close range, and then engaged them with rifles and machine guns, completely surprising them and taking prisoners the whole of the survivors, 5 officers and 50 men.  The Turks now began to develop a serious opposition to the 180th Brigade from a quarry behind Deir Yesin and from a group of houses forming part of what is known as the Syrian colony, nearly a mile from the Deir Yesin system.  There were some Germans and a number of machine guns in these houses, and by noon they held up the advance.

The brigade was seriously handicapped by the difficulty in moving guns.  The road during the morning had got into a desperate state.  It was next to impossible to haul field guns anywhere off the road, and as the Turks had paid no attention to the highway for some time—­or where they had done something it was merely to dump down large stones to fill a particularly bad hole—­it had become deeply rutted and covered with a mass of adhesive mud.  The guns had to pass down from Kustul by a series of zigzags with hairpin bends in full view of enemy observers, and it was only by the greatest exertion and devotion to duty that the gunners got their teams into the neighbourhood of the wadi.  The bridge over the Surar at Kulonieh having been wholly destroyed, they had to negotiate the wadi, which was now in torrent and carrying away the waters which had washed the face of the hills over a wide area.  The artillery made a track through a garden on the right of the village just before the road reached the broken bridge, and two batteries, the 301st and 302nd, got their guns and limbers across.  They went up the old track leading from Kulonieh to Jerusalem, when first one section and then another came into action at a spot between Deir Yesin and Heart Redoubt, where both batteries were subjected to a close-range rifle fire.

For several hours the artillery fought their guns with superb courage, and remained in action until the fire from the houses was silenced by a brilliant infantry attack.  At half-past one General Watson decided he would attack the enemy on a ridge in front of the houses of the Syrian colony with the 18th and 19th battalions.  With them were units of other battalions of the Brigade.  Soon after three o’clock they advanced under heavy fire from guns, machine guns, and rifles, and at a quarter to four a glorious bayonet charge, during which the London boys went through Germans and Turks in one overwhelming stride, sealed the fate of the Turk in Jerusalem.  That bayonet charge was within sight of the Corps Commander, who was with General Shea at his look-out on Kustul, and when he saw the flash of steel driven home with unerring certainty by his magnificent men, General Chetwode may well have felt thankful that he had been given such troops with which to deliver Jerusalem from the Turks.  The 74th Division, having taken the whole of its first objectives early in the morning and having throughout the day supported the left of the London Division, was ready to commence operations