How Jerusalem Was Won: Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in PalestineMassey, W. T. (William Thomas)
History
How Jerusalem Was Won: Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine
Massey, W. T. (William Thomas)
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Palestine
On the 29th the Turks made their biggest effort to break through the
important line we held, and all day they persisted with the greatest
determination in an attack on our left. At midnight they had again
occupied the cairn south of Suffa, and remained there till 8 A.M.,
when the 268th Brigade Royal Field Artillery crowned the hill with a
tremendous burst of fire and drove them off. The machine-gunners
of the 7th Mounted Brigade caught the force as it was retiring and
inflicted many casualties. The Turks came back again and again, and
the cairn repeatedly changed hands, until at last it was unoccupied by
either side. Towards dusk the Turks' attacks petered out, though the
guns and snipers continued busy, and the Yeomanry Mounted Division was
relieved by the 231st Infantry Brigade of the 74th Division and the
157th Infantry Brigade of the 52nd Division, the Australian Mounted
Division ultimately taking over the left of the line which XXth Corps
troops occupied.
The Yeomanry Mounted Division had made a grand fight against a vastly
superior force of the enemy in a country absolutely unfavourable to
the movement of mounted troops. They never had more than 1200 rifles
holding a far-flung barren and bleak line, and the fine qualities
of vigorous and swift attack, unfaltering discipline and heroic
stubbornness in defence under all conditions, get their proof in
the 499 casualties incurred by the Division in the hill fighting,
exclusive of those sustained by the 7th Mounted Brigade which
reinforced them. The Division was made up entirely of first-line
yeomanry regiments whose members had become efficient soldiers in
their spare time, when politicians were prattling about peace and
deluding parties into the belief that there was little necessity to
prepare for war. Their patriotism and example gave a tone to the
drafts sent out to replace casualties and the wastage of war, and were
a credit to the stock from which they sprang.
While the Yeomanry Mounted Division had been fighting a great battle
alongside the infantry of the XXIst Corps in the hills, the remainder
of the troops of the Desert Mounted Corps were employed on the plain
and in the coastal sector, hammering the enemy hard and establishing
a line from the mouth of the river Auja through some rising ground
across the plain. They were busily engaged clearing the enemy out of
some of the well-ordered villages east of the sandy belt, several of
them German colonies showing signs of prosperity and more regard
for cleanliness and sanitation than other of the small centres of
population hereabouts. The village of Sarona, north of Jaffa, an
almost exclusively German settlement, was better arranged than any
others, but Wilhelma was a good second.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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