TURKISH PRISONERS IN CAIRO.
To face p. 82.
On the morning of the 3rd the main attack was delivered. I was enabled to visit the defences at Ismailia, and was taken through the Ismailia ferry post round through the long length of communication trenches that led to the forward positions and back to the banks of the Canal, many hundred yards farther north. I saw the extraordinary pits that had been dug by the Gurkhas, in the centre of which had been placed spiked iron rails, on which many of the enemy subsequently became impaled. There were flares and trip wires round the lines, making, even on the darkest night, a surprise attack an impossibility. Ismailia post, like, for that matter, all the posts I saw along the Canal, was exceedingly strong. The trenches were 10 feet deep, and many of them protected with overhead cover, with iron and wood and sandbags. Extreme care had been taken to conceal the exact contour of the trenches, and from two or three hundred yards away out in the desert I would never have suspected that there was a post bristling with machine guns on the edge of the yellow desert dunes behind which lay the blue waters of the Canal. For at this place, like so many spots along the Canal, the banks are as much as 80 feet high, which, while they serve as a protection, do not always enable the warships to fire over the banks. Gaps, however, were to be found, and the Bitter Lakes presented suitable stations for the battleships that took part in the battle, as I shall indicate.
Before dawn on the 3rd, therefore, between Toussoum and Serapeum, at each of which places there were posts held by Indian troops, the main attempt was delivered and failed, though it was pressed home against a weak spot with some force. In choosing this point to drive in their wedge the Turks had borne in mind that the Suez-Cairo Railway was within a few miles of the Canal, and that one of the branches of the great Freshwater Canal, that supplies the whole of the length of the Canal settlements, lay not a mile away. Weather conditions favoured the Turks. It was cloudy and overcast. One would not say that the defenders were unprepared, for there had been too much quite apparent preparation by the enemy on the previous days. What was not known was the exact point of launching the attack. No doubt Djemal Pasha, who was present in person, gained much information from his spies, but he seems to have been rather wrongly informed. An early move of this adroit leader was an attempted bluff some days before the attack, when a letter was received by General Sir John Maxwell suggesting that, as the Canal was a neutral zone, and that shipping should not be interrupted, the fight should take place on ground to be selected on the Egyptian or western side of the Canal. One can picture the Turkish General, tongue in his cheek, writing the note.
As regards the defence works: at the point of attack there was a post at Toussoum, which lies not 3 miles from the southern extremity of Lake Timsah and about 6 or 8 miles from Ismailia. A series of trenches had been dug on the east bank of the Canal. They were complete and strong, practically intended as a guard for the Canal Company's station of Toussoum, on the west bank. A ferry was in the vicinity, close to the station on the side next to the lake. A mile south was Serapeum, another post on the east bank, with trenches on the western bank and a camp. At Serapeum proper was a fine hospital.
Plan of the attempted Crossing of the Suez Canal at Toussoum & Serapeum by a TURKISH FORCE on 3rd Feb ·1915·
The alarm was sounded at 3.25, when sentries noticed blurred figures moving along the Canal bank not 100 yards distant from the Toussoum post. It was soon reported that the enemy were coming up in considerable strength on the south side (see point marked 47, on map) of the post. Therefore it may be taken that the enemy approach was carried out very quietly and silently, for two pontoons were already in the water when they were fired on from the groups of Indian troops entrenched on the western bank, and were sunk. This was the signal for launching the great effort, and immediately firing broke out in tremendous volume from Toussoum post. Artillery firing soon opened from both sides; the air was noisy with shell. Curiously, though the Turkish gunners had at first the range, they soon lengthened it, evidently in the belief that they would cut off reinforcements; their shells went high and little damage was done. The Toussoum guard-house escaped with a few hits only, and bullets riddled posts and rafters. Vainly about 1,000 Turks endeavoured to seize Toussoum post, while three times that number launched the pontoons, which had been carried on the shoulders of thirty men across the soft sand to the bank. There were places here suitable for the launching, for V-shaped dips or gullies enabled the enemy to approach, protected on either flank, though exposed to a murderous frontal fire from the opposite Canal bank, which apparently they had not expected. At the distance-post at 47/2 the first launching was attempted, but almost simultaneously came the launching for an attack at 47/6. Shouts of "Allah!" were now started by the enemy south of the Toussoum post. At once machine guns came into action and the shouting of "Allah!" died away. By this time the Turks got their machine guns into action, and were ripping belts of lead into the British post, making any attempt at a flanking movement impossible. This was, however, unnecessary to foil the main plan; for the pontoons that had been carried with such terrible difficulty across the desert were being sunk almost as they were launched. A few reached midstream—the rowers were riddled with bullets, the sides of the pontoons ripped, and they sank almost immediately with their freight. Two only reached the opposite bank. One was sunk there immediately and the Turks killed. From the other the men scrambled and entrenched themselves, digging up the soft mud in their desperation with their hands. Next morning they capitulated. Four men alone reached the upper portion of the shore and escaped, only to be captured a few days later in the villages.
An hour after the first shot was fired, the 5th Battery Egyptian Mounted Artillery came into action from the opposite bank, and the Turkish position and head of the wedge being definitely determined, companies from the 62nd Punjabis from the reserve at Serapeum opened fire from midway between the two stations on the west Egyptian bank. The noise of rifles and the intense popping of machine guns resounded up and down the banks of the Canal between the two posts. The ground across which the Turks had made their final dash was tussocky, and behind these tussocks they gained some shelter and entrenched themselves, once the crossing had so dismally failed.