we could control this road.  Next morning the 7th Cheshires, supported by the 4th Welsh, deployed and advanced direct on Sherifeh and gained the summit soon after dawn in time to see small parties of enemy cavalry moving off; then the fog and rain enveloped everything.  The 4th Welsh held the hill during the night in pouring rain with no rations—­pack mules could not get up the height—­and the men having no greatcoats were perished with the cold.  Colonel Pemberton, their C.O., came down to report the men all right, and asked for no relief till the morning when they could be brought back to their transport.  The General went beyond Solomon’s Pools and was within rifle fire from the Turkish trenches in his efforts to reconnoitre, but it was impossible to see ahead, and instead of being able to begin his attack in the Beit Jala-Bethlehem area on the morning of the 8th, that morning arrived before any reconnaissance could be made.  He decided to attack on the high ground of Beit Jala (two miles north-west of Bethlehem) from the south, to send his divisional cavalry, the Westminster Dragoons, on the infantry’s left to threaten Beit Jala from the west and to refuse Bethlehem.

Before developing this attack it was essential to drive the enemy off the observation post looking down upon the main road along which the guns and troops had to pass.  The fog enabled the guns to pass up the road, although the Turks had seven mountain guns in the gardens of a big house south of Bethlehem and had registered the road to a yard.  They also had a heavy gun outside the town.  The weather cleared at intervals about noon, but about two o’clock a dense fog came down again and once more the advance was held up.  Late in the afternoon the Welsh Division troops reached the high ground west and south-west of Beit Jala, but the defences of Bethlehem on the south had still to be taken.  Advance guards were sent into Bethlehem and Beit Jala during the night, and by early morning of the 9th it was found that the enemy had left, and the leading brigade pressed on, reaching Mar Elias, midway between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, by eleven o’clock, and the southern outskirts of Jerusalem an hour later.

Meanwhile the 60th and 74th Divisions had actively patrolled their fronts during the night, and the Turks having tasted the quality of British bayonets made no attempt to recover any of the lost positions.  We had outposts well up the road above Lifta, and at half-past eight they saw a white flag approaching.  The nearest officer was a commander of the 302nd Brigade Royal Field Artillery, to whom the Mayor, the head of the Husseiny family, descendants of the Prophet and hereditary mayors of Jerusalem, signified his desire to surrender the City.  The Mayor was accompanied by the Chief of Police and two of the gendarmerie, and while communications were passing between General Shea, General Chetwode and General Headquarters, General Watson rode as far as the Jaffa Gate of the Holy City