Part 2 (1/2)
Within a month of his arrival in Egypt, General Allenby had visited the whole of his front line and had decided the form his offensive should take. As soon as his force had been made up to seven infantry divisions and the Desert Mounted Corps, and they had been brought up to strength and trained, he would attack, making his main offensive against the enemy's left flank while conducting operations vigorously and on an extensive scale against the Turkish right-centre and right.
The princ.i.p.al operation against the left was to be conducted by General Chetwode's XXth Corps, consisting of four infantry divisions and the Imperial Camel Brigade, and by General Chauvel's Desert Mounted Corps. General Bulfin's XXIst Corps was to operate against Gaza and the Turkish right-centre south-east of that ancient town.
If the situation became such as to make it necessary to take the offensive before the force had been brought up to strength, the XXIst Corps would have had to undertake its task with only two divisions, but in those circ.u.mstances its operations were to be limited to demonstrations and raids. By throwing forward his right, the XXIst Corps Commander was to pin the enemy down in the Atawineh district, and on the left he would move against the south-western defences of Gaza so as to lead the Turks to suppose an attack was to come in this sector. That movement being made, the XXth Corps and Desert Mounted Corps were to advance against Beersheba, and, having taken it, to secure the valuable water supply which was known to have existed there since Abraham dug the well of the oath which gave its name to the town. Because of water difficulties it was considered vital that Beersheba should be captured in one day, a formidable undertaking owing to the situation of the town, the high entrenched hills around it and the long marches for cavalry and infantry before the attack; and in drawing up the scheme based on the Commander-in-Chief's plan, the commanders of XXth Corps and Desert Mounted Corps had always to work on the a.s.sumption that Beersheba would be in their hands by nightfall of the first day of the attack. General Barrow's Yeomanry Mounted Division was to remain at Sh.e.l.lal in the gap between XXth Corps and XXIst Corps in case the enemy should attempt to attack the XXth Corps' left flank. Having dealt with the enemy in Beersheba, General Chetwode with mounted troops protecting his right was to move north and north-west against the enemy's left flank, to drive him from his strong positions at Sheria and Hareira, enveloping his left flank and striking it obliquely.
While the XXth Corps was moving against this section of the enemy line, Desert Mounted Corps was to bring up the mounted division left at Sh.e.l.lal, and pa.s.sing behind the XXth Corps to march on Nejile, where there was an excellent water supply, and the wadi Hesi, so as to threaten the left rear and the line of retreat of the Turkish Army.
It was always doubtful whether XXth Corps would be able to close up the gap between it and the XXIst Corps owing to the length of its marches and the distance it was from railhead, and the scheme therefore provided that the XXIst Corps should confirm successes gained on our right by forcing its way through the tremendously strong Gaza position to the line of the wadi Hesi and joining up with Desert Mounted Corps. A considerable number of XXth Corps troops would then return to the neighbourhood of railhead and release the greater part of its transport for the infantry of XXIst Corps moving up the Maritime Plain.
This, in summary form, was the scheme General Allenby planned before the middle of August, and though the details were not, and could not be, worked out until a couple of months had pa.s.sed, it is noteworthy as showing that, notwithstanding the moves an enterprising enemy had at his command in a country where positions were entirely favourable to him, where he had water near at hand, where the transport of supplies was never so serious a problem for him as for us when we got on the move, and where he could make us fight almost every step of the way, the Commander-in-Chief foresaw and provided for every eventuality, and his scheme worked out absolutely and entirely 'according to plan,' to use the favourite phrase of the German High Command.
When the Corps Commanders began working out the details two of the greatest problems were transport and water. Only patience and skilful development of known sources of supply would surmount the water difficulty, and we had to wait till the period of concentration before commencing its solution. But to lighten the transport load which must have weighed heavily on Corps Staffs, the Commander-in-Chief agreed to allow the extension of the railway east of Sh.e.l.lal to be begun sooner than he had provided for. It was imperative that railway construction should not give the enemy an indication of our intentions. If he had realised the nature and scope of our preparations he would have done something to counteract them and to deny us that element of surprise which exerted so great an influence on the course of the battle.
General Allenby, however, was willing to take some risks to simplify supply difficulties, and he ordered that the extension to a railway station north-east of Karm should be completed by the evening of the third day before the attack, that a Decauville line from Gamli, not to be begun before the sixth day prior to the attack, was to be completed to Karm by the day preceding the opening of the fighting at Beersheba, and that a new Decauville line should be started at Karm when fighting had begun, and should be carried nearly three miles in the Beersheba direction early on the following morning. These new lines, though of short length, were an inestimable boon to the conductors of supply trains. The new railheads both of the standard gauge and light lines were well placed, and they not only saved time and shortened the journeys of camel convoys and lorry transport columns, but prevented congestion at depots in one central spot.
A big effort was made to escape detection by enemy aircraft. For the first time since the Egyptian Expeditionary Force took the field we had obtained mastery in the air. On the 8th and 15th October two enemy planes were shot down behind our lines, and the keenness of our airmen for combat made the German aviators extremely careful. They had been bold and resolute, taking their observations several thousand feet higher than our pilots, it is true, but neither anti-aircraft fire nor the presence of our machines in the air had up to this time deterred them. However, just at the moment when airwork was of extreme importance to the Turks, the German flying men, recognising that our pilots had new battle planes and were full of resource and daring, showed an unusual lack of enterprise, and we profited from their inactivity. The concentration of the force in the positions from which it was to attack Beersheba was to have taken seven days, but owing to the difficulties attending the development of water at Asluj and Khalasa the time was extended to ten days. During this period the uppermost thought of commanders was to conceal their movements. All marching was done at night and no move of any kind was permitted till nearly six o'clock in the evening, when enemy aircraft were usually at rest and the light was sufficiently dull to prevent the Fritzes seeing much if they had made an exceptionally late excursion. All the tents and temporary shelters which had been occupied for weeks were left standing. Cookhouses, horse lines, canteens, and so on were untouched, and one had an eerie feeling in pa.s.sing at night through these untenanted camping grounds, deserted and lifeless, and a prey to the jackal and pariah dog. A vast area of many square miles which had held tens of thousands of troops and animals almost became a wilderness again, and the few natives hereabouts who had made large profits from the sale of eggs, fruit, and vegetables looked disconsolate and bewildered at the change, hoping and believing that the empty tents merely denoted a temporary absence. But the great majority of the Army never came that way again.
When the infantry started on the march, divisions and brigades had allotted to them particular areas for their march routes, and all over that country, where scarcely a tree or native hut existed to make a landmark, there were dotted small arrow-pointed boards with the direction 'A road,' 'B road,' 'Z road,' as the case might be. Marching in the dark hours when a refres.h.i.+ng air succeeded the heat of the day, the troops halted as soon as a purple flush threw into high relief the southern end of the Judean hills, and they hid themselves in the wadis and broken ground; and on one unit vacating a bivouac area it was occupied by another, thus making the areas in which the troops rested as few as possible.
The concentration was worked to a time-table. Not only were brigades allotted certain marches each night, but they were given specified times to cover certain distances, and these were arranged according to the condition of the ground. In parts it was very broken and covered with loose stones, and the pace of infantry by night was very slightly more than one mile per hour. The routes for guns were not chosen until the whole country had been reconnoitred, and it was a highly creditable performance for artillery to get their field guns and heavy howitzer batteries through to the time-table. But the clockwork precision of the movements reflected even more highly on the staff working out the details than on the infantry and artillery, and it may be said with perfect truth that the staff made no miscalculation or mistake. The XXth Corps staff maps and plans, and the details accompanying them, were masterpieces of clearness and completeness.
The men who fought out the plans to a triumphant finish were glad to recognise this perfection of staff work.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Appendix VI.]
CHAPTER VII
THE BEERSHEBA VICTORY
The XXth Corps began its movement on the night of 20-21st October.
The whole Corps was not on the march, but a sufficient force was sent forward to form supply dumps and to store water at Esani for troops covering Desert Mounted Corps engineers engaged on the development of water at Khalasa and Asluj. Some of the Australian and New Zealand troops engaged on this work had previously been at these places.
In the early summer it was thought desirable to destroy the Turkish railway which ran from Beersheba to Asluj and on to Kossaima, in order to prevent an enemy raid on our communications between El Arish and Rafa, and the mounted troops with the Imperial Camel Corps had had a most successful day in destroying many miles of line and several bridges. The Turks were badly in need of rails for the line they were then constructing down to Deir Sineid, and they had lifted some of the rails between Asluj and Kossaima, but during our raid we broke every rail over some fifteen miles of track. Khalasa and Asluj being water centres became the points of concentration for two mounted divisions, and the splendid Colonials in the engineer sections worked at the wells as if the success of the whole enterprise depended upon their efforts, as, indeed, to a very large extent it did. Theirs was not an eight hours day. They worked under many difficulties, often thigh deep in water and mud, cleaning out and deepening wells and installing power pumps, putting up large canvas tanks for storage, and making water troughs. The results exceeded antic.i.p.ations, and the Commander-in-Chief, on a day when the calls on his time were many and urgent, made a long journey to thank the officers and men for the work they had done and to express his high appreciation of their skill and energy.
The princ.i.p.al work carried out by the XXth Corps during the period of concentration consisted in laying the standard gauge line to Imara and opening the station at that place on October 28; prolonging the railway line to a point three-quarters of a mile north-north-east of Karm, where the station was opened on November 3; completing by October 30 the light railway from the east bank of the wadi Ghuzze at Gamli _via_ Karm to Khasif; and developing water at Esani, Malaga, and Abu Ghalyun for the use first by cavalry detachments and then by the 60th Division. Cisterns in the Khasif and Imsiri area were stocked with 60,000 gallons of water to be used by the 53rd and 74th Divisions, and this supply was to be supplemented by camel convoys.
Apparently the enemy knew very little about the concentration until about October 26, and even then he could have had only slight knowledge of the extent of our movements, and probably knew nothing at all of where the first blow was to fall. In the early hours of October 27 he did make an attempt to interfere with our concentration, and there was a spirited little action on our outpost line which had been pushed out beyond the plain to a line of low hills near the wadi Hanafish. The Turks in overwhelming force met a most stubborn defence by the Middles.e.x Yeomanry, and if the enemy took these London yeomen as an average sample of General Allenby's troops, this engagement must have given them a foretaste of what was in store for them.
The Middles.e.x Yeomanry (the 1st County of London Yeomanry, to give the regiment the name by which it is officially known, though the men almost invariably use the much older Territorial t.i.tle) and the 21st Machine Gun Squadron, held the long ridge from El Buggar to hill 630.
There was a squadron dismounted on hill 630, three troops on hill 720, the next and highest point on the ridge, and a post at El Buggar. At four o'clock in the morning the latter post was fired on by a Turkish cavalry patrol, and an hour later it was evident that the enemy intended to try to drive us off the ridge, his occupation of which would have given him the power to hara.s.s railway construction parties by sh.e.l.l-fire, even if it did not entirely stop the work. Some 3000 Turkish infantry, 1200 cavalry, and twelve guns had advanced from the Kauwukah system of defences to attack our outpost line on the ridge.
They heavily engaged hill 630, working round both flanks, and brought heavy machine-gun and artillery fire to bear on the squadron holding it. The Royal Flying Corps estimated that a force of 2000 men attacked the garrison, which was completely cut off.
A squadron of the City of London Yeomanry sent to reinforce was held up by a machine-gun barrage and had to withdraw. The garrison held out magnificently all day in a support trench close behind the crest against odds of twenty to one, and repeatedly beat off rushes, although the bodies of dead Turks showed that they got as close as forty yards from the defenders. Two officers were wounded, and four other ranks killed and twelve wounded.
The attack on hill 720 was made by 1200 cavalry supported by a heavy volume of sh.e.l.l and machine-gun fire. During the early morning two desperate charges were beaten off, but in a third charge the enemy gained possession of the hill after the detachment had held out for six hours. All our officers were killed or wounded and all the men were casualties except three. At six o'clock in the evening the Turks were holding this position in strength against the 3rd Australian Light Horse, but two infantry brigades of the 53rd Division were moving towards the ridge, and during the evening the enemy retired and we held the ridge from this time on quite securely. The strong defence of the Middles.e.x Yeomanry undoubtedly prevented the Turks establis.h.i.+ng themselves on the ridge, and saved the infantry from having to make a night attack which might have been costly. Thereafter the enemy made no attempt to interfere with the concentration. The yeomanry losses in this encounter were 1 officer and 23 other ranks killed, 5 officers and 48 other ranks wounded, 2 officers and 8 other ranks missing.
On the night of October 30-31 a brilliant moon lit up the whole country. The day had been very hot, and at sunset an entire absence of wind promised that the night march of nearly 40,000 troops of all arms would be attended by all the discomforts of dust and heat. The thermometer fell, but there was not a breath of wind to s.h.i.+ft the pall of dust which hung above the long columns of horse, foot, and guns.
Where the tracks were sandy some brigades often appeared to be advancing through one of London's own particular fogs. Men's faces became caked with yellow dust, their nostrils were hot and burning, and parched throats could not be relieved because of the necessity of conserving the water allowance. A hot day was in prospect on the morrow, and the fear of having to fight on an empty water-bottle prevented many a gallant fellow broaching his supply before daybreak.
Most of the men had had a long acquaintance with heat in the Middle East, and the high temperature would have caused them scarcely any trouble if there had been wind to carry away the dust clouds. The cavalry marched over harder and more stony ground than the infantry.
They advanced from Khalasa and Asluj a long way south of Beersheba to the east of the town. It was a big night march of some thirty miles, but it was well within the powers of the veterans of the Anzac Mounted Division and Australian Mounted Division, whose men and horses were in admirable condition.
The infantry were ordered to be on their line of deployment by four o'clock on the morning of October 31, and in every case they were before time. There had been many reconnaissances by officers who were to act as guides to columns, and they were quite familiar with the ground; and the guns and ammunition columns were taken by routes which had been carefully selected and marked. In places the banks of wadis had been cut into and ramps made to enable the rough stony watercourses to be practicable for wheels, and, broken as the country was, and though all previous preparations had to be made without arousing the suspicions of Turks and wandering Bedouins, there was no incident to check the progress of infantry or guns. Occasional rifle fire and some sh.e.l.ling occurred during the early hours, but at a little after three A.M. the XXth Corps advanced headquarters had the news that all columns had reached their allotted positions.