TERRIBLE AIR WORK
But before this the airmen had commenced their work in the passes. When our infantry broke the enemy’s line on the Plain of Sharon, many thousands of Turks, who were on the foothills eastward of the gap our cavalry had galloped through, had endeavoured to swing round and retreat to the highlands of Samaria. But the movement was at once detected by the Australian airmen. The Turks, with their transport, were seen to be heading for a narrow defile leading up from Tul Keram to Anebta. Using their wireless, the airmen called up aerodromes where dozens of British and Australian pilots were awaiting the signal. The doomed column, extending over upwards of two miles, was deep in the pass when the first flight arrived with its bombs. Beginning on the leading troops and vehicles, the airmen, flying low, had, in a few minutes, blocked the narrow track. Pilot after pilot, flying in perfect order, dropped his bombs, and then, assisted by the observers, raked the unfortunate Turks with machine guns. Their ammunition exhausted, the airmen sped back to their aerodrome for more, and returned again to the slaughter. Some pilots made four trips on that day. While the airmen attacked the column, the 5th Light Horse Brigade came up over the hills on either side of the track, and caught the Turks with their swords as they attempted to escape. Blocked in front, the battered, distracted procession closed up and telescoped, and fires broke out among the massed and broken vehicles.
Still more appalling, because of the greater magnitude of the disaster, was the fate of a column between Balata and Fermeh on its way down the range towards Beisan, on the Jordan. Flying over Samaria, you appreciate the opportunities which this retreating army offered to the airmen. The stony hills are not so rugged as in Judea, but they are still too steep to permit masses of troops to move off the narrow roads. These roads wind along beside the wadies and are flanked nearly all the way by abrupt hillsides. The Balata column contained the bulk of the enemy’s forward transport. It stretched, slow-moving and in full view from the air, over seven or eight miles of the confined track. An Australian reconnaissance pilot sighted it soon after dawn and, an hour later, dozens of British and Australian bombers and machine gunners, flying within a few hundred feet of the ground, were smashing it to splinters. Again they began at the head, and forced the helpless drivers to pile up from the rear. For hours the bombing was continued. Here the airmen worked unaided by any other arm of the service, and they had wrecked or disabled the whole of the transport before the infantry came up from the south and took the dazed survivors. The broken material afterwards collected in the pass included 90 guns, 840 four-wheeled and 76 two-wheeled horse and cattle vehicles, 50 motor-lorries and a large number of miscellaneous transport, such as water carts and travelling kitchens. The horror of the scene during the bombardment and afterwards need not be dwelt upon. As the bombs rained down with pitiless regularity, scores of lorries and wagons were overturned and dashed to pieces as they went hurtling down into the rocky beds of the wadies. Included in the column were large formations of infantry, and these and the drivers, rushing from the track to escape the bombs, were shot down by airmen. These air attacks were repeated many times on a similar scale in the first two days.
FINE STAFF WORK
Rarely have the various services of an army worked in such perfect accord. The infantry drove the enemy from his front, the Australian and French cavalry, at the same moment, struck from the flank at his very heart at Nablus; as he attempted to retreat in good order, the airmen wrecked him from the skies, and, in a few hours, turned his army into a shell-shocked rabble, with few guns or munitions, and little food. The wretched Turks, in their tens of thousands, urged on by officers, came at last to the outlets into the Esdraelon Plain. When first the cavalry galloped down upon them, and they surrendered in hordes without the least attempt at resistance, we were astonished. It was not until we learned what had happened in the mountains that we understood the tragic state of their morale.
The air force achieved a notable victory. They had not only inflicted very heavy losses, but had incalculably lessened the task of both our infantry and cavalry. They had prevented the Turk from fighting effective rear-guard actions against the pursuing infantry, and had hammered him so soundly that he was incapable of any attempt to burst through our cordon of cavalry. Without this help from the airmen, General Allenby must still have won a great victory; but it would have been much short of the sensational one achieved. Progress must have been much slower, and our casualties heavier by many thousands.
Before the fight was two days old our aeroplanes were using aerodromes captured from the enemy. At one point on the march to Damascus, when we were a hundred miles from our starting-place, a number of airmen came up and established a flying ground abreast of our cavalry advance guard. Throughout the operations an air-post service was maintained between the leading troops and General Headquarters. An Australian Brigadier and a Colonel of the Light Horse, who were in hospital far down the line when the campaign opened, surprised their troops by alighting from aeroplanes in their midst, a hundred miles from our starting-point.
GERMANS FIGHT WELL
The few thousand Germans who were with the Turkish 7th and 8th Armies west of the Jordan met the same fate as their allies; nearly all were destroyed or captured. But one must give the Germans credit for a stout resistance. Throughout, they fought resolutely to avert the great disaster, and if all of them did not continue the struggle to the death, it must be remembered that they were in a desperate situation. They handled nearly all of the hundreds of machine guns, which were the most formidable weapons possessed by the enemy. All the way to Damascus they fought stout rear-guard actions.