounted Corps to whom the 60th Division
was temporarily attached. The Desert Corps had orders on November 7 to
push through as rapidly as possible to the line wadi Jemmameh-Huj, and
from that day the Corps commenced its long march to Jaffa, a march
which, though strongly opposed by considerable bodies of troops, was
more often interfered with by lack of water than by difficulty in
defeating the enemy.

The scarcity of water was a sore trouble. There was an occasional pool
here and there, but generally the only water procurable was in deep
wells giving a poor yield. The cavalry will not forget that long
trek. No brigade could march straight ahead. Those operating in the
foothills on our right had to fight all the way, and they were often
called upon to resist counter-attacks by strong rearguards issuing
from the hills to threaten the flank and so delay the advance in
order to permit the Turks to carry off some of their material. It was
necessary almost every day to withdraw certain formations from the
front and send them back a considerable distance to water, replacing
them by other troops coming from a well centre. In this way brigades
were not infrequently attached to divisions other than their own, and
the administrative services were heavily handicapped. Several times
whole brigades were without water for forty-eight hours, and though
supplies reached them on all but one or two occasions they were often
late, and an exceedingly severe strain was put on the transport.
During that diagonal march across the Maritime Plain I heard infantry
officers remark that the Australians always seemed to have their
supplies up with them. I do not think the supplies were always there,
but they generally were not far behind, and if resource and energy
could work miracles the Australian supply officers deserve the credit
for them. The divisional trains worked hard in those strenuous days,
and the 'Q' staff of the Desert Mounted Corps had many a sleepless
night devising plans to get that last ounce out of their transport men
and to get that little extra amount of supplies to the front which
meant the difference between want and a sufficiency for man and horse.

On the 7th November the 60th Division after its spirited attack on
Tel el Sheria crossed the wadi and advanced north about two miles,
fighting obstinate rearguards all the way. The 1st Australian Light
Horse took 300 prisoners and a considerable quantity of ammunition
and stores at Ameidat, and with the remainder of the Anzac Division
reached Tel Abu Dilakh by the evening, and the Australian Mounted
Division filled the gap between the Anzacs and the Londoners, but
having been unable to water could not advance further. The 8th
November was a busy and brilliantly successful day. The Corps' effort
was to make a wide sweeping movement in order first to obtain the
valuable and urgently required water at Nejile, and then to push
across the hills and rolling downs to the country behind Gaza to
harass the enemy retreating from that town. The Turks had a big
rearguard south-west of Nejile and made a strong effort to delay the
capture of that place, the importance of which to us they realised
to the full, and they were prepared to sacrifice the whole of the
rearguard if they could hold us off the water for another twenty-four
hours. The pressure of the Anzac Division and the 7th Mounted Brigade
assisting it was too much for the enemy, who though holding on to the
hills very stoutly till the last moment had to give way and leave the
water in our undisputed possession. The Sherwood Rangers and South
Notts Hussars were vigorously counter-attacked at Mudweiweh, but they
severely handled the enemy, who retired a much weakened body.

By the evening the Anzacs held the country from Nejile to the north
bank of the wadi Jemmameh, having captured 300 prisoners and two guns.
The Australian Mounted Division made an excellent advance round
the north side of Huj, which had been the Turkish VIIIth Army
Headquarters, and the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade was in touch
with the corps cavalry of XXIst Corps at Beit Hanun, while the 3rd
Australian Light Horse Brigade had taken prisoners and two of the
troublesome Austrian 5.9 howitzers.

It was the work of the 60th Division in the centre, however, which
was the outstanding feature of the day, though the Londoners readily
admitted that without the glorious charge of the Worcester and
Warwickshire Yeomanry in the afternoon they would not have been in the
neighbourhood of Huj when darkness fell. The 60th were in the centre,
sandwiched between the Anzacs and Australian Mounted Division, and
their allotted task was to clear the country between Sheria and Huj, a
distance of ten miles. The country was a series of billowy downs with
valleys seldom more than 1000 yards wide, and every yard of the way
was opposed by infantry and artillery. Considering the opposition the
progress was good. The Londoners drove in the Turks' strong flank
three times, first from the hill of Zuheilika, then from the
cultivated area behind it, and thirdly from the wadi-torn district
of Muntaret el Baghl, from which the infantry proceeded to the high
ground to the north. It was then between two and three o'clock in the
afternoon, and maps showed that between the Division and Huj there was
nearly four miles of most difficult country, a mass of wadi beds and
hills giving an enterprising enemy the best possible means for holding
up an advance. General Shea went ahead in a light armoured car to
reconnoitre, and saw a strong body of Turks with guns marching across
his front. It was impossible for his infantry to catch them and,
seeing ten troops of Warwick and Worcester Yeomanry on his right about
a mile away, he went over to them and ordered Lieut.-Colonel H. Cheape
to charge the enemy. It was a case for instant action. The enemy were
a mile and a half from our cavalry. The gunners had come into action
and were shelling the London Territorials, but they soon had to
switch off and fire at a more terrifying target. Led by their gallant
Colonel, a Master of Foxhounds who was afterwards drowned in the
Mediterranean, the yeomen swept over a ridge in successive lines and
raced down the northern slope on to the flat, at first making direct
for the guns, then swerving to the left under the direction of Colonel
Cheape, whose eye for country led him to take advantage of a mound on
the opposite side of the valley. Over this rise the Midland yeomen
spurred their chargers and, giving full-throated cheers, dashed
through the Turks' left flank guard and went straight for the guns.
Their ranks were somewhat thinned, for they had been exposed to a
heavy machine-gun fire as well as to the fire of eight field guns and
three 5.9 howitzers worked at the highest pressure. The gunners were
nearly all Germans and Austrians and they fought well. They splashed
the valley with shrapnel, and during the few moments' lull when the
yeomanry were lost to view behind the mound they set their shell fuses
at zero to make them burst at the mouth of the guns and act as case
shot. They tore some gaps in the yeomen's ranks, but nothing could
stop that charge. The Midlanders rode straight at the guns and sabred
every artilleryman at his piece. The Londoners say they heard all the
guns stop dead at the same moment and they knew they had been silenced
in true Balaclava style. Having wiped out the batteries the yeomen
again answered the call of their leader and swept up a ridge to deal
effectively with three machine guns, and having used the white arm
against their crews the guns were turned on to the retreating Turks
and decimated their ranks. This charge was witnessed by General Shea,
and I know it is his opinion that it was executed with the greatest
gallantry and élan, and was worthy of the best traditions of British
cavalry. The yeomanry lost about twenty-five per cent. of their
number in casualties, but their action was worth the price, for they
completely broke up the enemy resistance and enabled the London
Division to push straight through to Huj. The Warwick and
Worcester Yeomanry received the personal congratulations of the
Commander-in-Chief, and General Shea was also thanked by General
Allenby.

During this day General Shea accomplished what probably no other
Divisional Commander did in this war. When out scouting in a light
armoured car he was within 500 yards of a big ammunition dump which
was blown up. He saw the three men who had destroyed it running away,
and he chased them into a wadi and machine-gunned them. They held up
their hands and were astonished to find they had surrendered to a
General. These men were captured in the nick of time. But for the
appearance of General Shea they would have destroyed another dump,
which we captured intact.

I was with the Division the night after they had taken Huj. It was
their first day of rest for some time, but the men showed few signs
of fatigue. No one could move among them without being proud of the
Londoners. They were strong, self-reliant, well-disciplined, brave
fellows. I well remember what Colonel Temperley, the G.S.O. of the
Division, told me when sitting out on a hill in the twilight that
night. Colonel Temperley had been brigade major of the first New
Zealand Infantry Brigade which came to Egypt and took a full share in
the work on Gallipoli on its way to France. He had over two years of
active service on the Western Front before coming out to Palestine for
duty with the 60th Division, and his views on men in action were based
on the sound experience of the professional soldier. Of the London
County Territorials he said: 'I cannot speak of these warriors without
a lump rising in my throat. These Cockneys are the best men in the
world. Their spirits are simply wonderful, and I do not think any
division ever went into a big show with higher moral. After three
years of war it is refreshing to hear the men's earnestly expressed
desire to go into action again. These grand fellows went forward
with the full bloom on them, there never was any hesitation, their
discipline was absolutely perfect, their physique and courage were
alike magnificent, and their valour beyond words. The Cockney makes
the perfect soldier.' I wrote at the time that 'whether the men came
from Bermondsey, Camberwell or Kennington, or belonged to what were
known as class corps, such as the Civil Service or Kensingtons, before
the war, all battalions were equally good. They were trained for
months for the big battle till their bodies were brought to such a
state of fitness that Spartan fare during the ten days of ceaseless
action caused neither grumble nor fatigue. The men may well be
rewarded with the title "London's Pride," and London is honoured by
having such stalwarts to represent the heart of the British Empire. In
eight days the Londoners marched sixty-six miles and fought a number
of hot actions. The march may not seem long, but Palestine is not
Salisbury Plain. A leg-weary man was asked by an officer if his feet
were blistered, and replied: "They're rotten sore, but my heart's
gay." That is typical of the spirit of these unconquerable Cockneys. I
have just left them. They still have the bloom of freshness and I do
not think it will ever fade. Scorching winds which parched the throat
and made everything one wore hot to the touch were enough to oppress
the staunchest soldier, but these sterling Territorials, costers
and labourers, artisans and tradesmen, professional men and men of
independent means, true brothers in arms and good Britons, left their
bivouacs and trudged across heavy country, fearless, strong, proud,
and with the cheerfulness of good men who fight for right.' What I
said in those early days of the great advance was more than borne out
later, and in the capture of Jerusalem, in taking Jericho, and in
forcing the passage of the Jordan this glorious Division of Londoners
was always the same, a pride to its commander, a bulwark of the XXth
Corps, and a great asset of the Empire.



CHAPTER X

THROUGH GAZA INTO THE OPEN


On the Gaza section of the front the XXIst Corps had been busily
occupied with preparations for a powerful thrust through the remainder
of the defences on the enemy's right when the XXth Corps should have
succeeded in turning the main positions on the left. The 52nd Division
on the coast was ready to go ahead immediately there was any sign that
the enemy, seeing that the worst was about to happen, intended to
order a general retirement, and then it would be a race and a fight to
prevent his establishing himself on the high ground north of the wadi
Hesi. Should he fail to do that there was scarcely a possibility of
the Turks holding us up till we got to the Jaffa-Jerusalem road,
though between Gaza and that metalled highway there were many points
of strength from which they could fight delaying actions. It is very
doubtful whether the Turkish General Staff gave the cavalry credit for
being able to move across the Plain in the middle of November when the
wadis are absolutely dry and the water-level in the wells is lower
than at any other period of the year. Nor did they imagine that the
transport difficulties for infantry divisions fed as ours were could
be surmounted. They may have thought that if they could secure the
wadi Hesi line before we got into position to threaten it in flank
they would immobilise our Army till the rains began, and there was a
possibility of sitting facing each other in wet uncomfortable trench
quarters till the flowers showed themselves in the spring, by which
time, the Bagdad venture of the German Higher Command proving hopeless
before it was started, a great volume of reinforcements might be
diverted to Southern Palestine with Turkish divisions from the
Salonika front and a stiffening of German battalions spared from
Europe in consequence of the Russian collapse.

Whatever they may have been, the Turkish calculations were completely
upset. The cavalry's water troubles remained and no human foresight
could have smoothed them over, but the transport problem was solved in
this way. During the attack on Beersheba XXIst Corps came to the aid
of XXth Corps by handing over to it the greater part of its camel
convoys and lorries, so much transport, indeed, that a vast amount of
work in the Gaza sector fell to be done by a greatly depleted supply
staff. When Beersheba had been won and the enemy's left flank had been
smashed and thrown back, the XXth Corps repaid the XXIst Corps, not
only by returning what it had borrowed, but by marching back into the
region of railhead at Karm, where it could live with a minimum of
transport and send all its surplus to work in the coastal sector. The
switching over of this transport was a fine piece of organisation. On
the allotted day many thousands of camels were seen drawn out in huge
lines all over the country intersected by the wadi Ghuzze, slowly
converging on the spots at which they could be barracked and rested
before loading for the advance. The lorries took other paths. There
was no repose for their drivers. They worked till the last moment on
the east, and then, caked with the accumulated dust of a week's weary
labour in sand and powdered earth, turned westward to arrive just in
time to load up and be off again in pursuit of infantry, some making
the mistake of travelling between the West and East Towns of Gaza,
while others took the longer and sounder but still treacherous route
east of Ali Muntar and through the old positions of the Turks. These
lorry drivers were wonderful fellows who laughed at their trials, but
in the days and nights when they bumped over the uneven tracks and
negotiated earth rents that threatened to swallow their vehicles, they
put their faith in the promise of the railway constructors to open the
station at Gaza at an early date. Even Gaza, though it saved them so
many toilsome miles, did not help them greatly because of a terrible
piece of road north-east of the station, but Beit Hanun was
comfortable and for the relief brought by the railway's arrival at
Deir Sineid they were profoundly grateful.

But this is anticipating the story of Gaza's capture. The XXIst Corps
had not received its additional transport when it gained the ancient
city of the Philistines, though it knew some of it was on the way and
most of it about to start on its westward trek. On the day of November
4 and during the succeeding night the Navy co-operated with the Corps'
artillery in destroying enemy trenches and gun positions, and the
Ali Muntar Ridge was a glad sight for tired gunners' eyes. The enemy
showed a disposition to retaliate, and on the afternoon of the 4th he
put up a fierce bombardment of our front-line positions from Outpost
Hill to the sea, including in his fire area the whole of the trenches
we had taken from him from Umbrella Hill to Sheikh Hasan. Many
observers of this bombardment by all the Turks' guns of heavy, medium,
and small calibre declared it was the prelude not of an attack but
of a retirement, and that the Turks were loosing off a lot of the
ammunition they knew they could not carry away. They were probably
right, though the enemy made no sign of going away for a couple of
days, but if he thought his demonstration by artillery was going to
hasten back to Gaza some of the troops assembling against the left of
his main line he was grievously in error. The XXIst Corps was strong
enough to deal with any attack the Turks could launch, and they would
have been pleased if an attempt to reach our lines had been made.

Next day the Turks were much quieter. They had to sit under a terrific
fire both on the 5th and 6th November, when in order to assist
XXth Corps' operations the Corps' heavy artillery, the divisional
artillery, and the warships' guns carried out an intense bombardment.
The land guns searched the Turks' front line and reserve systems,
while the Navy fired on Fryer's Hill to the north of Ali Muntar,
Sheikh Redwan, a sandhill with a native chief's tomb on the crest,
north of Gaza, and on trenches not easily reached by the Corps' guns.

During the night of November 6-7 General Palin's 75th Division, as
a preliminary to a major operation timed for the following morning,
attacked and gained the enemy's trenches on Outpost Hill and the
whole of Middlesex Hill to the north of it, the opposition being less
serious than was anticipated. At daylight the 75th Division pushed on
over the other hills towards Ali Muntar and gained that dominating
position before eight o'clock. The fighting had not been severe,
and it was soon realised that the enemy had left Gaza, abandoning a
stronghold which had been prepared for defence with all the ingenuity
German masters of war could suggest and into which had been worked an
enormous amount of material. It was obvious from the complete success
of XXth Corps' operations against the Turkish left, which had been
worked out absolutely 'according to plan,' that General Allenby had so
thoroughly mystified von Kressenstein that the latter had put all
his reserves into the wrong spot, and that the 53rd Division's stout
resistance against superior numbers had pinned them down to the wrong
end of the line. There was nothing, therefore, for the Turk to do but
to try to hold another position, and he was straining every nerve to
reach it. The East Anglian Division went up west of Gaza and held from
Sheikh Redwan to the sea by seven o'clock, two squadrons of the Corps'
cavalry rode along the seashore and had patrols on the wadi Hesi a
little earlier than that, and the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade,
composed of troops raised and maintained by patriotic Indian princes,
passed through Gaza at nine o'clock and went out towards Beit Hanun.
To the Lowland Division was given the important task of getting to the
right or northern bank of the wadi Hesi. These imperturbable Scots
left their trenches in the morning delighted at the prospect of once
more engaging in open warfare. They marched along the beach under
cover of the low sand cliffs, and by dusk had crossed the mouth of
the wadi and held some of the high ground to the north in face of
determined opposition. The 157th Brigade, after a march through very
heavy going, got to the wadi at five in the afternoon and saw the
enemy posted on the opposite bank. The place was reconnoitred and the
brigade made a fine bayonet charge in the dark, securing the position
between ten and eleven o'clock. On this and succeeding days the
division had to fight very hard indeed, and they often met the enemy
with the bayonet. One of their officers told me the Scot was twice
as good as the Turk in ordinary fighting, but with the bayonet his
advantage was as five to one. The record of the Division throughout
the campaign showed this was no too generous an estimate of their
powers. After securing Ali Muntar the 75th Division advanced over
Fryer's Hill to Australia Hill, so that they held the whole ridge
running north and south to the eastward of Gaza. The enemy still held
to his positions to the right of his centre, and from the Atawineh
Redoubt, Tank Redoubt, and Beer trenches there was considerable
shelling of Gaza and the Ali Muntar ridge throughout the day. A large
number of shells fell in the plantations on the western side of the
ridge; our mastery of the air prevented enemy aviators observing for
their artillery, or they would have seen no traffic was passing along
that way. We were using the old Cairo 'road,' and as far as I could
see not an enemy shell reached it, though when our troops were in the
town of Gaza there were many crumps and woolly bears to disturb the
new occupation. But all went swimmingly. It was true we had only
captured the well-cracked shell of a town, but the taking of it was
full of promise of greater things, and those of us who looked on the
mutilated remnants of one of the world's oldest cities felt we were
indeed witnesses of the beginning of the downfall of the Turkish
Empire. Next morning the 75th Division captured Beer trenches and Tank
and Atawineh Redoubts and linked up with the Irish Division of XXth
Corps on its right. They were shelled heavily, but it was the shelling
of rearguards and not attackers, and soon after twelve o'clock we
had the best of evidence that the Turks were saying good-bye to a
neighbourhood they had long inhabited. I was standing on Raspberry
Hill, the battle headquarters of XXIst Corps, when I heard a terrific
report. Staff officers who were used to the visitations of aerial
marauders came out of their shelters and searched the pearly vault of
the heavens for Fritz. No machine could be found. Some one looking
across the country towards Atawineh saw a huge mushroom-shaped cloud,
and then we knew that one enormous dump at least contained no more
projectiles to hold up an advance. This ammunition store must have
been eight miles away as the crow flies, but the noise of the
explosion was so violent that it was a considerable time before some
officers could be brought to believe an enemy plane had not laid an
egg near us. The blowing up of that dump was a signal that the Turk
was off.

The Lowlanders had another very strenuous day in the sand-dune belt.
First of all they repulsed a strong counter-attack from the direction
of Askalon. Then the 155th Infantry Brigade went forward and, swinging
to the right, drove the Turks off the rising ground north-west of Deir
Sineid, the possession of which would determine the question whether
the Turk could hold on in this quarter sufficiently long to enable him
to get any of his material away by his railway and road. The enemy put
in a counter-attack of great violence and forced the Scots back.

The 157th Brigade in the early evening attacked the ridge and gained
the whole of their objectives by eight o'clock. There ensued some
sanguinary struggles on this sandy ground during the night. The Turks
were determined to have possession of it and the Scots were willing to
fight it out to a finish. The first counter-attack in the dark hours
drove the Lowlanders off, but they were shortly afterwards back on the
hills again. The Turks returned and pushed the Highland Light Infantry
and Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders off a second time. A third
attack was delivered with splendid vigour and the enemy left many
dead, but they renewed their efforts to get the commanding ground and
succeeded once more. The dogged Scots, however, were not to be denied.
They re-formed and swept up the heavy shifting sand, met the Turk on
the top with a clash and knocked him down the reverse slope. Soon
afterwards there was another ding-dong struggle. The Turks, putting in
all their available strength, for a fourth time got the upper hand,
and the Lowlanders had to yield the ground, doing it slowly and
reluctantly and with the determination to try again. They were Robert
Bruces, all of them. It's the best that stays the longest. After a
brief rest these heroic Scots once more swarmed up the ridge. Their
cheers had the note of victory in them, they drove their bayonets
home with the haymakers' lift, and what was left of the Turks fled
helter-skelter down the hill towards Deir Sineid, broken, dismayed,
beaten, and totally unable to make another effort. The H.L.I.
Brigade's victory was bought at a price. The cost of that hill was
heavy, but the Turks' tale of dead was far heavier than ours, and
we had won and held the hills and consolidated them. The Turks then
turned their faces to the north and the Scots hurried them on. The
Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade had also met with considerable
resistance, but they worked up to and on the ridge overlooking Beit
Hanun from the east and captured a 5.9. By evening these Indian
horsemen were linked up with the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade on
their right and the 52nd Division on their left, and pursued the enemy
as far as Tumrah and Deir Sineid.

General Headquarters directed that two infantry divisions should
advance to the line Julis-Hamameh in support of mounted troops, and
the 75th Division was accordingly ordered from its position east of
Gaza up to Beit Hanun. On the 9th November the 52nd Division was again
advancing. The 156th Brigade had moved forward from the Gaza trenches.
One officer, five grooms, and two signallers mounted on second horses
formed a little party to reconnoitre Askalon, and riding boldly into
the ancient landing place of the Crusader armies captured the ruined
town unaided. There are visible remains of its old strength, but the
power of Askalon has departed. It still stands looking over the blue
Mediterranean as a sort of watch tower, a silent, deserted outpost of
the land the Crusaders set their hearts on gaining and preserving for
Christianity, but behind it is many centuries' accumulation of sand
encroaching upon the fertile plain, and no effort has been made to
stop the inroad. The gallant half-dozen having reported to the 156th
Brigade that Askalon was open to them--the Brigade occupied the place
at noon--rode across the sand-dunes to the important native town of
Mejdel, where there was a substantial bazaar doing a good trade in the
essentials for native existence, beans and cereals in plenty, fruit,
and tobacco of execrable quality. At Mejdel the six accepted the
surrender of a body of Turks guarding a substantial ammunition dump
and rejoined their units, satisfied with the day's adventure. The
Turks had retired a considerable distance during the day. The
principal body was moving up what is called the main road from Deir
Sineid, through Beit Jerjal to Julis, to get to Suafir esh Sherkiyeh,
Kustineh, and Junction Station, from which they could reach Latron by
a metalled road, or Ramleh by a hard mud track by the side of their
railway. They were clearly going to oppose us all the way or they
would lose the whole of their material, and their forces east and west
of the road were well handled in previously selected and partially
prepared positions.

They left behind them the unpleasant trail of a defeated army. Turks
had fallen by the way and the natives would not bury them. Our
aircraft had bombed the road, and the dead men, cattle and horses,
and smashed transport were ghastly sights and made the air offensive.
There they lay, one long line of dead men and animals, and if a London
fog had descended to blind the eyes of our Army the sense of smell
would still have carried a scout on the direct line of the Turkish
retreat.

I will break off the narrative of fighting at this point to describe a
scene which expressed more eloquently than anything else I witnessed
in Palestine how deeply engraved in the native mind was the conviction
that Britain stood for fair dealing and freedom. The inhabitants, like
the Arabs of the desert, do not allow their faces to betray their
feelings. They preserve a stolid exterior, and it is difficult to tell
from their demeanour whether they are friendly or indifferent to
you. But their actions speak aloud. Early on the morning after the
Lowlanders had entered Mejdel I was in the neighbourhood. Our guns
banging away to the north were a reminder that there was to be no
promenade over the Plain, and that we had yet to make good the
formidable obstacle of the wadi Sukereir, when I passed a curious
procession. People whom the Turks had turned out of Gaza and the
surrounding country were trekking back to the spots where they and
their forefathers had lived for countless generations. All their
worldly goods and chattels were packed on overloaded camels and
donkeys. The women bore astonishingly heavy loads on their heads, the
men rode or walked carrying nothing, while patriarchs of families
were either held in donkey saddles or were borne on the shoulders of
younger men. Agriculturists began to turn out to plough and till the
fields which had lain fallow while the Turkish scourge of war was on
the land, and the people showed that, now they had the security of
British protection, they intended at once to resume their industry.
The troops had the liveliest welcome in passing through villages,
though the people are not as a rule demonstrative; and one could point
to no better evidence of the exemplary behaviour of our soldiers than
the groups of women sitting and gossiping round the wells during the
process of drawing water, just as they did in Biblical days, heedless
of the passing troops whom they regarded as their protectors. The man
behind a rude plough may have stopped his ill-matched team of pony
and donkey to look at a column of troops moving as he had never seen
troops march before, a head of a family might collect the animals
carrying his household goods and hurry them off the line of route
taken by military transport, but neither one nor the other had any
fear of interference with his work, and the life of the whole country,
one of the most unchanging regions of the world, had suddenly again
become normal, although only yesterday two armies had disputed
possession of the very soil on which they stood. The moment we were
victorious old occupations were resumed by the people in the way that
was a tradition from their forefathers. Our victory meant peace
and safety, according to the native idea, and an end to extortion,
oppression, and pillage under the name of requisitions. It also meant
prosperity. The native likes to drive a bargain. He will not sell
under a fair price, and he asks much more in the hope of showing a
buyer who has beaten him down how cheaply he is getting goods. The
Army chiefly sought eggs, which are light to carry and easy to cook,
and give variety to the daily round of bully, biscuit, and jam. The
soldier is a generous fellow, and if a child asked a piastre (2-1/2d.)
for an egg he got it. The price soon became four to five for a
shilling in cash, though the Turks wanted five times that number for
an equivalent sum in depreciated paper currency. The law of supply
and demand obtained in this old world just as at home, and it became
sufficient for a soldier to ask for an article to show he wanted it
and would pay almost anything that was demanded. It was curious to see
how the news spread not merely among traders but also among villagers.
The men who first occupied a place found oranges, vegetables, fresh
bread, and eggs cheap. In Ramleh, for example, a market was opened for
our troops immediately they got to the town, and the goods were sound
and sold at fair rates. The next day prices were up, and the standards
fixed behind the front soon ruled at the line itself. There was no
real control attempted, and while the extortionate prices charged by
Jews in their excellent agricultural colonies and by the natives made
a poor people prosperous, it gave them an exaggerated idea of the size
of the British purse, and they may be disappointed at the limitation
of our spending powers in the future. Also it was hard on the bravest
and most chivalrous of fighting men. But it opened the eyes of the
native, whose happiness and contentment were obvious directly we
reached his doors.

Our movements on November 9 were limited by the extent to which
General Chauvel was able to use his cavalry of the Desert Mounted
Corps. Water was the sole, but absolute handicap. The Yeomanry Mounted
Division rejoined the Corps on that day and got south of Huj,
but could not proceed further through lack of water and supply
difficulties. The Australian Mounted Division also had to halt for
water, and it was left to Anzac Mounted Division, plus the 7th Mounted
Brigade, to march eighteen miles north-westwards to occupy the line
Et Tineh-Beit Duras-Jemameh-Esdud (the Ashdod of the Bible). The 52nd
Division occupied the area Esdud-Mejdel-Herbieh by the evening of the
10th, and on the way, Australian cavalry being held up on a ridge
north of Beit Duras, the 157th Brigade made another of its fine
bayonet charges at night and captured the ground, enabling the cavalry
to get at some precious water. The brigade made the attack just after
completing a fourteen miles' march in heavy going, achieving the
remarkable record of having had three bayonet battles on three
nights out of four. On this occasion the Turks again suffered heavy
casualties in men and lost many machine guns. The 75th Division
prolonged the infantry line through Gharbiyeh to Berberah. The 54th
Division was in the Gaza defences with all its transport allotted to
the divisions taking part in the forward move, but as the 54th had
five days' rations in dumps close at hand it was able to maintain
itself, and the railway was being pushed on from the wadi Ghuzze with
the utmost speed. The iron road in war is an army's jugular vein,
and each mile added to its length was of enormous value during the
advance.

General Allenby, looking well ahead and realising the possibilities
opened out by his complete success in every phase of the operations on
the Turks' main defensive line, on the 10th November ordered the 52nd
and 75th Divisions to concentrate on their advanced guards so as
to support the cavalry on their front and to prevent the Turk
consolidating on the line of the wadi Sukereir. The enemy was
developing a more organised resistance on a crescent-shaped line from
Et Tineh through Yasur to Beshshit, and it was necessary to adopt
deliberate methods of attack to move him. The advance on the 11th was
the preliminary to three days of stirring fighting. The Turks put up
a very strong defence by their rearguards, and when one says that
at this time they were fighting with courage and magnificent
determination one is not only paying a just tribute to the enemy but
doing justice to the gallantry and skill of the troops who defeated
him. The Scots can claim a large share of the success of the next two
days, but British yeomanry took a great part in it, and their charge
at Mughar, and perhaps their charge at Abu Shushe as well, will find a
place in military text-books, for it has confounded those critics who
declared that the development of the machine gun in modern warfare has
brought the uses of cavalry down to very narrow limits.

The 156th Brigade was directed to take Burkah on the 12th so as to
give the infantry liberty of manoeuvre on the following day. Burkah
was a nasty place to tackle. The enemy had two lines of beautifully
sited trenches prepared before he fell back from Gaza. The Scots had
to attack up a slope to the first line, and having taken this to pass
down another slope for 1000 yards before reaching the glacis in front
of the second line. The Scottish Rifles assaulted this position by day
without much artillery support, but they took it in magnificent style.
It looked as if the Turks had accepted the verdict, but at night they
returned to a brown hill on the right and drove the 4th Royal Scots
from it. This battalion came back soon afterwards and retook the
hill with the assistance of some Gurkhas of General Colston's 233rd
Infantry Brigade, and the Turk retired to another spot, hoping that
his luck would change. While this fighting was going on about Burkah
the 155th Brigade went ahead up a road which the cavalry said was
strongly held. They got eight miles north of Esdud, and were in
advance of the cavalry, intending to try to secure the two heights
and villages of Katrah and Mughar on the following day. Katrah was a
village on a long mound south of Mughar, native mud huts constituting
its southern part, whilst separated from it on the northern side by
some gardens was a pretty little Jewish settlement whose red-tiled
houses and orderly well-cared-for orchards spoke of the industry of
these settlers in Zion. All over the hill right up to the houses the
cactus flourished, and the hedges were a replica of the terrible
obstacles at Gaza. From Katrah the ground sloped down to the flat on
all four sides, so that the village seemed to stand on an island in
the plain. A mile due west of it was Beshshit, while one mile to the
north across more than one wadi stood El Mughar at the southern end of
an irregular line of hills which separated Yebnah and Akir, which will
be more readily recognised, the former as the Jamnia of the Jews and
the latter as Ekron, one of the famous Philistine cities. While the
75th Division was forcing back the line Turmus-Kustineh-Yasur and
Mesmiyeh athwart the road to Junction Station the 155th Brigade
attacked Katrah. The whole of the artillery of two divisions opened a
bombardment of the line at eight o'clock, but the Turks showed more
willingness to concede ground on the east than at Katrah, where the
machine-gun fire was exceptionally heavy. General Pollak M'Call
decided to assault the village with the bulk of his brigade, and
seizing a rifle and bayonet from a wounded man, led the charge
himself, took the village, and gradually cleared the enemy out of the
cactus-enclosed gardens. The enemy losses at Katrah were very heavy.
In crossing a rectangular field many Turks were caught in a cross fire
from our machine guns, and over 400 dead were counted in this one
field.



CHAPTER XI

TWO YEOMANRY CHARGES


In front of the mud huts of Mughar, so closely packed together on the
southern slope of the hill that the dwellings at the bottom seemed to
keep the upper houses from falling into the plain, there was a long
oval garden with a clump of cypresses in the centre, the whole
surrounded by cactus hedges of great age and strength. In the
cypresses was a nest of machine guns whose crews had a perfect view
of an advance from Katrah. The infantry had to advance over flat open
ground to the edge of the garden. The Turkish machine-gunners and
riflemen in the garden and village were supported by artillery firing
from behind the ridge at the back of the village, and although the
brigade made repeated efforts to get on, its advance was held up in
the early afternoon, and it seemed impossible to take the place by
infantry from the south in the clear light of a November afternoon.
The 6th Mounted Brigade commanded by Brigadier-General C.A.C. Godwin,
D.S.O., composed of the 1/1st Bucks Hussars, 1/1st Berkshire Yeomanry,
and 1/1st Dorset Yeomanry, the Berkshire battery Royal Horse
Artillery, and the 17th Machine Gun Squadron--old campaigners with
the Egyptian Expeditionary Force--had worked round to the left of
the Lowlanders and had reached a point about two miles south-west of
Yebnah, that place having been occupied by the 8th Mounted Brigade,
composed of the 1/1st City of London Yeomanry, 1/1st County of London
Yeomanry, and the 1/3rd County of London Yeomanry. At half-past twelve
the Bucks Hussars less one squadron and the Berks battery, which were
in the rear of the brigade, advanced _via_ Beshshit to the wadi Janus,
a deep watercourse with precipitous banks running across the plain
east of Yebnah and joining the wadi Rubin. One squadron of the Bucks
Hussars had entered Yebnah from the east, co-operating with the 8th
Brigade. General Godwin was told over the telephone that the infantry
attack was held up and that his brigade would advance to take Mughar.
This order was confirmed by telegram a quarter of an hour later as
the brigadier was about to reconnoitre a line of approach. The Berks
battery began shelling Mughar and the ridge behind the village from a
position half a mile north of Beshshit screened by some trees. Brigade
headquarters joined the Bucks Hussars headquarters in the wadi Janus
half a mile south-east of Yebnah, where Lieut.-Colonel the Hon. F.
Cripps commanding the Bucks Hussars had, with splendid judgment,
already commenced a valuable reconnaissance, the Dorset and Berks
Yeomanry being halted in a depression out of sight a few hundred yards
behind. The Turks had the best possible observation, and, knowing they
were holding up the infantry, concentrated their attention upon the
cavalry. Therein they showed good judgment, for it was from the
mounted troops the heavy blow was to fall. Lieut. Perkins, Bucks
Hussars, was sent forward to reconnoitre the wadi Shellal el Ghor,
which runs parallel to and east of the wadi Janus. He became the
target of every kind of fire, guns, machine guns, and rifles opening
on him from the ridge whenever he exposed himself. Captain Patron, of
the 17th Machine Gun Squadron, was similarly treated while examining
a position from which to cover the advance of the brigade with
concentrated machine-gun fire. It was not an easy thing to get cavalry
into position for a mounted attack. Except in the wadis the plain
between Yebnah and Mughar offered no cover and was within easy range
of the enemy's guns. The wadi Janus was a deep slit in the ground with
sides of clay falling almost sheer to the stony bottom. It was hard to
get horses into the wadi and equally troublesome to get them to bank
again, and the wadi in most places was so narrow that horses could
only move in single file. The Dorsets were brought up in small parties
to join the Bucks in the wadi, and they had to run the gauntlet of
shell and rifle fire. The Berks were to enter the wadi immediately the
Bucks had left it. Behind Mughar village and its gardens the ground
falls sharply, then rises again and forms a rocky hill some 300 yards
long. There is another decline, and north of it a conical shaped hill,
also stony and barren, though before the crest is reached there is
some undulating ground which would have afforded a little cover if the
cunning Turks had not posted machine guns on it. The Dorset Yeomanry
were ordered to attack this latter hill and the Bucks Hussars the
ridge between it and Mughar village, the Berks Yeomanry to be kept in
support. There seems to be no reason for doubting that Mughar would
not have been captured that day but for the extremely brilliant charge
of these home counties yeomen. The 155th Brigade was still held fast
in that part of the wadi Janus which gave cover south-west and south
of Mughar, and after the charge had been completely successful and the
yeomanry were working forward to clear up the village a message was
received--timed 2.45 P.M., but received at 4 P.M.--which shows the
difficulties facing that very gallant infantry brigade: '52nd Division
unable to make progress. Co-operate and turn Mughar from the north.'

It was a hot bright afternoon. The dispositions having been made, the
Bucks Hussars and Dorset Yeomanry got out of the wadi and commenced
their mounted attack, the Berks battery in the meantime having
registered on certain points. The Bucks Hussars, in column of
squadrons extended to four yards interval, advanced at a trot from
the wadi, which was 3000 yards distant from the ridge which was their
objective. Two machine guns were attached to the Bucks and two to the
Dorsets, and the other guns under Captain Patron were mounted in a
position which that officer had chosen in the wadi El Ghor from which
they could bring to bear a heavy fire almost up to the moment the
Bucks should be on th

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/10098