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
The brigade was seriously handicapped by the difficulty in moving
guns. The road during the morning had got into a desperate state. It
was next to impossible to haul field guns anywhere off the road, and
as the Turks had paid no attention to the highway for some time--or
where they had done something it was merely to dump down large stones
to fill a particularly bad hole--it had become deeply rutted and
covered with a mass of adhesive mud. The guns had to pass down from
Kustul by a series of zigzags with hairpin bends in full view of enemy
observers, and it was only by the greatest exertion and devotion to
duty that the gunners got their teams into the neighbourhood of
the wadi. The bridge over the Surar at Kulonieh having been wholly
destroyed, they had to negotiate the wadi, which was now in torrent
and carrying away the waters which had washed the face of the hills
over a wide area. The artillery made a track through a garden on the
right of the village just before the road reached the broken bridge,
and two batteries, the 301st and 302nd, got their guns and limbers
across. They went up the old track leading from Kulonieh to Jerusalem,
when first one section and then another came into action at a spot
between Deir Yesin and Heart Redoubt, where both batteries were
subjected to a close-range rifle fire.
For several hours the artillery fought their guns with superb courage,
and remained in action until the fire from the houses was silenced by
a brilliant infantry attack. At half-past one General Watson decided
he would attack the enemy on a ridge in front of the houses of the
Syrian colony with the 18th and 19th battalions. With them were units
of other battalions of the Brigade. Soon after three o'clock they
advanced under heavy fire from guns, machine guns, and rifles, and at
a quarter to four a glorious bayonet charge, during which the London
boys went through Germans and Turks in one overwhelming stride, sealed
the fate of the Turk in Jerusalem. That bayonet charge was within
sight of the Corps Commander, who was with General Shea at his
look-out on Kustul, and when he saw the flash of steel driven home
with unerring certainty by his magnificent men, General Chetwode may
well have felt thankful that he had been given such troops with which
to deliver Jerusalem from the Turks. The 74th Division, having taken
the whole of its first objectives early in the morning and having
throughout the day supported the left of the London Division, was
ready to commence operations against the second objective. The
dismounted yeomanry, whose condition through the wet and mud was
precisely similar to that of the 60th Division troops, for they, too,
had found the hills barren of shelter and equally cold, did extremely
well in forcing the enemy from his stronghold on the hill covering
Beit Iksa and the Kulonieh-Jerusalem road, from which, had he not been
ejected, he could have harassed the Londoners' left. The Beit Iksa
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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