The Desert Mounted Corps / An Account of the Cavalry Operations in Palestine and Syria 1917-1918

by R. M. P. Preston

The Turks were well aware that Amman was the Achilles' heel of the Hedjaz Expeditionary Force, and had provided for its protection as many troops as they could spare. The town itself, which lay immediately to the west of, and covering, the tunnel and viaduct, had been garrisoned and prepared for defence. An advanced defensive position had been established astride the Jericho-El Salt road, extending from El Haud to Shunet Nimrin, and a third position was in course of preparation on the east bank of the Jordan, opposite El Ghoraniyeh.

The Anzac Mounted Division, with the Camel Corps Brigade attached, and the 60th Division were detailed to carry out the raid, which had as its sole object the destruction of the viaduct and tunnel. The town of Amman, which is the principal Circassian settlement in Syria, lies some thirty miles east-north-east of the north end of the Dead Sea, and is connected with Jericho by an indifferent metalled road, passing through El Salt, which the Turks had constructed during the war. From the Jordan at El Ghoraniyeh, 1200 feet below the level of the sea, to Naaur, sixteen miles farther east, at the edge of the plateau on which Amman lies, the ground rises 4300 feet. Nearly the whole of this rise occurs in the last ten miles before Naaur is reached, and the intervening country is a maze of rocky hills, intersected by deep ravines, and traversed only by a few narrow footpaths.

In the course of the ages the Jordan has cut a deep trough through the valley, varying in width from a few hundred yards to a mile or more, and lying about 100 feet below the general level of the surrounding country. The bottom of this trough is a flat plain covered with a dense jungle of tamarisk, and the banks are, in most places, perpendicular. The present channel winds about down the trough, and is only about forty yards wide in normal weather, but the river is deep and very swift, and liable to a rapid rise after heavy rain.

The main watercourses descend from the hills on the east in a series of deep gorges, which traverse the narrow strip of flat country between the foothills and the old channel, and form a succession of barriers to movement along this strip, north and south. Many of these gorges can only be crossed by a single track, which runs from near Beisan, fifteen miles south of Lake Tiberias, to El Ghoraniyeh.

The plan was for the 60th Division to force the passage of the river, drive the enemy from his position at Shunet Nimrin, and then advance up to Jericho-Amman road, as far as El Salt, which was to be seized and held. Meanwhile the rest of the cavalry and the Camel Brigade were to move direct on Amman by the tracks through Naaur and Ain el Sir. After blowing up the viaduct and tunnel at Amman, and destroying as much of the railway line as they could, they were to withdraw on the 60th Division, and the whole force would then recross the Jordan, leaving permanent bridgeheads on the east bank.

The operation was thus purely a raid. Our cavalry would again be engaged in a country that was at least as unsuited for mounted work as was the Judæan Range, of which we had already had such unfavourable experience. The only information available about the Amman hills, other than that of natives, which was always quite unreliable, was contained in a memorandum written for the Commander-in-Chief by two mission fathers who had spent many years in the country east of the Jordan and Dead Sea. This document was an admirable ethnographical and geographical treatise, but, from the military point of view, which requires the utmost detail of description as regards the terrain, it left much to be desired. It appeared, however, that cavalry might be expected to be able to move with some speed up the Naaur-Ain el Sir track to Amman, in fine weather, and thus carry out the necessary demolition on the railway, and make good their retreat, before the enemy should have time to reinforce his troops east of the Jordan.

During the night of the 21st of March a party of swimmers of the 60th Division succeeded, after many fruitless attempts, in getting a line across the Jordan at Makhadet Hajlah, some six miles south of El Ghoraniyeh, and bridge building began at once. Our infantry and engineers suffered severely from the enemy's fire, but the bridge was completed by eight in the morning, and by mid-day a brigade of infantry was over the river, and forcing its way through the dense tamarisk jungle on the east side.

Meanwhile, similar attempts to cross at El Ghoraniyeh during the night had been frustrated by the strength of the current. The efforts had to be abandoned during the daytime, owing to the activity of the enemy, but were renewed during the night of the 22nd. These attempts again failed, and it was not until the morning of the 23rd that a raft was got across here. At four o'clock in the morning a regiment of the New Zealand Mounted Brigade crossed the river by the pontoon bridge at Makhadet Hajlah, and, galloping along the bank to the north, cleared the enemy from the east bank opposite Ghoraniyeh, thus facilitating the crossing of our infantry at that place. By mid-day this regiment had seized the high ground commanding El Ghoraniyeh, capturing about seventy prisoners and several machine guns.

They were followed across the Jordan by a regiment of the 1st A.L.H. Brigade, which cleared the enemy from the country south of Hajlah, and gained touch with a party of infantry which had crossed the Dead Sea in motor boats, and landed on the east bank of the river near its mouth.