very heavy losses, but had incalculably lessened the task of both our
infantry and cavalry. They had prevented the Turk from fighting
effective rear-guard actions against the pursuing infantry, and had
hammered him so soundly that he was incapable of any attempt to burst
through our cordon of cavalry. Without this help from the airmen,
General Allenby must still have won a great victory; but it would have
been much short of the sensational one achieved. Progress must have been
much slower, and our casualties heavier by many thousands.
Before the fight was two days old our aeroplanes were using aerodromes
captured from the enemy. At one point on the march to Damascus, when we
were a hundred miles from our starting-place, a number of airmen came up
and established a flying ground abreast of our cavalry advance guard.
Throughout the operations an air-post service was maintained between the
leading troops and General Headquarters. An Australian Brigadier and a
Colonel of the Light Horse, who were in hospital far down the line when
the campaign opened, surprised their troops by alighting from aeroplanes
in their midst, a hundred miles from our starting-point.
GERMANS FIGHT WELL
The few thousand Germans who were with the Turkish 7th and 8th Armies
west of the Jordan met the same fate as their allies; nearly all were
destroyed or captured. But one must give the Germans credit for a stout
resistance. Throughout, they fought resolutely to avert the great
disaster, and if all of them did not continue the struggle to the death,
it must be remembered that they were in a desperate situation. They
handled nearly all of the hundreds of machine guns, which were the most
formidable weapons possessed by the enemy. All the way to Damascus they
fought stout rear-guard actions.
Having the great body of Turks on Samaria safe, and most of them already
accounted for, General Allenby decided to clear Haifa; the operation
demonstrated the relative morale of the Turks and Germans. A flying
reconnaissance of armoured cars and smaller cars of the Light Car Patrol
was pushed into the outskirts of the town. About three miles from the
town our force saw the heads of a party of Turks in a strong redoubt two
hundred yards from the road. The armoured cars halted and swept the
Turkish parapet with their machine guns. The white flag was at once
hoisted, and about eighty Turks came out without firing a shot. Two
miles further on, the British came upon an Austrian battery of light
field guns, supported by German machine gunners. Our little probing
expedition was at once brought to a standstill, and was not sorry to
pull out. Next day the Indians and Yeomanry, supported by horse
artillery, rode into the town, and again the only opposition came from
the Austrians and Germans. “We tried to cover the Turks’ retreat,” said
a captured German officer, “but we expected them to do something, if
only keep their heads. At last we decided they were not worth fighting
for.”
[Illustration:
THE ROAD TO JERICHO
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration:
ISMAILIA
]
EAST OF JORDAN
Before Haifa fell our troops were moving swiftly east of Jordan. A
Division of Indian and Yeomanry cavalry crossed the Jordan about Beisan
and rode eastward. Simultaneously, the Anzac Mounted Division forded and
swam the river further to the south, and moved on Es Salt and Amman. The
Australians and New Zealanders were familiar with the country. This was
their third expedition to the Plateau of Moab and the heights of Gilead.
They knew every goat-walk on the steep mountain side. This time they had
come to stay; the Fourth Turkish Army on the East was to share the fate
of the 7th and 8th Armies on Samaria. The tactics employed on both sides
of the river were broadly similar. General Allenby depended for success
upon the speed and stamina of his horses. Before the operations
commenced, the Turk held a defensive position which was roughly an
extension of his line west of the Jordan. He was strong in the foothills
of Gilead; on the mountain he had his base at Es Salt, and at Amman he
had a substantial force guarding a vital series of tunnels and viaducts
on his Hedjaz railway. Beyond the railway the Eastern Palestine Range
flattens out on the wide desert, which extends right across to the
Euphrates. On the fringe of the desert was the Army of the Sherif of
Mecca, a picturesque, galloping, thrusting, well-armed force. The Arabs
harassed the Turk by day and night, repeatedly dashing in and cutting
his railway and telegraph communications with Damascus. When attacked,
they would fade away into the wide desert and leave the slow-footed Turk
in the air. While the Anzacs marched upon Es Salt and Amman, the Arabs
made a detour in the desert, appeared on the flank of the enemy north of
Deraa, and cut the railway where the Hedjaz line junctions with the line
which supplied the Turks west of the Jordan.
THE RACE FOR DAMASCUS
Meanwhile the Indian and Yeomanry Division had crossed Eastern Palestine
and reached Deraa, where it joined hands with the Arab army. Then the
Arabs, the Indians and the Yeomanry sped on towards Damascus. There was
still a chance of escape for some 20,000 Turks, who had moved northwards
of Deraa before the arrival of our forces. These struggled gamely
towards Damascus, hoping either to make a stand at that great base or to
escape by rail to the north. But General Chauvel still had in hand the
Australian Mounted Division and a strong force of Indians and Yeomanry,
which had returned to the Jordan after the capture of Haifa. With the
Australians leading, he marched from Esdraelon Plain north-east across
Jordan for Damascus. Then ensued one of the grand races of the war. Our
tired horses were called upon for the heaviest work of the lightning
campaign. Marching by Beisan, the 4th Light Horse Brigade, after a stiff
fight—the most expensive cavalry fight in the campaign—took Semakh, and
then, co-operating with the 3rd Brigade, which had come down from
Nazareth, occupied Tiberias. After a day’s partial rest, during which
our men swam and fished in the blue waters of Galilee, the Australian
Division marched swiftly for the Jordan crossing, a few miles south of
Lake Huleh. But the enemy was now seized of our intention, and the
German machine gunners put up a fine resistance. Their stand at Semakh
aimed at preventing us reaching Damascus before the 20,000 Turks, who
were retreating from the direction of Deraa, and to give time for the
removal of as many military stores as possible from the city. South of
Lake Huleh, also, the Germans fought well and delayed us for a few
hours. We then ran through as far as Kunneitra, but, a few miles further
on, were again held up by machine guns and a field battery.
GREAT-HEARTED HORSES
Our horses had covered, with marching and fighting, an average of thirty
and forty miles a day. Thousands of Australian-bred animals must have
covered some 400 miles in twelve days, a very fine performance when it
is remembered that they carried a load exceeding an average of 250lbs.
and had been on short rations. On our ride to Damascus, the excellent
work of the staff was demonstrated again. As the advance guard of the
4th Light Horse Regiment (Victorian), travelling north-east, came within
view of the green and generous plain of Damascus, we saw, some eight
miles away on our right, and moving north-west, a great converging
column of the fugitive Turks from Deraa. Nearly all of these were
captured, the Germans once more fighting well with their machine guns.
But even the Germans had now almost given up hope, and on this last day
before Damascus, and in the two days which followed, they abandoned
their machine guns, and fled at the galloping approach of the
Australians. That evening many thousands of prisoners were captured by
the 3rd and 5th Australian Light Horse Brigades, and the city was
enveloped.
[Illustration:
IN THE JORDAN VALLEY
SHOPPING IN JERICHO
]
[Illustration:
“BAKSHEESH”
]
[Illustration:
A MEAL OUTSIDE THE BIVVIES
]
[Illustration:
THE DEAD SEA (SUNRISE)
_By Lieut. G. W. Lambert_
]
[Illustration:
SCOTTIES ON A ROUTE MARCH
]
ABANA GORGE
At dusk, in the Abana Pass, which leads out from Damascus towards
Beirut, another disaster befell the enemy. Here, a column many miles in
length was committed in a deep and narrow and singularly beautiful
gorge. The floor of the gorge is less than a hundred yards across, and
it is crowded with the Abana River—a rushing, mountain torrent,—a
railway and a road. The river banks are overgrown with trees and bushes;
the railway and road cross and re-cross the tumbling stream. On either
side rise the gaunt cliffs of the desert. In this brief survey it is
impossible to describe the fight between the long enemy column and the
handful of dismounted Light Horsemen of the 3rd and 5th Brigades, who
were perched in pockets of the cliffs on either side. The Germans,
working their machine guns from the tops of motor wagons and lorries,
fought to the death. Three hundred and seventy officers and men were
killed, and fell among the dead and dying horses in the wild tumult of
the chaotic column. We had scarcely a man hit. That ended the attempt to
leave Damascus by the west; but the enemy was streaming out by the north
along the road to Aleppo. Their run, however, was brief. Early next
morning the 3rd Light Horse Brigade—the first force to enter
Damascus—was in hot pursuit. The German machine gunners again attempted
a rear-guard, but they could not withstand the charges of the elated
Light Horsemen. Thousands of prisoners and hundreds of machine guns were
taken by the Brigade.
On the morning of 1st October a squadron of the 4th Light Horse Regiment
received orders to patrol into the city. Winding along the crooked lanes
between the irrigated orchards and gardens, it came upon the great
Turkish barracks, swarming with troops. The Turks did not at once
surrender, and the squadron leader, before attacking, awaited the
arrival of the remainder of the Regiment. Then followed a fitting
termination to the wonderful, and practically bloodless, British ride. A
few hundred of the 4th Light Horse took nearly 12,000 prisoners in
Damascus before noon, together with dozens of field pieces and scores of
machine guns. Scarcely a shot was fired. There was no formal surrender;
each body of men laid down its arms as the Australians rode up.
EXULTANT ARABS
The Victorians entered the city and joined up with the exulting Arabs.
These two forces, which had started hundreds of miles apart with two
mountain systems intervening, were mingled together in the midst of the
swirling, madly-excited populace. To the Arab, Damascus was the dazzling
prize, the promised reward. Here he was to proclaim and set up his
government. Riding forth from his tent on the desert, or his little mud
village, he was, in Damascus, the lord of a city of 250,000 souls—the
oldest city in the world, and distinguished by the richness and strange
character and beauty of its surroundings. Fired with pride, his long
robes touched with brilliant patches of silk, he rode the streets on his
sprightly desert horse, caparisoned with richly woven Persian
saddle-bags. His scabbard of gold and silver flashed in the sunlight,
and he fired his rifle freely at the skies. Ameer Feisal, the third son
of the Sherif of Mecca, who was soon to be proclaimed the new ruler,
rode into the city. The Arabs of the city gave an almost fanatical
greeting to the Prince.
THE GALLOP INTO DAMASCUS
Although the Victorians secured the great haul of prisoners, the first
troops to enter Damascus were the Light Horsemen from Western Australia,
who, also, had had the distinction of being the first mounted men to
enter Jerusalem, in December. The Western Australians found their way
into Damascus by accident, and their ride was one of the most dramatic
and picturesque incidents of the campaign.
The 3rd Light Horse Brigade, to which the Western Australians belong,
spent the night in the Abana Gorge, a few miles from Damascus, to the
west along the Beirut Road. Brigadier-General Wilson was under orders to
move at dawn and seize the road leading from the city northward towards
Aleppo. It was hoped that a track would be found around the outskirts of
the town, but this proved impracticable. The Brigade, therefore, with a
troop of scouts leading, and the Western Australians following, came
down the Abana Gorge, clearing a track through the shambles of dead
Turks and Germans and hundreds of camels and horses, heaped on the road
in the fighting of the evening before. It soon became plain to the
officer second in command of the Western Australians, who was riding
ahead with the scouts, that the only way to the Aleppo road lay through
the heart of Damascus. The city had not surrendered, and he did not know
how many of the enemy it contained. But he decided on the bold course,
and pressed on. As the scouts passed the outskirts of the city, riding a
narrow road with the river on one side and a prolonged, mud-built garden
wall on the other, there was a sudden burst of Turkish rifle fire. No
one was hit, and the officer in command, checking the scouts until the
advanced squadron of Western Australians came up, ordered drawn swords,
and dashed on at a gallop. Across the river, two or three hundred yards
away, were thousands of Turks at the barracks. For a moment, the enemy
decision was in the balance. But the sight of the great Australian
horses coming at a gallop (the Turks and natives never ceased to marvel
at the size of our horses), the flashing swords, and the ring of shoes
upon the metal, turned the scale. “The shooting by the Turks,” said one
of our officers, “gave way, in a second, to the clapping of hands by the
citizens.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
MAJOR-GEN. CHAYTOR RECEIVES A DEPUTATION OF ARAB CHIEFS NEAR AMMAN
]
[Illustration:
JERUSALEM
]
The Australians rode hard, scattering the excited people from their
track. The firing increased, but its character had changed. The shots
were now coming from native Arabs, who were expressing their feelings,
in the popular Arab way, by blazing at the heavens. Across the river
ahead, in front of the large new Town Hall, a huge crowd was assembled,
and clattering over a bridge, the cavalry pulled up at the steps of the
building. Instantly, there were hundreds of eager horse-holders, and an
intense demonstration of goodwill. The East was greeting the victors of
the day. Three officers, all carrying their revolvers, entered the
building, and demanded the civil governor. They were at once taken
upstairs to that personage, a trim, little middle-aged Turk, who greeted
them with complete calm and much dignity, and begged to know their
wishes. He was told that a great British force of cavalry was entering
the town, and that he would be held responsible for good order and the
protection of property; the shooting in the streets must instantly
cease. The Governor replied that there was nothing to fear from the
civil population, that the shooting was merely the expression of an
excess of feeling, and that the British wishes would be respected in
every way. He then begged the Australian officers to accept his
hospitality.
A reliable guide was obtained and the party hurried forward. As the
Australians continued their ride through the city they received the
honours traditionally lavished on conquerors. The stalls were emptied of
their incomparable grapes and pomegranates, which were handed up to the
passing horsemen. Crowds hung to their stirrups and ran along with their
hands on the bridle reins. They were smothered with perfumes. Every man
who smoked enjoyed a gift cigar. Dark-eyed women and pretty girls
appeared in every window, some of them the wives, doubtless, of Turkish
soldiers, timidly, and showing no pleasure; others boldly waved their
hands, smiled their welcome, and threw down scents and other favours.
[Illustration: OUTLINE MAP OF SYRIA]
VETERANS
It was a wonderful hour for our young Australian countrymen. But the
long war had made them into reserved men of the world, and the streets
of old Damascus were but a stage in the long path of the war. They rode,
very dusty and unshaved, their big hats battered and drooping, through
the tumultuous populace of the oldest city in the world, with the same
easy, casual bearing, and the same quiet self-confidence that are their
distinctive characteristic on their country tracks at home. They ate
their grapes and smoked their cigars, and missed no pretty eyes at the
windows; but they displayed no excitement or elation. They had become
true soldiers of fortune. And their long-tailed horses, at home now,
like their owners, on any road in any country, saw nothing in the
shouting mob or banging rifles, or the narrow ways and many colours of
the bazaars, to cause them once to start, shy, or even cock an ear. The
3rd Brigade rode out to a series of ugly, but highly successful, actions
with stout rear-guards of German machine gunners. Few men, in any age,
have passed through twenty-four more adventurous and gratifying hours
than they during this first day around Damascus.
BEAUTIFUL DAMASCUS
The district of Damascus is an irrigation settlement on a vast scale,
set in the midst of comparative desert. So rich and close are the
orchards, and so tall the plantations of poplars and other decorative
trees, that, looking over the city from the neighbouring hills, all you
see of the city of 250,000 people are the stately minarets of its many
mosques and the roofs of the larger residences of the rich. Immediately
to the west of the town rises the bare, glaring mountain side, and to
the east and north and south of the green expanse of gardens you ride
out upon the harsh and treeless plain. Damascus owes all its wealth,
even its very existence, to the torrential Abana River, which, surging
down from Anti-Lebanon, bursts from the mountain gorge on to the plain
and, splitting up into several beautiful streams, has made a rural
paradise on the edge of the Arabian wilderness.
[Illustration:
AUSTRALIANS ON THE ROAD TO JERUSALEM
]
[Illustration:
AN AUSTRALIAN FLYING SQUADRON IN PALESTINE
_Photos, in colour by Capt. Frank Hurley_
]
In Palestine the troops looked in vain for the Promised Land “flowing
with milk and honey.” The Plain of Philistia was fertile, but apart from
the few Jewish and German colonies, and the orange groves about Jaffa,
it was, with all its natural possibilities, a land bare and neglected, a
reproachful ghost of a great life that is gone. But Damascus was a prize
worth the winning. Here, after nearly three years of desert and
exhausted, unfruitful regions, was an area good to look upon, and
teeming with an active people. Few of us were sorry that we had at last
outrun our supplies, or rather, that the huge capture of prisoners had
somewhat strained the wonderful commissariat which had so gallantly kept
at the heels of the galloping cavalry, and that a brief halt was
necessary for the Australian Mounted Division. For a month some of the
Regiments were in camps in the gardens around the city, and man and
horse never accepted rest more gratefully. After thirteen days on bully
and biscuit, it was good to know fresh meat and bread again; the mutton
was of the best, and the bread, if dark and coarse and heavy, was still
a long way ahead of biscuit. We were too late for the famous Damascus
apricots, but there were grapes for the multitude, and pears and apples
and pomegranates, and, also, raisins and other dried fruits and
specialties in Eastern sweetmeats. Best of all, every camp was within
sight and sound of many running waters.
Noisy little streams crossed our path a hundred times a day. Follow one
along, and it suddenly disappeared into an underground passage, to burst
forth like a spring a hundred yards away. In the streets, many of the
gutters are river-fed waterways, and, to reduce the dust, the tired
civic authorities block the drains and cause an effective little flood,
which is extended by boys splashing with their hands. You buy grapes at
the stalls, and carry them a few yards to dip into the waters of a
mountain stream. But Damascus is dirty and insanitary. Without the purge
of the Abana waters, flushing through it and under it, the city would
die of its filth in a single summer. And even with its beautiful streams
it proved a false friend to great numbers of Australians. The Australian
Mounted division suffered more sickness in the Damascus area than
anywhere else in the campaign.
THE ANZACS’ PART
In most of the operations which cleared Sinai and Palestine of the Turk,
the lead was entrusted to the veterans of the Anzac Mounted Division. In
this last and greatest campaign of all, the Division found itself away
from the spectacular side of the enterprise. A trusty mounted Division
was needed for the subsidiary, but highly important, work on Moab and
Gilead, east of Jordan, and the choice fell upon the Anzacs.
The Australians and New Zealanders complained about their luck. But
their task made one strong appeal to them. Twice before they had been
across the Jordan, and twice they had returned leaving not a few of
their men in enemy graves. The two great raids over the river, early in
the year, were brilliantly successful, as raids. Each time our purpose
was achieved. But each time our men broke off the fight strongly against
their inclination, and prayed for the day when they would get orders to
go over and see the job through, and stay. Old Amman, the ancient
Philadelphia, was especially coveted by our men. There, in March, 1918,
we had fought for days over sodden ground in extreme winter weather and
come away, the railway having been well broken, just after the New
Zealanders had won into the town. This time, Australians and New
Zealanders competed, in a sporting way, for first entry, and the 5th
Light Horse Regiment, from Queensland, narrowly gained the honour.
At the outset, the Anzacs, and the small infantry force operating with
them, made up chiefly of the Jewish Battalion, the British West Indians
and troops from India proper, had no chance of breaking out of our
bridgeheads east of the river. Their orders were to keep in very close
and firm touch with the enemy, and to demolish him as soon as he began
to withdraw in consequence of his defeat on Samaria. Also, this Jordan
Valley force was to push northwards up the Valley, and complete the
cordon round the two Turkish armies on Samaria. Both missions were
admirably accomplished. While the New Zealanders and infantry were
advancing up the Valley, the Australians were probing the strongly
entrenched and wired positions along the Moab and Gilead foothills,
across the river. As soon as the Turk moved the two Australian Brigades
pounced upon his rear-guard, and fought him as he climbed the narrow
wady tracks up on to the tableland. Meanwhile, the New Zealanders,
crossing away to the north at Jisr el Darnie, ascended the goat-track
which leads from there to Es Salt, and, for the third time in the
campaign, that old stone-built town was in Australasian hands.
All the way our men had evidence of the success of the British bluff.
The Turks’ defences on the foothills, and higher up, were particularly
strong. Had our main attack gone that way, the fight would have been
very bitter, with the enemy in a strong natural position. But now the
Turks were compelled to abandon their stronghold because of their
disaster in the west, and, also, because the Arabs had broken their
communications to the north, and were joining hands with a British and
Indian cavalry Division right across those communications. As the
Australians passed Shunet Nimrin, they discovered a long-range navy gun
lying on its side, a piece known to them as “Nimrin Nellie” and “Jericho
Jane,” with which the Turk had often made our camps near Jericho dusty
and unpleasant.
[Illustration:
ORANGE SELLER, JAFFA
]
[Illustration:
IN THE SHADE
]
[Illustration:
THE VILLAGE WELL
NATIVE PLOUGH AND TEAM
]
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
JAFFA
]
[Illustration:
AUSTRALIANS PRIOR TO THE FIGHT FOR HEIGHTS OF NALIN
_Photos, in colour by Capt. Frank Hurley_
]
AMMAN CAPTURED