Book: With Our Army in Palestine

A >> Antony Bluett >> With Our Army in Palestine




Two divisions, one of infantry and the other of dismounted yeomanry--which
latter had done so well as infantry that they were rewarded by being
further employed as such--were to make for the gap between Beersheba and
Sheria and make things unpleasant for the Turks occupying the defences of
the former place. The part assigned to the mounted troops was that they
should disappear into the desert land south-east of Beersheba and wait
there till the time appointed, whereupon they were to perform the
outflanking movement which, as has been stated, was utterly unforeseen by
the Turks. For the moment we will, if you please, follow the fortunes of
the cavalry.

If you have persevered so far with this narrative you will have noticed
throughout that the troops had little assistance from Nature in beating the
Turks. Here, doubtless relenting, she had with kindly forethought provided
two small oases--one about twenty miles from El Chauth, the other ten miles
farther away--in the desert where the cavalry was to hide. At both places
there was a moderate supply of water, sufficient for a few days at any
rate, which was all that was required.

During the night of October 27th, what time the Turks were being severely
trounced in an attempt on the branch railway, two columns of cavalry
started for these providential hiding-places, following substantially the
same route as that taken when the railway between Beersheba and El Auja was
blown up. The dust was still there, in greater quantities than ever after
six months of drought, and the fond illusion that we had taken most of it
on our persons during the railway raid was rudely shattered. Fortunately
the Turks were profoundly ignorant of the move, and the two columns reached
their respective destinations without discovery. They remained unseen until
the night of the 30th, when the long trek northwards began. If you can
imagine a mighty column of dust well over ten miles in length, in the midst
of which were many thousands of half-suffocated men and horses, you have no
need of further words to picture that night's march, which lasted for ten
hours.

At dawn all the troops were in their assigned positions. The infantry had
marched all night and were to open the performance as soon as it was light
enough for the gunners to get on to their targets. At the outset these
consisted of the barbed-wire entanglements with which the defences south of
Beersheba were surrounded. Unfortunately the light was not too good for
accurate shooting, and although most of the wire was destroyed a few
patches were left which caused considerable trouble to infantry when they
went forward to the assault. Moreover the Turkish--or rather
Austrian--artillery fire was very heavy and accurate; they had the range
of every spot in the vicinity of their defences, which our own guns found
very difficult to locate. Despite the volume of fire the storming-parties
pressed on, tearing down the wire with their hands or forcing themselves
through it, until at last they got to close quarters with the bayonet.
After that nothing could stop them, and by the early afternoon all the
defences south of Beersheba had been taken. Also, the artillery by
admirable shooting had succeeded in putting the railway out of action: a
great feat.

By this time the Turks had received a rude shock from another direction:
east-north-east. Our cavalry, having unseen closed the northern exits from
the town, suddenly swooped down and seized positions menacing the town from
the east. Here some topographical details will be necessary. The only way
to approach Beersheba from the desert is by crossing the steep-sided Wadi
es Saba--from which the town and a small village near by take their names.
On the Beersheba side of the wadi and forming almost a semi-circle round
the town is a broad, flat plain commanding which was Tel es Saba, the
highest of all the surrounding hills. This had to be captured before any
direct attack on the town could be made.

All day long the Australians, on foot, made desperate attempts to carry the
hill by storm, but the Turks, well served by their magnificent position,
held on stubbornly. Another party of the Australians scrambled across the
wadi and made an attempt to cross the plain in face of the appalling fire
that was poured into them. They did succeed in capturing Saba village,
though the place was a death-trap after it was taken. Just before sunset
Tel es Saba succumbed to the incessant hammering it had received all day,
and one great obstacle was removed from the path.

But fundamentally we were "no forrader." Although the outlying positions
had been taken Beersheba itself was still intact, and its immediate capture
was urgently necessary; the whole adventure turned upon it. With the coming
of night, the artillery had ceased fire, and of course no further support
could be expected from them. The town had to be taken by direct assault
with the bayonet; there was nothing else for it. First the wadi had to be
crossed, no easy matter, then the plain, which was heavily trenched. The
Yeomanry, who had not been needed during the day, were ordered to tackle
the job--of course, dismounted. They did actually start from their reserve
positions, but they were forestalled. From under the shadow of Tel es Saba
a vast cloud of dust was seen sweeping over the moonlit plain. Inside it
was the 4th Light Horse Brigade, who, tired of waiting and with their usual
cheerful disregard of the conventions, had decided to take the town
themselves. Also, having had sufficient fighting on foot during the
all-day struggle for Tel es Saba, they determined that the horses should
share in the excitement.

So, using as lances their rifles with bayonets fixed, the whole
brigade--and any one else with a horse and rifle and bayonet--charged
yelling upon the town. Over trenches, rifle-pits and obstacles of all sorts
they leapt and burst into Beersheba like a tornado. The Turks were
literally paralysed by the audacity of the effort and made a mere travesty
of resistance, in comparison with their stubbornness during the day. It was
all over in a very short time and Beersheba was ours. The Yeomanry,
astonished to find so little resistance, came in at the death in time to
help round up the large numbers of prisoners captured by the Australians.

Speaking without the book I should say that this mounted bayonet charge is
without parallel in military history. It was at any rate worthy of the best
traditions of Australian resourcefulness. Their motto seemed always to be:
"If you haven't the right tools for a job, do it with anything that's handy
and trust to the luck of the British army to pull you through." A very
sound maxim, on the whole, if their headstrong adherence to it did
sometimes land them in a tight corner.

It was difficult to realise in the midst of a jostling crowd of soldiers,
with guns and all the impedimenta of war in the background, that once on a
time old Father Abraham had lived at Beersheba with his family and
developed the water-supply for his flocks. Impossible, too, to visualise
the past splendours of Beersheba, as became the city on the southern border
of Palestine, on the main caravan-route through the Land of Goshen, across
the Sinai desert into Egypt, and through which on account of its wells,
travellers for countless ages had passed on their leisurely journey south.
Nowadays, it is but a collection of exaggerated mud-huts of the usual
native type, with the addition of a few modern works and the railway.

Though I saw it frequently enough later on the sight of a railway-station
in or near a native village always seemed strangely incongruous. Do not for
a moment imagine that by railway-station I mean anything so elaborate as
the merest village station at home; except at Kantara even the best and
largest of ours did not rise to such heights. The platform, if there was
one, was of sleepers piled almost haphazard one upon another with sand
shovelled into the interstices and spread over the top. Occasionally
cinders were used to form an extra hard surface; but this was a luxury.
Unless a stationary train marked its presence the station was very
difficult to find at all, for one bit of the railway looks very much like
another at a distance. I remember a party of us trying for a long time to
find one of these elusive places. We found the railway all right but the
only sign of human habitation was a tiny wooden hut, almost invisible
against the background of sand, towards which we made our way. A
lance-corporal in the R.E. was the sole inmate. "Where's the station,
chum?" he was asked. He looked at us suspiciously for a moment.

"Don't come it over me," he said then; "yer standin' on it." And he was
right; you could even see the platform if you peered about carefully.

At Beersheba the Turkish station was rather a pretentious affair, all
things considered. There were quite a number of adequate buildings, most of
them connected with the water-works just outside. The Turks, thanks in the
first place to the fine shooting of our artillery, had had no chance of
getting their rolling-stock away; and secondly, the spirited dash of the
Australians had overwhelmed them before they could destroy any of it. In
fact there was a train in the station, fully laden with stores and ready to
start for Sheria had it been possible, when the Light Horse burst into the
town.

Beersheba that night presented an indescribable spectacle. It is literally
impossible to describe it, for every detail was obscured by the immense
clouds of dust that hung over the place like a pall, clinging and opaque.
The water-works and wells were fortunately intact, but until everything had
been carefully tested and examined, the horses, who had drunk nothing since
the previous day, had to remain thirsty.

In the morning the town was systematically searched.

There were mines and bombs and infernal-machines everywhere, all obviously
made in Germany. The Turk usually limited his nefarious practices to
poisoning the wells when he retreated--a sufficiently damnable thing to do,
_bien entendu_. But the Germans despised crude methods of this kind. They
were not content with poisoning the water but must needs fix their devilish
contraptions so that a man blew himself to pieces in the act of drawing his
drink. Many of the wells were mined, but the Germans had slightly
overreached themselves either through haste or clumsiness, and all the
mines were removed without mishap.

Elsewhere we were not so fortunate. Some of our native camel-drivers saw
tins of preserved meat conspicuously lying about without owners. Following
the invariable native principle of obtaining something for nothing whenever
possible, one or two seized them. It is a melancholy fact that the act was
their last in this world, for the tins were simply--potted death. After
this men gave a wide berth even to the most innocent-looking objects,
though in truth the more innocent a thing looked the more devilish was the
contrivance hidden under it. Now observe further the workings of the German
mind. In one dug-out there was--of all books--a copy of Ruskin's _Sesame
and Lilies_, tattered and dog's-eared by constant use, and a torn piece
of--the _Sporting Times_! Also, hanging on a nail in one of the beams was
a German tunic, stretched neatly on a coat-hanger. The dug-out looked very
innocent and had quite a domesticated atmosphere; and the unwary, lulled
into security by it, might have been tempted casually to reach for the
tunic as a trophy. Providentially no one pulled it down until the engineers
had inspected the dug-out, and then only from the end of a very long rope.
There was little left of the dug-out after the explosion.

What can you make of a mind that can appreciate and enjoy the incomparable
beauty of _Sesame and Lilies_, and yet can conceive so hidden and
treacherous a means of destruction? Of course the book might have come
fortuitously into the possession of the occupant of the dug-out, might even
have been left there and forgotten by some passing British soldier when the
place was captured; but the latter at least is unlikely. When
inquisitiveness had such dire results no one did much prying until
everything had been examined and pronounced safe. But that the wells were
safe was the great thing and their importance could hardly be
over-estimated.

They must be amongst the oldest in the world. For thirty-seven centuries
there has been water at Beersheba, since, in fact, Abraham sank the wells
in the neighbourhood, and these have known many vicissitudes. When he died
the Philistines came and rendered them all useless by filling them up with
sand: a precedent, you will have noticed, much favoured by the Turks,
though their methods were more modern. Years after came Isaac and excavated
the wells again; whereupon he had to fight with the men of Gerar for the
possession of them. Tiring of strife he dug the well at Beersheba which
gives the town its name, and this he retained, having made peace with the
Philistines. Finally, history repeating itself nearly four thousand years
later, British soldiers fought for, and won, these self-same wells, which
were substantially in as good condition as when they were first made.

But what had been an ample supply for the flocks of the patriarchs and
passing caravans proved inadequate for the needs of the thousands of men
and horses and camels thronging into Beersheba. A hundred thousand gallons
is a big tax on the capacity of any well, and this is a very moderate
estimate of the amount required daily by the troops. From the moment they
were pronounced fit for use the watering-places by the station were crowded
with thirsty men and animals, and the supply soon decreased alarmingly. To
add to the trouble most of the stored water, accumulated previously with
such care and labour, was delayed somewhere _en route_ to Beersheba and
ultimately had considerable difficulty in reaching the place at all.
Meanwhile the "Cameliers," whose mounts could last in fair comfort for a
week without water, went off into the parched hills north of Beersheba to
perform their usual function of protecting our flank. Then all the mounted
troops took the road towards Sheria, so as to be in readiness for the main
blow when the transport difficulty had been solved.




CHAPTER XV

GAZA AT LAST


During the days immediately following the capture of Beersheba the mounted
troops were kept exceedingly busy, for our position was yet by no means
secure. Every day the Turks in the hills made an attempt to drive us
eastwards into the desert and every day we strove to push them back on to
their defences at Sheria. It was a series of battles for the wells, in
effect, for here the eternal problems of transport and water were acute.
The former was more or less solved in time for the big operations; the
latter was the difficulty it had always been for the past two years, but in
a different way. In the desert, whilst the wells were few and far between
they were seldom more than fifty or sixty feet deep; in the district around
Beersheba there were, to exaggerate a little, almost as many wells as in
the whole of the Sinai Desert, but you could not get at the water! Scarcely
a well was less than a hundred feet deep and most of them were anything
over that up to a hundred and eighty; of course there were no pumps. The
old shadouf of the desert, unwieldy though it was, would have been a
veritable godsend to the troops here.

A cavalryman could not pack a two-hundred foot coil of the lightest rope on
to his saddle; it was as much as he could do to climb into it over the
conglomeration of picketing-pegs and ropes, rifle-bucket, and sword which
constituted his full marching order, and it was more or less the same in
the artillery.

Those patriarchs of old who built the wells would doubtless have been
vastly diverted to see a trooper sit down and solemnly remove his putties
with which to lengthen a "rope" already consisting of reins, belts, and any
odds and ends of rope he had acquired, and when even these additions proved
insufficient--! It was a joke which matured but slowly.

Imagine half a brigade of cavalry clustered round a well frantically
devising means to reach the cavernous depths, while the other half were
fighting like tigers to keep off the Turks a few miles away! It was nothing
out of the ordinary for a squadron or battery to take five hours to water
their horses; and it added a piquancy to the situation that you were never
quite sure when a marauding party of Turks would appear over the top of a
neighbouring hill. Ultimately the extraordinary exertions of the engineers
saved the situation; with incredible labour and ingenuity they fixed
pumping-appliances to the wells.

They must have used most of the kinds known to science, and assuredly a
great many not in the textbooks. In the course of their work they performed
the functions of a hundred trades--including divers: in fact a large part
of their time was of necessity spent in the water, and a singularly
unpleasant business it must have been, dangling for hours at the end of a
rope in the dank atmosphere of a well. Practically everything had to be
done in the first two days after the capture of Beersheba in order to
secure our precarious hold on that place; and with the lack of quick
transport--for the country was too rough for motors, and camels are very
slow--the shortage of rope and appliances, with, in fine, everything
against them, the engineers in successfully accomplishing the feat added
one more to their already imposing list of miracles.

Let there be no mistake about it; it _was_ a miracle and one performed only
by the most complete abnegation of self. Men who doubtless would have
groused at home had they been asked to work for a couple of hours overtime
at bank or office or works, here slaved for twenty-four hours at a stretch
without bite or sup, and then after a short rest went on for another
twenty-four. It is astonishing what the human frame can be made to do, when
it is driven by that indescribable thing variously called _morale_ or
_esprit de corps_ or duty.

The same feeling of superb confidence in the outcome animated the whole
army, from the men clinging tenaciously to Beersheba to those straining
impatiently at the leash in front of Gaza. The turn of the latter came on
November 1st, and the account of their exploits must be taken from official
sources, since by some inexplicable oversight on the part of Nature, a man
cannot be in two places at once.

According to General Allenby's dispatches, it was decided to make a strong
attack on some of the ridges defending Gaza, for the purpose chiefly of
preventing the enemy from sending reinforcements or reserves across to the
other flank. Also, any gains would be of material assistance when the time
came for striking the big blow in the centre. The first part of the attack
was made by the Scotch division on Umbrella Hill, previously mentioned in
this narrative as being the scene of a raid by the same troops in the
middle of June. Just before sunset the artillery put up a tremendous
bombardment which lasted until dusk, and shortly before midnight the
Scotsmen attacked the hill. To many of them it must have been reminiscent
of their desperate assault on Wellington Ridge, during one phase of the
battle of Romani, for Umbrella Hill was somewhat similarly shaped and the
approach to it was over a wide expanse of heavy, yielding sand. But here
the Turks were partially taken by surprise, and the Jocks were amongst them
and had bundled them out of their trenches almost before they knew, though
as usual they fought desperately hard once they were alive to the
situation.

Thus the first part of the enterprise was safely accomplished with
comparatively little loss; the second and more difficult attempt began
before daylight the next morning. The main objective was Sheikh Hassan, a
ridge sloping gently down to the Mediterranean north-west of Gaza. This was
nearly two miles from the nearest British trenches, and the ground to be
covered by the attacking infantry was of the rough and difficult nature
characteristic of this part of the coast. The artillery, including the
heavy guns of the battleships off the coast, kept up an intense barrage
while the troops were in the open, and, in addition to knocking the
trenches on Sheikh Hassan out of shape, completely destroyed some works
nearer Gaza. With these as a foothold the infantry stormed the main
position with the bayonet, though the Turkish machine-gun fire was deadly
and their resistance stubborn in the extreme. But this was the opportunity
of "getting a little of their own back" for which our men, especially the
52nd and 54th Divisions, had been waiting for six months, and it was more
than the Turks could do to keep them out.

Besides, Sheikh Hassan was no more than the _hors d'oeuvre_ to the feast,
so to speak, and it was swallowed with gusto. In this action, for the first
time, I believe, the French and Italians assisted the British on land as
well as from the sea. It was also the last occasion on which the Baby Tanks
were used, for in the subsequent fighting amongst the Judaean hills the
country was too rough even for the larger specimens successfully to have
negotiated.

Of the important defences in the immediate neighbourhood of Gaza, only grim
old Ali Muntar now remained unconquered, and still reared a defiant head
above his humbler satellites. As was fitting, and indeed very necessary,
its capture was left till the last. Meanwhile, the preliminaries being
completed more or less successfully, the main blow at the centre had to be
struck. During the night of November 5th the great move toward Sheria was
begun, and by the morning all the troops were in the positions assigned to
them. The principal Turkish position was on Kauwukah Ridge, as usual very
difficult to approach and positively crawling with machine-guns and wire.
As was a customary feature with the Turkish defences, if one position was
captured it could immediately be enfiladed from another portion; and very
little was left to chance to make the place secure.

The 74th Division attacked the eastern and more vulnerable end first, and
with such amazing elan did they fight--and it was all the more remarkable
in that these troops were dismounted Yeomanry--that by the early afternoon
they had swept the Turks out of their trenches in this part of Kauwukah,
and were firmly established in what remained of the position. At the other
end of the ridge two more divisions were fighting towards a maze of wire,
which was rapidly being uprooted by the accurate and devastating fire of
our artillery. This was the heaviest bombardment of the battle; some of the
Turkish trenches were simply swept out of existence, and the defenders
irretrievably buried in the debris. One of the attacking divisions was
Irish, who as a pleasing change from road-making in that malarial hole,
Salonica, gave of their best with the bayonet, in which bright pastime they
were capably aided and abetted by the 60th Division. It is the fashion to
speak of successful military operations as being carried out "like
clockwork." If extreme dash and gallantry in the face of every obstacle
that brain of man could devise constitute the "clockwork," then the attack
that led to the capture of Kauwukah Ridge merits the above description.

I cannot write of the attack as an eye-witness but, months afterwards, I
saw the Turkish system of defences, and little imagination was needed to
picture the terrible struggle it must have been to take them by storm.

Late in the afternoon the two divisions had captured all their objectives
as far as, and including, Sheria railway-station. On the right flank, too,
where success was no less important, the troops had done their share; and
here in the hills north of Beersheba the fighting was terribly severe. It
is one thing to attack with numbers at least equal, if not superior, to
those of the enemy; it is quite another when the advantage of numbers lies
heavily with the enemy, and the attack has still to be made. This was the
predicament in which the Welshmen found themselves; they had not only to
prevent themselves from being cut off, but had to drive a vastly superior
force out of commanding positions they had taken, and not all the hammering
of the Turks could oust them permanently. It was attack and counter-attack
from one hill to another all day long, but the advantage at the end of the
day lay with the Welshmen, who simply refused to be beaten and fought the
Turks to a standstill. Like the Scotsmen they had to wipe off a few old
scores, in addition to which there was the accumulated interest of six
months of waiting.

By these operations Gaza was isolated except from the north but, as the
Turks had no more reserves immediately available, little danger was to be
feared from that direction. During the night the Turkish commander, seeing
that the game was up, skilfully evacuated all the defences of Gaza, with
the exception of those at Atawina Ridge, from which, as will be seen by a
glance at the map, the defenders could best protect his rear from the
onslaught of the victorious troops advancing from the east. There was no
necessity, therefore, for an assault on Ali Muntar; its deserted slopes
were occupied without opposition the next day. It thus remained unconquered
to the end, and no one begrudged the barren victory, for many thousands of
British lives were saved in consequence.

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