LOOKING TOWARDS JERUSALEM
The Anzac Mounted Division had only the 1st Australian Light Horse and
the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade operating with it on the 14th.
The Australians, by the evening, were in the thick olive groves on the
south of Ramleh, and on the ridges about Surafend. On their left the
Turks were violently opposing the New Zealanders who were working
along the sand-dunes with the port and town of Jaffa as their ultimate
objective. There was one very fierce struggle in the course of the
day. A force attacked a New Zealand regiment in great strength and for
the moment secured the advantage, but the regiment got to grips with
the enemy with hand-grenades and bayonets, and so completely repulsed
them that they fled in hopeless disorder leaving many dead and wounded
behind them. It was unfortunate that there was no mobile reserve
available for pursuit, as the Turks were in such a plight that a large
number would have been rounded up. General Cox's brigade seized Ramleh
on the morning of the 15th, taking ninety prisoners, and then advanced
and captured Ludd, being careful that no harm should come to the
building which holds the grave of St. George. In Ludd 360 prisoners
were taken, and the brigade carried out a good deal of demolition work
on the railway running north. The New Zealanders made Jaffa by noon
on the 16th, the Turks evacuating the town during the morning without
making any attempt to destroy it, though there was one gross piece of
vandalism in a Christian cemetery where monuments and tombstones had
been thrown down and broken. In the meantime, in order to protect the
rear of the infantry, five battalions of the 52nd Division with three
batteries were stationed at Yebnah, Mughar, and Akir until they could
be relieved by units of the 54th Division advancing from Gaza. To
enable the 54th to move, the transport lent to the 52nd and 75th
Divisions had to be returned, which did not make the supply of those
divisions any easier. The main line of railway was still a long way in
the rear, and the landing of stores by the Navy at the mouth of the
wadi Sukereir had not yet begun. A little later, and before Jaffa had
been made secure enough for the use of ships, many thousands of tons
of supplies and ammunition were put ashore at the wadi's mouth, and at
a time when heavy rains damaged the newly constructed railway tracks
the Sukereir base of supply was an inestimable boon. Yet there were
times when the infantry had a bare day's supply with them, though
they had their iron rations to fall back upon. It speaks well for
the supply branch that in the long forward move of XXIst Corps the
infantry were never once put on short rations.
While the 54th were coming up to take over from the 52nd, plans were
prepared for the further advance on Jerusalem. The Commander-in-Chief
was deeply anxious that there should be no fighting of any description
near the Holy Places, and he gave the Turks a chance of being
chivalrous and of accepting the inevitable. We had got so far that the
ancient routes taken by armies which had captured Jerusalem were just
before us. The Turkish forces were disorganised by heavy and repeated
defeats, the men demoralised and not in good condition, and there was
no hope for them that they could receive sufficient reinforcements
to enable them to stave off the ultimate capture of Bethlehem and
Jerusalem, though as events proved they could still put up a stout
defence. We know from papers taken from the enemy that the Turks
believed General Allenby intended to go right up the plain to get
to the defile leading to Messudieh and Nablus and thus threaten the
Hedjaz railway, in which case the position of the enemy in the Holy
City would be hopeless, and the Turks formed an assault group of three
infantry divisions in the neighbourhood of Tul Keram to prevent this,
and continued to hold on to Jerusalem. General Allenby proposed to
strike through the hills to the north-east to try to get across the
Jerusalem-Nablus road about Bireh (the ancient Beeroth), and in this
operation success would have enabled him to cut off the enemy forces
in and about the Holy City, when their only line of retreat would have
been through Jericho and the east of the Jordan. The Turks decided
to oppose this plan and to make us fight for Jerusalem. That was
disappointing, but in the end it could not have suited us better, for
it showed to our own people and to the world how after the Turks had
declined an opportunity of showing a desire to preserve the Holy
Places from attack--an opportunity prompted by our strength, not by
any fear that victory could not be won--General Allenby was still able
to achieve his great objective without a drop of blood being spilled
near any of the Holy Sites, and without so much as a stray rifle
bullet searing any of their walls. That indeed was the triumph of
military practice, and when Jerusalem fell for the twenty-third time,
and thus for the first time passed into the hands of British soldiers,
the whole force felt that the sacrifices which had been made on the
gaunt forbidding hills to the north-west were worth the price, and
that the graves of Englishman, Scot and Colonial, of Gurkha, Punjabi,
and Sikh, were monuments to the honour of British arms. The scheme was
that the 75th Division would advance along the main Jerusalem road,
which cuts into the hills about three miles east of Latron, and occupy
Kuryet el Enab, and that the Lowland Division should go through Ludd,
strike eastwards and advance to Beit Likia to turn from the north the
hills through which the road passes, the Yeomanry Mounted Division
on the left flank of the 52nd Division to press on to Bireh, on the
Nablus road about a dozen miles north of Jerusalem. A brief survey
of the country to be attacked would convince even a civilian of the
extreme difficulties of the undertaking. North and east of Latron
(which was not yet ours) frown the hills which constitute this
important section of the Judean range, the backbone of Palestine.
The hills are steep and high, separated one from another by narrow
valleys, clothed here and there with fir and olive trees, but
elsewhere a mass of rocks and boulders, bare and inhospitable.
Practically every hill commands another. There is only one road--the
main one--and this about three miles east of Latron passes up a narrow
defile with rugged mountains on either side. There is an old Roman
road to the north, but, unused for centuries, it is now a road only in
name, the very trace of it being lost in many places. In this strong
country men fought of old, and the defenders not infrequently held
their own against odds. It is pre-eminently suitable for defence, and
if the warriors of the past found that flint-tipped shafts of wood
would keep the invader at bay, how much more easily could a modern
army equipped with rifles of precision and machine guns adapt Nature
to its advantage? It will always be a marvel to me how in a country
where one machine gun in defence could hold up a battalion, we made
such rapid progress, and how having got so deep into the range it was
possible for us to feed our front. We had no luck with the weather.
In advancing over the plain the troops had suffered from the abnormal
heat, and many of the wells had been destroyed or damaged by the
retreating enemy. In the hills the troops had to endure heavy rains
and piercingly cold winds, with mud a foot deep on the roads and
the earth so slippery on the hills that only donkey transport was
serviceable. Yet despite all adverse circumstances the infantry and
yeomanry pressed on, and if they did not secure all objectives, their
dash, resource, and magnificent determination at least paved the way
for ultimate triumph.
To the trials of hard fighting and marching on field rations the wet
added a severe test of physical endurance. The troops were in enemy
country where they scrupulously avoided every native village, and no
wall or roof stood to shelter them from wind or water. The heat of
the first two weeks of November changed with a most undesirable
suddenness, and though the days continued agreeably warm on the plain
into December, the nights became chilly and then desperately cold. The
single blanket carried in the pack--most of the infantry on the march
had no blanket at all--did not give sufficient warmth to men whose
blood had been thinned by long months of work under a pitiless Eastern
sun, and lucky was the soldier who secured even broken sleep in the
early morning hours of that fighting march across the northern part of
the Maritime Plain. The Generals, with one eye on the enemy and the
other on the weather, must have been dismayed in the third week of
November at the gathering storm clouds which in bursting flooded the
plain with rains unusually heavy for this period of the year. The
surface is a very light cotton soil several feet deep. When baked by
summer sun it has a cracked hard crust giving a firm foothold for man
and horse, and yielding only slightly to the wheels of light cars;
even laden lorries made easy tracks over the country. The lorries
generally kept off the ill-made unrolled Turkish road which had been
constructed for winter use and, except for slight deviations to avoid
wadis and gullies cut by Nature to carry off surplus water, the supply
columns could move in almost as direct a course as the flying men.
When the heavens opened all this was altered. The first storm turned
the top into a slippery, greasy mass. In an hour or two the rain
soaked down into the light earth, and any lorry driver pulling out of
the line to avoid a skidding vehicle ahead, had the almost certainty
of finding his car and load come to a full stop with the wheels held
fast axle deep in the soft soil. An hour's hard digging, the fixing
of planks beneath the wheels, and a towing cable from another lorry
sometimes got the machine on to the pressed-down track again and
enabled it to move ahead for a few miles, but many were the supply
vehicles that had to wait for a couple of sunny days to dry a path for
them.
My own experience of the first of the winter rains was so like that of
others in the force who moved on wheels that I may give some idea of
the conditions by recounting it. We had taken Ludd and Ramleh, and
guided by the ruined tower of the Church of the Forty Martyrs I had
followed in the cavalry's wake. I dallied on the way back to see if
Akir presented to the latter-day Crusader any signs of its former
strength when it stood as the Philistine stronghold of Ekron. Near
where the old city had been the ghastly sight of Turks cut down by
yeomanry during a hot pursuit offended the senses of sight and smell,
and when you saw natives moving towards their village at a rate
somewhat in excess of their customary shuffling gait you were almost
led to think that their superstitious fears were driving them home
before sundown lest darkness should raise the ghosts of the Turkish
dead. A few of the Jewish settlers, whose industry has improved the
landscape, were leaving the fields and orchards they tended so well,
though there was still more than an hour of daylight and their tasks
were not yet done. They were weatherwise. They could have been deaf to
the rumblings in the south and still have noticed the coming of the
storm. I was some forty miles from the spot at which my despatch could
be censored and passed over land wire and cable to London, when a
vivid lightning flash warned me that the elements were in forbidding
mood and that I had misread the obvious signal of the natives'
homeward movement.
The map showed a path from Akir through Mansura towards Junction
Station, from which the so-called Turkish road ran south. In the
gathering gloom my driver picked up wheel tracks through an olive
orchard and, crossing a nullah, found the marks of a Ford car's wheels
on the other side. The rain fell heavily and soon obliterated all
signs of a car's progress, and with darkness coming on there was
a prospect of a shivering night with a wet skin in the open. An
Australian doctor going up to his regiment at grips with the Turk told
me that he had no doubt we were on the right road, for he had been
given a line through Mansura, which must be the farmhouse ahead of us.
These Australians have a keen nose for country and you have a sense
of security in following them. The doctor's horse was slipping in the
mud, but my car made even worse going. It skidded to right and left,
and only by the skill and coolness of my driver was I saved a ducking
in a narrow wadi now full of storm water. After much low-gear work we
pulled up a slight rise and saw ahead of us one or two little fires.
Under the lee of a dilapidated wall some Scottish infantry were
brewing tea and making the most of a slight shelter. It was Mansura,
and if we bore to the right and kept the track beaten down by lorries
across a field we might, by the favour of fortune, reach Junction
Station during the night. The Scots had arranged a bivouac in that
field before it became sodden. They knew how bad it had got, and a
native instinct to be hospitable prompted an invitation to share the
fire for the night. However, London was waiting for news and I decided
to press on. The road could not be worse than the sea of mud in which
I was floundering, and it might be better. We turned right-handed
and after a struggle came up against three lorry drivers hopelessly
marooned. They had turned in. Up a greasy bank we came to a stop and
slid back. We tried again and failed. I relieved the car of my weight
and made an effort to push it from behind, but my feet held fast in
the mud and the car cannoned into me when it skidded downhill. 'Better
give it up till the morning,' said an M.T. driver whose sleep was
disturbed by the running of our engine. 'Can't? Who've you got there?
Eh? Oh, very well. Here, Jim, give them a hand or we'll have no sleep
to-night'--or words to that effect. Three of the lorry men and the
engine got us on the move, and before they took mud back with them to
the dry interiors of the lorries they hoped, they said, that we would
reach G.H.Q., but declared that it was hopeless to try.
Before getting much farther a light, waved ahead of us, told of some
one held up. I walked on and found General Butler, the chief of the
Army Veterinary Service with the Force, unable to move an inch. The
efforts of two drivers failed to locate the trouble, and everything
removable was taken off the General's car and put into ours, and with
the heavier load we started off again for Junction Station. This was
not difficult to pick up, for there were many flares burning to enable
working parties to repair engines, rolling stock, and permanent way.
We got on to the road ultimately, carrying more mud on our feet than I
imagined human legs could lift. Leaving a driver and all spare gear at
the station, we thrashed our way along a road metalled with a soft,
friable limestone which had been cut into by the iron-shod wheels of
German lorries until the ruts were fully a foot deep, and the soft
earth foundation was oozing through to the surface. It was desperately
hard to steer a course on this treacherous highway, and a number of
lorries we passed had gone temporarily out of action in ditches. The
Germans with the Turks had blown up most of the culverts, and the road
bridges which had been destroyed had only been lightly repaired with
planks and trestles, no safety rails being in position. To negotiate
these dangerous paths in the dark the driver had to put on all
possible speed and make a dash for it, and he usually got to the other
side before a skid became serious. Most of the lorry drivers put out
no light because they thought no car would be able to move on such a
night, and we had several narrow escapes of finishing our career on a
half-sunken supply motor vehicle.
Reinforcements for infantry battalions moved up the road as we came
down it. They were going to the front to take the place of casualties,
for weather and mud are not considered when bayonets are wanted in the
line. So the stolid British infantryman splashed and slipped his way
towards the enemy, and he would probably have been sleeping that night
if there had not been a risk of his drowning in the mud. The Camel
Transport Corps fought the elements with a courage which deserved
better luck. The camel dislikes many things and is afraid of some. But
if he is capable of thinking at all he regards mud as his greatest
enemy. He cannot stand up in it, and if he slips he has not an
understanding capable of realising that if all his feet do not go
the same way he must spread-eagle and split up. This is what often
happens, but if by good luck a camel should go down sideways he seems
quite content to stay there, and he is so refractory that he prefers
to die rather than help himself to his feet again. On this wild night
I had a good opportunity of seeing white officers encourage the
Egyptian boys in the Camel Transport Corps. At Julis the roadway
passes through the village. There was an ambulance column in
difficulties in the village, and while some cars were being extricated
a camel supply column came up in the opposite direction. The camels
liked neither the headlights nor the running engines, and these had to
be made dark and silent before they would pass. The water was running
over the roadway several inches deep, carrying with it a mass of
garbage and filth which only Arab villagers would tolerate. Officers
and Gyppies coaxed and wheedled the stubborn beasts through Julis,
but outside the place the animals raised a chorus of protest and went
down. They held me up for an hour or more, and though officers and
boys did their utmost to get them going again it was a fruitless
effort, and the poor beasts were off-loaded where they lay. That night
of rain and thunder, wind and cold, was bad alike for man and beast,
but beyond a flippant remark of some soldier doing his best and the
curious chant of the Gyppies' chorus you heard nothing. Tommy could
not trust himself to talk about the weather. It was too bad for words,
for even the strongest.
It took our car ten hours to run forty miles, and as the last ten
miles was over wet sand and on rabbit wire stretched across the
sand where the car could do fifteen miles an hour, we had averaged
something under three miles an hour through the mud. Wet through,
cold, with a face rendered painful to the touch by driven rain, I
reached my tent with a feeling of thankfulness for myself and deep
sympathy for the tens of thousands of brave boys enduring intense
discomfort and fatigue, coupled with the fear of short rations for the
next day or two. The men in the hills which they were just entering
had a worse time than those in the waterlogged plain, but no storms
could damp their enthusiasm. They were beating your enemies and mine,
and they were facing a goal which Britain had never yet won. Jerusalem
the Golden was before them, and the honour and glory of winning it
from the Turk was a prize to attain which no sacrifice was too great.
Those who did not say so behaved in a way to show that they felt it.
They were very gallant, perfect knights, these soldiers of the King.