The Corps bridging train came up during the night, and the Sappers set to work repairing the bridge. This proved a big task, as one of the four arches had been completely demolished. At daylight on the 28th, as the work was still far from finished, the rest of the Australian Mounted Division forded the river, and at once pressed on up the road towards El Kuneitra. The passage of the guns was very arduous. The river was only about four feet deep at the ford, but there were deep holes on either side, and the current was torrential. The ground on the other side proved to be a marsh, covered with a tangle of high, stiff scrub, and interspersed with large boulders. A road had to be cut through this scrub, boggy places filled in with tree trunks and bushes, and the ford improved. All this took time, and it was nine o'clock before the first gun was across the ford, and safely on the road.
For the first two miles from the Jordan, the road climbs out of the valley in a series of steep zigzags, and the surface was atrocious. Once out of the valley, however, an excellent, metalled road stretched ahead all the way to Damascus. Four Turkish guns, three of them destroyed by direct hits from our artillery, two motor lorries, and a number of machine guns were found on the east bank.
The division made good progress, and the advanced troops reached the Circassian village of El Kuneitra, at the top of the watershed, about one o'clock. The 5th Division got in about five hours later, and the two divisions bivouacked for the night east and west of the village.
The cavalry were now over sixty miles from Nazareth, the nearest post held by our infantry, and Damascus was forty miles farther on. The whole country was, very naturally, in a most disturbed state. Bands of marauding Arabs and Druses patrolled the Hauran, ostensibly at war with the Turks, but always ready to fall on and plunder any weakly-guarded convoy. To protect our communications, therefore, General Grant, with the headquarters of the 4th A.L.H. Brigade and the 11th Regiment, was stationed at Kuneitra. The Hyderabad Lancers, who had been left at the Jordan, near Jisr Benat Yakub, were also placed under his command.
Kuneitra is the seat of government of a Kaza, and one of the most important of the Circassian villages that are found scattered throughout the Hauran, and as far south as Amman. Their origin dates back to the annexation by Russia of the Turkish provinces of Kars, Batoum, and Ardahan in 1877. The Circassians, being Moslems, left the annexed provinces in considerable numbers, and were planted by the Turks along the fringe of the desert, to act as a check on the turbulent Arab tribes. They were given land and favoured in other ways by the Turks, and are consequently cordially hated by the local Arab population. Our cavalry had encountered them before, during the Amman raids. They used to enlist freely in the Turkish cavalry, and should make good soldiers if properly trained. Now, however, the defeat of their protectors laid them open to the vengeance of the Arabs, whom they had always despised and insulted, and they were completely cowed. On the afternoon of the 26th, our aircraft had reported a force of enemy cavalry, estimated at 3000, in the neighbourhood of El Kuneitra. This large force made no attempt to assist in holding the passage of the Jordan, and, by the time our troops reached El Kuneitra, it had all melted away. Arms were buried or hidden, uniforms thrown away, and the big, sturdy, fair-haired louts were all wandering about their villages, with their hands in the pockets of their baggy breeches, trying to look as much like peaceful agriculturists as possible.
A party of Hauran Druses had looted the village before our troops arrived. Some of them were rounded up near by and questioned, but, as they were fighting with the Arabs, and were thus our 'allies,' albeit their methods were not ours, they had to be set free again.
While the Australians and the 5th Cavalry Division were advancing on El Kuneitra, the 4th Cavalry Division passed through Deraa, and pressed on to El Mezerib and Tafas, with the Arabs on its right flank, harassing the rear of the retreating IVth Army. The main Turkish force had got some distance farther north, but it had been delayed for many hours on the previous day at Sheikh Saad, by the skilful fighting of Lawrence's Arabs. It was this delay that finally decided the fate of the Turks in the race for Damascus. The remnants of the IVth Army did, in fact, reach the city, but our troops were close on their heels, and they got no farther. Of the units that left Deraa on the 27th, however, not one man lived to reach Damascus. Passing through Tafas on the afternoon of that day, they seized eighty Arab women and children, and butchered them in cold blood, with every refinement of torture and outrage that the bestial mind of the Turk could conceive. For this deed the Arabs exacted vengeance to the last man. Not only was every man of the Turkish rearguard killed, but two trains full of sick and wounded, which were captured by the Arabs on the railway farther north, were set on fire, and burnt with their human freight. It was a terrible vengeance, but characteristic of the Arabs, and one can hardly blame them. It is to be noted that the Turks who perpetrated this horrible massacre were accompanied by a number of German officers, who appear to have made no effort to stop the hideous work.