CAMOUFLAGE
General Allenby took no chances. He followed the sound principle of fighting under the best possible conditions. By the aid of clever and greatly successful bluff, the Commander-in-Chief delivered his smashing blow at an unexpected point of the Turkish line. The enemy was led to believe that the British offensive would fall on the eastern sector. While a huge force of cavalry, artillery and infantry was being smuggled by night marches to the Plain of Sharon on the west, active and amusing camouflage preparations were being made in the Jordan Valley. For instance, many dummy camps were brought into existence, and large numbers of realistic canvas horses were tethered in them. Mules drawing sledges were driven about in the dust to suggest heavy traffic. Fast’s Hotel at Jerusalem, then being conducted for officers by the Canteen Board, was ostentatiously emptied of its inmates, two sentry-boxes were placed at the entrance, and a whisper was started in the bazaars that the hotel would be General Allenby’s advanced headquarters during the coming offensive. Simultaneously, the Arabs east of the Jordan made realistic sham preparations for an attack on Amman, out on the Hedjaz. They put down a big base, engaged in bold reconnaissance, and cut the line between Amman and Damascus. The deception of the enemy was complete. We know now that he expected and prepared for the blow on the east, and was stiffening his defences there until a few hours before our bombardment opened on the west, near the Mediterranean.
The airmen materially assisted in this hoodwinking. During the eight weeks preceding the offensive, the German air service was practically driven out of the sky. Fifteen machines were destroyed or forced down and enemy aerodromes were bombed. So complete was our ascendancy that not an enemy plane was seen over the threatened sector for eight days before the offensive began.
Blind as to our movement of troops, and mistaken by fifty miles as to where his line was to be assailed, the enemy’s plight was further accentuated by the destruction of his communications on the very evening of the bombardment. Pulling out at night from their sham camp near Amman, the Arabs rushed away up north, and cut the railway and telegraph communications between Deraa and the great Turkish base at Damascus. This left the enemy on his whole front without supplies for the fight. Other telegraph lines further west were severed at the same time, and a bomb from an Australian plane on the night before our advance destroyed his great forward telephone exchange at Nablus, which dislocated all his lateral communications. When our guns opened at dawn on 19th September, the Turks were already in a desperate plight.