On the evening of the 9th of November, as the Anzac Mounted Division was 'in the air,' it was necessary for the other two divisions of the Desert Mounted Corps to press on and join it as soon as possible. The Australian Mounted Division, therefore, left Huj on the evening of the 9th, although all its horses were not yet watered, and marched to the north-east, the first objective being Tel el Hesi, and the second Arak el Menshiye and El Faluje. This was the only night march made by the cavalry in enemy country during the pursuit. The 3rd Brigade, with a battery attached, acted as advance guard, being followed by the 5th and 4th. The advance guard dropped pickets along the route every quarter of a mile, which were picked up by the 5th Brigade. This brigade, in turn, dropped pickets to be picked up by the rearguard. Signallers with lamps were sent by the two leading brigades on to every prominent hill top during the march, to flash the letters of the divisional signal call intermittently in a south-westerly direction. These arrangements worked well, and the division arrived at Tel el Hesi at half-past four in the morning, and halted there till daylight.
There were several large pools of good water in the Wadi Hesi, and the rest of the horses got their fill at last, having been without water for three days and four nights.
[Pg 62]
The division pushed on at once, and came up on the right of the Anzac Division at Faluje and Arak el Menshiye Station about eight o'clock. It was joined, some few hours later, by the Yeomanry Division, which had left Huj early in the morning, after having spent all the previous night trying to water horses. This division took over Arak el Menshiye, and extended a little farther east. Thus, on the afternoon of the 10th, the whole of the Corps, with the exception of the New Zealand Mounted Brigade, was in line from a point a little east of Arak el Menshiye to the sea, and ready for the further pursuit of the enemy.
The cavalry were now some thirty-five miles in advance of railhead at Deir el Belah, and the problem of supply became pressing. No help could be obtained from the two enemy railways, as the Turks had blown up bridges and culverts, and destroyed portions of the line during their retreat. Our only means of supply was, therefore, by motor lorries and camels along the single, narrow, ill-metalled road from Gaza to Junction Station. Between Gaza and Beit Hanun the road was unmetalled and deep in sand, and lorries had great difficulty in getting over this part, even with the light load of one ton, which was the maximum allowed to be carried. The marching ration of our horses was only 9? lbs. of grain a day, without any hay or other bulk food, but even this small ration, when multiplied by 25,000 (approximately the number of horses in the Corps), worked out at over 100 tons of forage a day. In addition to this there were the rations for the men of the Corps, and the food and forage for the infantry.
In order to enable the pursuit to continue, it was clear that the greater part of the infantry would[Pg 63] have to be left behind. Accordingly, on the 9th, the whole of the 20th Corps, with the exception of the 53rd Division, which was still watching the right group of the enemy forces, withdrew to railhead at Karm. Of the 21st Corps, only the 52nd and 75th Divisions continued the advance. The 54th, which had remained at Gaza, gave up all its transport to assist the other two divisions. All the available motor lorries and camels were organised in convoys along the Gaza-Junction Station road, from Deir el Belah to El Mejdel, whence the supplies were distributed to divisions by the horse-drawn wagons of the divisional trains. These trains had heavier work than any other part of the force. Even on the rare occasions when the cavalry got some rest at night, there was none for them, as they were distributing supplies from nightfall till dawn. Men and horses got into the habit of sleeping as they marched, and, as long as one or two men kept awake to lead the way, the wagons always reached their destination safely. The Divisional Ammunition Columns were in little better case, and the Sharki, or hot wind from the east, that commenced to blow on the 10th, added to the sufferings of the unfortunate horses.
The whole Corps was suffering from lack of water, but the Australian Mounted Division, which was advancing through the almost waterless country along the edge of the Jud?an range, was in an almost desperate condition. The Anzac Division, although operating in the better watered coastal area, had moved farther and faster and had more fighting than the other two, and was also in a bad way. Moreover, owing to the rapid advance of the last two days, forage and rations had failed to reach this division. There was absolutely no grazing to[Pg 64] be found, and what little grain the Turks had left in the villages was securely hidden. The 2nd A.L.H. and 7th Mounted Brigades, some of the horses of which had not had a drink for eighty-four hours, carried on all through the night of the 9th, trying to water with buckets from two or three deep wells, but got little satisfaction. The depth of the shallowest of these wells was 150 feet, and of the deepest nearly 250 feet. It was quite clear that these two divisions could make no further substantial move forward till all their horses had been watered and fed.
Had water been available in abundance throughout the advance, there is little doubt that our cavalry would have been able to overwhelm the retreating Turkish armies, and the capture of Jerusalem might then have been accomplished by a rapid raid of mounted troops. As it was, each night was spent by a large part of the cavalry in a heart-breaking search for water, that too often proved fruitless, while the enemy, moving in his own country, utilised the hours of darkness to put such a distance between his troops and their pursuers as enabled him generally to entrench lightly before our cavalry came up with him in the morning. The marching powers of the Turks are phenomenal. Time after time, after fighting all day, they would retire when darkness fell, and march all night, and repeat this performance of fighting all day and marching all night for several days in succession. During their retreat they systematically destroyed the water-lifting apparatus of all the wells they passed, thus incidentally depriving the native inhabitants of water.
The inevitable delay caused by the necessity of resting our cavalry now gave the enemy the opportunity to collect his scattered forces and organise[Pg 65] some sort of line of resistance. Already, on the 10th of November, his troops could be seen digging in along the high ground on the right bank of the Nahr Sukereir, and aeroplane reports indicated that he was preparing a second line farther north.
The 1st A.L.H. Brigade, reconnoitring northwards on the 10th, located the Turks in position from the hill of Tel el Murre near the sea, along the high ground on the right bank of the Nahr Sukereir, through Burka to Kustine. Finding a small force of Turks holding the bridge at Jisr Esdud, the 1st A.L.H. Regiment attacked, and drove them off. General Cox at once ordered a bridgehead to be established on the north bank, and entrenched. The possession of this bridge was of great value to us during the next few days. The Nahr Sukereir, in its lower course, runs between high, precipitous banks, and forms a barrier to movement north and south very difficult to pass except by this one bridge. The enemy was well aware of this, and squandered some of his best and freshest troops in a desperate attack on our bridgehead, supported by heavy artillery, but the 1st Brigade stood fast, and beat off the attack.
The 2nd A.L.H. Brigade continued the weary business of watering from two very deep wells at Suafir el Sharkiye, but there were 800 prisoners here clamouring for water, and the local inhabitants, who had been driven from the wells by the retiring Turks, had had none for twenty-four hours. In the middle of the pandemonium created by this fight for water, some enemy guns opened fire on the village, causing a number of casualties among the Arabs and Turks. The Arabs fled to the shelter of their houses, and the prisoners were sent back out of the way. Later on in the morning, some troops of the brigade returned[Pg 66] to the village to continue watering. No sooner had they entered the place, than the enemy guns opened fire again. A thorough search of the houses now revealed two Turks concealed in one of them, directing the fire of the enemy guns by telephone. They were promptly shot, and the firing at once ceased. A more callous action than this of directing gun-fire on to a village full of their own captured comrades and harmless natives could hardly be imagined. It again suggests German influence, as the Turks did not, as a rule, do such things on their own initiative.
In the evening part of the 52nd and 74th Divisions arrived at Esdud and Suafir el Sharkiye, and the weary 2nd A.L.H. and 7th Mounted Brigades were withdrawn to water and rest near Hamame. The 1st A.L.H. Brigade held an outpost line during the night from the sea west of Jisr Esdud to a point on the Wadi Mejma just north of Beit Duras, in touch with the infantry on the right.
Meanwhile the Australian Mounted Division and the Yeomanry Division, on the east, pushing their tired horses slowly after the retreating Turks, advanced a few miles, and located the left half of the enemy's line running from Kustine, roughly through Balin and Berkusie, to the neighbourhood of Beit Jibrin.
The headquarters of the Australian Division was at El Faluje on the 10th and 11th. Shortly after its arrival there, the headman of the village, which is the seat of a Nahie,[12] came to pay his respects to the British General. After a few polite compliments, he asked anxiously if we had any men from his village[Pg 67] among our prisoners. We, of course, could not tell, as all prisoners were sent back as soon as possible after being taken. The old man remarked sadly that he had not had much hope of finding any of them, as he believed they had all gone to the Caucasus. About two years ago, he said, a Turkish battalion had suddenly arrived at the village one morning, and carried off 500 of his young men to be pressed into the Army, and from that day no word had been heard from any of them.
All through the campaign we heard similar accounts of Turkish recruiting methods. The Turks always sent their conscripts to fight in a theatre of war as far removed from their native country as possible, in order to discourage desertion. In spite of this, their soldiers were constantly deserting, either to find a ready hiding-place in some neighbouring town or village, or to give themselves up to us. So serious had the question become in the Turkish Army that there was a standing reward of ￡5 Turkish offered to all natives for delivering a deserter to the Army authorities. An organised propaganda was also carried on by the officers, by means of lectures to their men, the chief feature of which was a description of the tortures and hideous deaths inflicted on their prisoners by British soldiers. These lectures were illustrated by pictures supplied by Berlin. Our reply to this propaganda was to scatter from our aeroplanes hundreds of handbills over the Turkish lines. These sheets showed, on one side, the signed photograph of a fat and smiling Turk, one of our prisoners, with an autograph letter from him, inviting his friends to join him, and, on the other side, a bill of fare of the prisoners' camps that must have made the hungry Turkish soldiers positively slobber!
The strange fact was that, in spite of these constant[Pg 68] desertions, the Turks, when brought to bay, nearly always fought splendidly, and that not alone in defence, but in attack also. Indeed, some of their counter-attacks were simply heroic. Out-numbered, out-gunned, out-man?uvred, doomed to defeat before even the attack was launched, they yet advanced with the most reckless courage, shouting their war cry, 'Allah! Allah! Allah!' The explanation must probably be sought in their religious hatred of the infidel. The Turks opposed to us in Palestine at this time were mostly Anatolians, of fine physique, and sturdy fighters.
The Commander-in-Chief determined to continue the advance on the 12th, devoting the preceding day to preparations for the attack on the enemy positions. The delay would afford time for the 52nd and 74th Divisions to close up and move forward to their preliminary positions.
He decided to attack the right centre of the Turkish line with his infantry, and turn the right flank with his cavalry. The Anzac Division had now, however, only one brigade (the 1st) in a fit state to continue the operations. Accordingly the Yeomanry Division was ordered to march on the 11th right across from east to west, behind our line, and relieve the 2nd and 7th Brigades on the coast. The Australian Mounted Division was directed to extend to the east, to a point south-west of Zeita, so as to cover the country vacated by the Yeomanry. Its r?le was to protect the right flank of our forces during the operations, and to attract the enemy's attention to this flan............