Part 3

A few weeks later, the 1st Light Horse Brigade and the New Zealanders marched secretly, at night, from Bethlehem by steep mountain tracks, and, co-operating with the 60th (London) Infantry Division, after a sharp fight at Nebi Musa captured Jericho. This exploit was distinguished, as the Anzacs’ work in the campaign has always been, by the remarkable work of our guides. A squadron of the 1st Brigade had the honour of being the first to enter the village; but the winning of the Jordan Valley, like the capture of Jerusalem, was, in the main, due to the solid fighting qualities of the men of London. To-day, all through the Judean Hills, you come upon little wooden crosses which tell of the spirit and self-sacrifice of our good ally, the fighting Cockney.

AMMAN

A brief pause, and then, the Desert Mounted Corps Bridging Train (B Troop, Australian Engineers) having thrown the first bridge across the Jordan, the Anzac Mounted Division, together with the Imperial Camel Brigade and, once again, the Londoners, made their famous rush for the Hedjaz Railway, far out across Jordan to the east, where the Plateau of Moab begins to merge into the sand of the wide Arabian Desert. This expedition, which, so far as the Colonials were concerned, fell chiefly upon the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, the New Zealanders and the Camels, was perhaps the severest we had had since crossing the Canal. Rain fell almost unceasingly for many days. The mountain tracks were so narrow and broken that the Brigades, travelling only by night, moved in single file, leading their horses and camels. The weather was piercingly cold. Men were wet through for several days and nights in which they knew no sleep, and were almost ceaselessly engaged in heavy fighting. In these circumstances, the destruction of some miles of the railway, and the safe withdrawal of the force, was an especially good performance.

ES SALT

A few weeks later practically all the Australian mounted troops, with the exception of the Camels, again crossed the Jordan, and, cutting in behind the Turks after some rare mountaineering feats in the darkness, took possession of Es Salt, a considerable Turkish base. In this enterprise, the 3rd Light Horse Brigade particularly distinguished itself, the 8th Regiment of Victorians alone taking prisoners equal to at least twice their fighting strength. The same Regiment also captured thirty machine guns and large quantities of other war material.

JORDAN VALLEY

During the spring and summer, which were spent in Jordan Valley, there were many highly successful little defensive fights. One of these, in which the Turkish attack fell mainly upon the 2nd Light Horse Regiment of Queenslanders, left nearly two hundred enemy dead within a few chains of our barbed wire. At about the same time, the foe assaulted the Musallabeh knoll, on the other side of the river, held by the 1st Battalion (Australians) of the Camel Brigade, and got to close quarters, in which bombs and bayonets, and even stones and hands were freely used on both sides. The Turks were beaten off with some hundreds of casualties.

On 12th July, a day on which the shade temperature stood for hours at 120 degrees, a stout attempt was made by a considerable force of German infantry against the 1st Light Horse Brigade under Brigadier-General Cox, on this same Musallabeh sector. Our line there was a series of small strong posts over a long and broken front. The Germans, advancing in the dark, penetrated between two of the posts, and actually reached the centre of our advanced position. A feature of this fight was that every little post, except one which was overwhelmed, successfully resisted the German attack, although all were surrounded and isolated for hours. In some, practically every officer and man became a casualty. The Germans were routed by a brilliant counter-attack of the 1st Light Horse Regiment (New South Wales), which was in reserve, and the affair cost the Germans 360 prisoners and about 1,200 casualties. Our losses were slight. Troops from four States, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales, shared in the victory. On the same day, also in Jordan Valley, a troop of Queenslanders, men from the 5th Light Horse Regiment, twice left their lines with bombs, and, surprising enemy forces many times their number, brought in forty-five prisoners, and they had killed and wounded as many more in the fight. The casualties suffered by the troop were one officer and two men slightly wounded. Two cars of No. 1 Australian Light Car Patrol also took part with the Imperial Service (Indian) Cavalry in a brilliant counter-attack east of the Jordan.

PREPARING FOR DAMASCUS

The long, distressing summer in Jordan Valley died hard. In September, when the Anzac Mounted Division was there, the hottest days of the whole year were endured. The various mounted troops had held the Jordan sector in turn, those in reserve enjoying brief periods of rest on the bracing uplands about Solomon’s Pools, a little to the south of Jerusalem. There the sunny days were cool, and at night men who had known little sleep down on the Jordan rejoiced in the mountain mists and the unwonted comfort of their blankets.

In the course of the year there had been another interesting change in the composition of General Allenby’s army. Many of the Yeomanry and British infantry had gone to other battle fronts, and in their place came one hundred thousand Indian horse and foot. Many of our Light Horsemen had fought beside the Gurkhas and other Indians on the Peninsula; some of us had seen the Indian cavalry in France in the early days of the war; but to most of the Australians the Indians were strangers. To-day, after a few months and a stirring campaign together, the bond between the two races is a remarkably strong one.

AUSTRALIA’S NEW FRIENDS

The Australian soldier has, for a man of insular breeding, shown an extraordinary capacity for making friends. He has an easy way with peoples of all races and colours. In France he is completely at his ease among the French peasantry; and he saunters through the Arab villages in Palestine as familiarly and as confidently as he used to walk the streets of his townships and cities at home. His old enemy the Turkish ranker is his admired personal friend. But the strong bond which sprang up so quickly between the Light Horseman and the Indians was perhaps the strangest of all his new war friendships. They were divided by colour, the language barrier was absolute, and, most unpromising of all, there was the barrier of caste, which prevented the devout Indian from sharing his rations, and so made little acts of camp hospitality impossible. But the barriers, although they seemed impassable, were miraculously surmounted. The Indians made no secret of their admiration of the Light Horseman as a past-master at the game of combined mounted and dismounted fighting, while the Australian was genuinely appreciative of the splendid soldierly qualities of the highly-trained regular Indian cavalry. Moreover, nearly all the Indians rode Australian horses!

Every trooper in Palestine knew that a great campaign would be launched in the early autumn. General Allenby would, according to the camp-fire strategists, “hop in” during the brief season between the extreme heat and the beginning of the heavy rains in November. Further, the C. in C. would, in all probability, assail the enemy line at the full of the moon, so that we should have light for the great cavalry night marches that were anticipated. But it is doubtful whether any soldier in Palestine, who was not in the official secret, forecasted a scheme so bold as that General Allenby had resolved upon. Certainly, none dared to hope for a triumph so dazzlingly swift and complete.

THE WONDERFUL FORTNIGHT

The great campaign opened at dawn on the morning of 19th September, 1918. A fortnight after General Allenby flung his artillery bombardment at the enemy line, the great Turkish and German force in Western and Eastern Palestine had been destroyed, and our prisoners numbered 75,000. Of the 4th, 7th, and 8th Turkish Armies south of Damascus only a few thousand foot-sore, hunted men escaped. Practically every gun, the great bulk of the machine guns, nearly all the small-arms, and transport, every aerodrome and its mechanical equipment and nearly every aeroplane, an intricate and widespread telephone and telegraph system, large dumps of munitions and every kind of supplies—all had, in fourteen swift and dramatic days, been stripped from an enemy who for four years had resisted our efforts to smash him. It was a military overthrow so sudden and so absolute that it is perhaps without parallel in the history of war. And it is still more remarkable because it was achieved at a cost so trifling.

It was a stupendous result, gained by a simple scheme. The strategy was strikingly bold, but perhaps the most impressive thing about General Allenby’s triumph was the superb manner in which his plan was carried through. The campaign went with a bang from the moment the line was broken until Damascus, more than 150 miles distant, was taken. It galloped all the way. There was never a moment’s indecision, never a semblance of fumbling. Here was a British Army at its best, every man efficient, every man enthusiastic.

The scheme was obviously the conception of a confident leader of horse. General Allenby is a cavalryman, and he had under his command the most powerful cavalry force in the war. And he knew the quality of his mounted men. All of the Australians and New Zealanders and Yeomanry had been in the sixty-mile drive from Gaza, of the previous year, and most of them had been in the saddle in Egypt and Palestine for two and a half years. The dashing Indian cavalry had been with him for many months and had given many examples of their speed and love of battle. Again and again in the summer their advanced patrols had galloped down bodies of Turks, and their terrible use of the lance in those little actions had a highly useful effect on Turkish nerves. The cavalry was General Allenby’s special weapon for the campaign, but in addition, he had a substantial and fit force of veteran infantry. He had, too, a particularly brilliant lot of airmen, and in his supply services he possessed a vast organization of railway, motor, camel, horse, mule and donkey transport, which was efficient and resourceful in the highest degree, and had already performed miracles.

Altogether the British Army of Palestine was, when the final campaign opened, as near to perfection as any force ever was. All ranks were veterans and all were animated by that spirit which every army feels when confident of victory and happy in its leaders.

A BOLD SCHEME

This was the scheme. We faced the Turks on a fifty-mile line running from a point on the Mediterranean coast about twelve miles north of Jaffa south-eastward across the Plain of Sharon, thence eastward over the Mountains of Samaria at a height of 1500 to 2000 feet, falling to 1000 feet below sea-level where it crossed the Jordan Valley, and terminating in the foothills of the Mountains of Gilead. The Sharon Plain sector was some fifteen miles in length, across Samaria fifteen miles, and the stretch in the Jordan Valley about eighteen. The Turkish position was a strong one. On Samaria, or the Central Palestine Range, south of Nablus, the enemy had ideal defensive country, rugged and broken, yet well served by rail—on the north-west to Haifa, and on the north-east across the Jordan at Beisan and by way of Damascus to Turkey; he had also good roads to Haifa and to Damascus by way of Nazareth.

To push the Turk on the mountains by a frontal attack would have meant at best the gradual withdrawal of his forces. In Jordan Valley the enemy’s safety lay in the fact that his guns on the foothills of either side covered the limited ground which was practicable for horse and transport. And, even if we had galloped up Jordan Valley, it would have been extremely difficult from there to swing in behind the Turkish position on the Central Range. General Allenby took the Plain of Sharon for his great enterprise. Forty miles behind the Turkish position the Jordan Valley and the Plain of Sharon are joined to the Esdraelon Plain—the old Plain of Armageddon. In other words, the Jordan and Sharon and Esdraelon formed a half-circle round the main central Turkish position on the mountains. All the enemy lines of communication led across Esdraelon. If we could seize the Plain swiftly, cut the railways and hold the roads, the Turkish army west of the Jordan was in our hands. It was a scheme calculated to test the mettle of any army. If we were to succeed, every branch of the service had to show at its best. First our airmen had to destroy or drive off the German aeroplanes and so keep the enemy ignorant of our plans; then the artillery barrage had to make the way possible for our infantry; in its turn, the infantry had, in one rush, to drive a gap for our cavalry, and the cavalry, galloping through the gap, had to cover fifty miles and reach Esdraelon Plain on the night of the first day. Lastly, the cavalry must hold the communications they had cut, and to do so, they had to be fed. The transport necessary for feeding tens of thousands of men and horse had to travel almost as fast as the cavalry. The scheme had to go through to time-table or it might not go through at all. If the artillery had failed to do its work in a swift half-hour’s bombardment, or if the infantry had faltered, the enemy would have had time to redistribute his forces, and General Allenby might have been robbed of his victory.

CAMOUFLAGE

General Allenby took no chances. He followed the sound principle of fighting under the best possible conditions. By the aid of clever and greatly successful bluff, the Commander-in-Chief delivered his smashing blow at an unexpected point of the Turkish line. The enemy was led to believe that the British offensive would fall on the eastern sector. While a huge force of cavalry, artillery and infantry was being smuggled by night marches to the Plain of Sharon on the west, active and amusing camouflage preparations were being made in the Jordan Valley. For instance, many dummy camps were brought into existence, and large numbers of realistic canvas horses were tethered in them. Mules drawing sledges were driven about in the dust to suggest heavy traffic. Fast’s Hotel at Jerusalem, then being conducted for officers by the Canteen Board, was ostentatiously emptied of its inmates, two sentry-boxes were placed at the entrance, and a whisper was started in the bazaars that the hotel would be General Allenby’s advanced headquarters during the coming offensive. Simultaneously, the Arabs east of the Jordan made realistic sham preparations for an attack on Amman, out on the Hedjaz. They put down a big base, engaged in bold reconnaissance, and cut the line between Amman and Damascus. The deception of the enemy was complete. We know now that he expected and prepared for the blow on the east, and was stiffening his defences there until a few hours before our bombardment opened on the west, near the Mediterranean.

The airmen materially assisted in this hoodwinking. During the eight weeks preceding the offensive, the German air service was practically driven out of the sky. Fifteen machines were destroyed or forced down and enemy aerodromes were bombed. So complete was our ascendancy that not an enemy plane was seen over the threatened sector for eight days before the offensive began.

Blind as to our movement of troops, and mistaken by fifty miles as to where his line was to be assailed, the enemy’s plight was further accentuated by the destruction of his communications on the very evening of the bombardment. Pulling out at night from their sham camp near Amman, the Arabs rushed away up north, and cut the railway and telegraph communications between Deraa and the great Turkish base at Damascus. This left the enemy on his whole front without supplies for the fight. Other telegraph lines further west were severed at the same time, and a bomb from an Australian plane on the night before our advance destroyed his great forward telephone exchange at Nablus, which dislocated all his lateral communications. When our guns opened at dawn on 19th September, the Turks were already in a desperate plight.

THE NIGHT BEFORE

On the night before the bombardment there was an atmosphere of perfect confidence in our camp close behind the line. Every man was moved by the prospect of a successful adventure, which would give vast immediate results and have an incalculable influence on the world war. The tropical intensity of Jordan Valley, where the Australian Brigades, with one exception, and some of the British and Indian cavalry had spent the whole summer, had left its mark. We had suffered much from malaria and other fevers, which, it was feared, might recur when we moved into the cooler north. The horses were, if not in poor condition, certainly on the light side; but these things were forgotten as the critical day approached. The Australian Mounted Division, commanded by Major-General Hodgson, and now made up entirely of Light Horse, except for one dashing, picturesque regiment of French Colonial regulars, had recently been armed with swords. The period of training in the new arm was very brief—for many Regiments only a few hours; but the men taking very keenly to it, soon reached a high standard of efficiency. Every trooper was excited at the thought of a true cavalry charge. The Anzac Mounted Division was still in the line in Jordan Valley.

During many nights before the push every road on the coastal sector was crowded with slow-moving, well-ordered traffic. By day all was normal, except for significant glimpses of camps in the wide olive groves around Ludd, and in the orchards and orange groves about Jaffa. But as darkness fell the whole countryside would become thronged with masses of horse and foot and guns, and every kind of transport, groping their way through blinding clouds of dust. The roads were impassable outside the organized columns; the night was loud with the shouts of drivers speaking divers languages. A few hours before the great push began this night traffic culminated in a general move northward, the cavalry moving up close behind the infantry, and the supplies following the cavalry. Every road was massed with motor-lorries and horse transport; every track with endless strings of camels. Each unit in the great army was pressing up as closely as possible to the starting gate.

The bombardment opened at dawn, a heavy barrage. For half an hour the startled Turks were battered in their trenches. Then, abruptly, the bombardment ceased. “Now the infantry,” said a Brigadier of horse “and then!...”

THE ADVANCE

Our battalions leaped forward as the gunnery died away, and carried the Turkish trenches after a brief struggle. They simply overwhelmed the enemy riflemen, and even the German machine gunners and Austrian artillerymen, after a wild burst of bad shooting, were forced to flight or submission. Within half an hour the infantry had made a gap for the great force of Indian and Yeomanry cavalry waiting near the coast, and soon afterwards they opened another a few miles inland. The expectant horsemen jumped off like thoroughbreds from the barrier.

THE GREAT RIDE BEGINS

They rode away in the sunrise, the advanced squadrons trotting out after the ground scouts, the flank patrols galloping wide; Brigade after Brigade rode out over the rolling sandhills. The men were eager, the horses fought for their heads. The swords of the Yeomanry flashed and Indian lances glinted from each successive skyline. It was like a war scene of the picture galleries. Quickening the pace, the Regiments raced on past our guns, most of which were already limbered-up for the pursuit. The infantry, busy with their prisoners, cheered them as they passed, and soon they were speeding down on Turks who had fled from the onslaught of the infantry. But their sport with sword and lance was brief. In this Sharon sector, the enemy had no forward reserves, no second-line trenches. The Turkish front here had depended for its safety on a one trench system. From the crossing of the trenches until they reached the Esdraelon Plain, late in the night, the cavalry encountered no resistance. Once or twice they sighted small bodies of the enemy and made for them at the gallop. But the Turks would not give battle. Before the campaign was three hours old there began the long series of almost bloodless surrenders which were to be the most amazing feature of the sleepless fortnight.

The perfection of our organization was revealed very early. The cavalry was scarcely clear of the trench system before scores of field guns were rumbling in their wake. And, pressing on after the artillery by many tracks, good and bad, went mile after mile of camels and wheeled transport. Where the cavalry went the supplies must follow; and the cavalry rode from forty to fifty miles between sunrise and midnight. With nothing to check them, their pace was controlled only by the endurance of their horses. The men rode light; they carried only one blanket, and that as a saddle-cloth. Tent sheets and waterproofs were forbidden. It was a wild ride against time. But horses were loaded with three days’ rations, and few carried less than 250lbs.—many of them more than 280lbs.

ESDRAELON PLAIN

At dawn next morning the Yeomanry were across the Esdraelon Plain and in Nazareth, where they caught most of the garrison of 3000 and the whole population still in their beds. They secured the town at the expense of eighteen casualties. By noon the Esdraelon Plain was in our hands, and the Turkish Army in Western Palestine left without a line of communication or retreat, except at Beisan on the north-east corner of the trap; and the capture of Beisan was already assured. How completely the enemy was deceived, and how light were his forces on the sector broken for the cavalry, is shown by the fact that on the first day, although our horse travelled fully forty miles on a wide front, only 900 prisoners were taken by them. Next day, as the net closed round the forward enemy forces on the Central Range, and they attempted to retreat across the Esdraelon Plain, our cavalry took upwards of 12,000.

DOOMED TURKISH ARMY