With our army in Palestine

by Antony Bluett

When he had sufficiently recovered from the shock the trooper described what he had seen to the sentry, who urged him to go to bed and he would probably be better in the morning. However, the trooper persisted in his tale, and finally the sentry promised to keep a sharp look-out on the place and to warn his relief to do the same. The next day the trooper, his conviction still unshaken, collected a few friends and together they dug round the mysterious spot. They found an underground chamber with telephone apparatus complete, which was found to be connected with the Turkish defences at Gaza! The trap-door leading down to it was hidden under sods of earth indistinguishable from the surrounding soil and the place was ingeniously ventilated by a pipe through the stump of a tree close by. The two occupants had rations enough for a siege; only they knew how long they had been installed and how much information they had gathered. The sublime effrontery of the thing! It might have gone on for ever had not one of the prisoners crawled out for a breather at the precise moment when the convivial trooper was returning to home and friends.

After this episode there was a long and rigorous hunt for spies and several more were captured, most of them carrying on very innocent-looking pursuits. What made the risk of detection less for these people was the British policy, in the main a sound one, of non-interference up to a certain point with the natives of the country in which we were fighting; any old Bedouin, therefore, was a potential spy.

By the middle of April the preparations for a second attempt on Gaza were complete. This time there was no intention of confining the issue to a one- or even two-day battle. There might be another fog.... On the 16th we packed six days' rations and forage on to the limbers and moved to the outskirts of Belah, there to cover the infantry and wait till they had carried out their part of the programme, which was to capture the outer defences of Gaza. The Lowlanders and East Anglians did this in great style the next morning, and spent the rest of that and the following day consolidating the gains and preparing for the big "show" on the 19th. At dark on the 18th we moved forward and crossed the wadi once again: the journey this time was made comparatively easy by the fine work of the engineers during the past fortnight.

By cutting deep into the steep sides of the wadi they had made several really admirable roads sloping gradually down to the bed and up the other side. The way led through fields of barley now standing almost waist-high. It seemed a monstrous pity that the harvest would never be garnered, that soon it would be crushed by gun-wheels and trodden underfoot by thousands of horses. As we drew nearer the Turkish lines we proceeded with extreme caution lest we ran into their patrols, and shortly after midnight halted, noiselessly unlimbered the guns and dug them in. We had to tie the horses' heads up to prevent them from grazing on the barley around us, and muffled their bits and other steel work on the harness with bits of rag, for the least sound carries a long way in this clear atmosphere. Then, the drivers in each team taking turns to watch their horses, we lay down in the barley and slept. "Zero" was at 0530, when it was just light enough to fire, and by dawn we were up and about, tightening girths and preparing for a quick move, if necessary—in one direction or the other.

The Turkish batteries discovered us at the precise moment when we opened fire, possibly a few seconds before, for their first shells arrived and exploded in a smother of barley-stalks and dust ere we had fairly begun. They must have had some previous suspicion of our presence, for they had the range to a yard right from the opening chorus and peppered our position with extraordinary precision. Fortunately for us their guns, like our own, were light field-pieces, or casualties would have been heavy. As it was the Turkish shells destroyed most of the barley in the vicinity without doing any material damage to our guns or horses.

After about an hour's steady firing, on the same lines as the strophe and anti-strophe of a Greek chorus—noise and damage about equal, that is—the excitement began in real earnest. The guns were limbered up and we advanced out of the barley fields and galloped under heavy fire across a sandy stretch to a position right in the open. We had a lively half-minute unlimbering the guns. One team advancing into line struck a patch of heavy soil which caused the pace sensibly to decrease. They were lucky, for a shell had previously burst in the exact spot where the gun was unlimbered a second or two later, which would certainly have obliterated the entire team had it not been for that providential patch of heavy ground. Another shell passed underneath an ammunition-waggon, ploughed a deep furrow in the earth and—failed to explode! There were very few "duds," however. The red flashes from the Turkish guns were distinctly visible, and every few seconds their shells exploded in a long line about ten yards in front of our position.

Our responses must have been very much to the point, for the shelling from one quarter diminished appreciably after one particularly heavy burst of firing from our guns, and soon ceased altogether. By way of retaliation the batteries immediately in front of us redoubled their fire and spouts of earth shot into the air all round the guns. So hot did it become that once the horses were called up to bring the battery out of action; it was impossible to approach within a hundred yards, however—indeed, as soon as the teams appeared out of the nullah in which the waggon-line had been placed the Turks instantly turned their guns on to them and shelled them out of sight again.

But now another battery came up on our right, and the two, by accurate and steady shooting, gradually wore down the opposition; one by one the red flashes disappeared and the spouts of earth diminished in number. Finally there was a lull; the Turks had had enough for the time being.

This of course was only on a very small portion of the front, and only affected the movements of our particular brigade, who were heavily engaged on their own account. On our left the advance was making little progress. The Turks had fortified every ridge to the last degree and refused to be dislodged from even the smallest positions, fighting on till every man was killed. The Welsh Division were making towards Samson's Ridge, and being nearest the sea were compelled to move in a restricted area in which there was no cover whatever. Standing a few miles off-shore were some British monitors and a French battleship, the last-named aptly called the Requin, and these did some fine shooting throughout the day.

It was discovered that the Turks were using the big mosque in Gaza as an O.P. from which to direct their artillery fire. The navy promptly dropped a 9.2 in. shell on it—a fine shot considering the range.