The great mosque, which had once been a noble, Christian church, was almost entirely destroyed, but not by our guns. The Turks had used it as an ammunition depot, with that callous disregard for the Holy Places of their own religion which was always so characteristic of them, and, when the city was abandoned, they blew up the great store of shells there, and laid the mosque in ruins. Some of the lower arches remained, and one beautiful Norman gateway, but all the rest was a heap of tumbled masonry.
The German headquarters was in the north-west corner of the town, close to the remains of a graceful little Greek church. The house in which the officers lived was screened from view on all sides, and, as it was far removed from any of the enemy defences, it had escaped serious damage. But it was satisfactory to note that both the tennis courts, which had been made with such evident pains, had been visited by eight-inch shells.
The rest of the city was a mass of ruins, stark and silent. And so it is likely to remain for all time, an awful witness to the devastation of war. Its inhabitants have neither the energy of the people of Europe, nor the incentive of a bitter climate, and they are never likely to rebuild it.
By the end of January our front had been thoroughly consolidated, and the infantry had recovered from the hard fighting and cruel weather of December. The Commander-in-Chief now determined to extend his line to the Jordan, in order to secure his right flank.
There were several other advantages to be gained by securing possession of one or two crossings over the river. The enemy was at this time obtaining large supplies of grain from the districts round Kerak, in the land of Moab, on the eastern and south-eastern shores of the Dead Sea. This grain was carried across the sea, in barges towed by motor boats, to the north end, whence it was transported to the Turkish front by the good metalled road from Jericho to Jerusalem. With Jericho and the crossings of the Jordan immediately north of the Dead Sea in our hands, we should have control of the sea, and all this traffic would be stopped. The grain would then have to be brought up to Amman, thirty miles east of the Jordan, by the Hedjaz Railway, and transported from there over some fifty miles of bad mountain track. In the extremely disorganised state of the Turkish transport, this would be likely to cause the enemy much inconvenience and delay. The control of the river crossings at Jericho would also facilitate raiding operations across the Jordan, directed against the enemy's line of communications with the Hedjaz.
The operations necessary to secure these objects were limited to the establishment of one or more bridgeheads on the east bank of the Jordan, and to an advance of our line northwards as far as the Wadi el Auja, a small, perennial stream that flows into the Jordan some nine miles north of the point where the latter enters the Dead Sea.
The watershed between the Mediterranean and the deep cleft of the Jordan Valley runs roughly north and south, through the Mount of Olives. Some description of the difficulties of the country on the west of the watershed has already been given. On the east side they are very much greater. The streams that run down from the mountains to the plain have cut gorges through the rock, often many hundreds of feet deep, which divide the eastern portion of the range into a series of parallel ridges running east and west. Innumerable tributaries of the main watercourses run in all directions, and split these ridges again into isolated masses of rocks. It is only possible to cross the main wadis in a few places, so that movement north and south on the part of any considerable body of troops is out of the question.
Going down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, the general fall of the ground is gradual to Talaat el Dumm, the Hill of Blood, above the Good Samaritan Inn. From here the road pitches down, in a series of zigzags and hairpin turns, to the valley floor nearly 3000 feet below. Farther north, at Jebel Kuruntul, the traditional Mount of Temptation, the mountains end abruptly in a single stupendous cliff, over 1000 feet high.
Over this country the 60th Division and the Anzac Mounted Division, which had concentrated at Bethlehem on the 18th of February, were directed to move on Jericho.
The advance began on the 19th of February, in heavy rain. All day the infantry struggled forward, against strong opposition from the enemy, and by nightfall had advanced nearly three miles, to a position about a mile west of Talaat el Dumm.