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.