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
In parenthesis I may state we are going to restore those walls to the
condition they were in before German hands defiled them. The General
who by capturing Jerusalem helped us so powerfully to bring Germany
to her knees and humble her before the world, entered on foot by an
ancient way, the Jaffa Gate, called by the native 'Bab-el-Khalil,'
or the Friend. In this hallowed spot there was no great pageantry of
arms, no pomp and panoply, no display of the mighty strength of a
victorious army, no thunderous salutes to acclaim a world-resounding
victory destined to take its place in the chronicles of all time.
There was no enemy flag to haul down and no flags were hoisted. There
were no soldier shouts of triumph over a defeated foe, no bells in
ancient belfrys rang, no Te Deums were sung, and no preacher mounted
the rostrum to eulogise the victors or to point the moral to the
multitude. A small, almost meagre procession, consisting of the
Commander-in-Chief and his Staff, with a guard of honour, less than
150 all told, passed through the gate unheralded by a single trumpet
note; a purely military act with a minimum of military display told
the people that the old order had changed, yielding place to new. The
native mind, keen, discerning, receptive, understood the meaning and
depth of this simplicity, and from the moment of high noon on December
11, 1917, when General Allenby went into the Mount Zion quarter of the
Holy City, the British name rested on a foundation as certain and sure
as the rock on which the Holy City stands. Right down in the hearts of
a people who cling to Jerusalem with the deepest reverence and piety
there was unfeigned delight. They realised that four centuries of
Ottoman dominion over the Holy City of Christians and Jews, and 'the
sanctuary' of Mahomedans, had ended, and that Jerusalem the Golden,
the central Site of Sacred History, was liberated for all creeds from
the blighting influence of the Turk. And while war had wrought this
beneficent change the population saw in this epoch-marking victory a
merciful guiding Hand, for it had been achieved without so much as a
stone of the City being scratched or a particle of its ancient dust
disturbed. The Sacred Monuments and everything connected with the
Great Life and its teaching were passed on untouched by our Army.
Rightly did the people rejoice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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