The Battalion was relieved on the night of the 31st of March, and at dawn moved down to the south side of Es Salt. The Divisional withdrawal from Annam, the assault on which place had not been entirely successful, was now in full swing, and the majority of the Armenian population of Es Salt, terrified at the prospect of the return of the terrible Turk, was hastily evacuating the town. The road, which had been churned up by men, horses, guns, and wheeled transport, was inches deep in liquid mud, and was packed with refugees. Old men and boys, women and children of all ages, with their household goods in large bundles on their backs, staggered along obsessed with great fear. Their flight was terrible, and not a few of us hurriedly realised that it is not only troops who suffer in war time. We could give little assistance; our own baggage wagons were already overburdened and our own loads were heavy, but we did what we could. At 8.0 a.m. on the 1st of April (Easter Monday), after standing in full marching order in the mud for a solid hour, we started our retirement, and though hindered and hampered by the crowd of refugees which surged and swayed either side of us, we marched steadily until 5.0 a.m. next day, when we emerged from the hills at Shunet Nimrin, and bivouacked for a few hours, after which we continued and, crossing the Jordan River by the Ghoraniyeh Ford, we arrived at a position in the Wadi Nuemiah about 3 p.m., having covered a distance of about thirty miles since 8.0 p.m. the previous night. Every one was footsore, dirty, unshaven, with seven days’ growth of beard, and thoroughly tired, but we soon settled down to our first proper night’s rest for nine days, during which time we had experienced almost the extremes of heat and cold, and had marched about seventy miles through some of the most atrocious country our army has ever operated in. The other Brigades had fared even worse than we had, but the whole Division had covered itself with honour, and had no reason to be dispirited at the apparent failure of its novel enterprise. Gains in warfare are not measured by territory alone, and the influence of this raid--indeed it was almost a campaign--had a far reaching effect on the strategy of the Palestine campaign. We were happy, on our return to the Jordan Valley, to welcome back from leave in England our Commanding Officer, Lieut.-Colonel Bisdee, and the Battalion, though it had worked well under its temporary Commander, was delighted to see its Commanding Officer back once again, and it speaks much for the spirit of comradeship of the Regiment that no one was perhaps more pleased to be with us again than Colonel Bisdee himself.