The end of Ottoman dominion over the cradle of Christianity, a place held in reverence by the vast majority of the peoples of the Old and New World, made a deep and abiding impression, and as long as people hold dearly to their faiths, sentiment will make General Allenby’s victory one of the greatest triumphs of the war.  The relief of the people of Jerusalem, as well as their confidence that we were there to stay, manifested itself when General Shea drove into the City.  The news had gone abroad that the General was to arrive about noon, and all Jerusalem came into the streets to welcome him.  They clapped their hands and raised shrill cries of delight in a babel of tongues.  Women threw flowers into the car and spread palm leaves on the road.  Scarcely had the Turks left, probably before they had all gone and while the guns were still banging outside the entrances to Jerusalem, stray pieces of bunting which had done duty on many another day were hung out to signify the popular pleasure at the end of an old, hard, extortionate regime and the beginning of an era of happiness and freedom.

After leaving Jerusalem the enemy took up a strong position on the hills north and north-east of the City from which he had to be driven before Jerusalem was secure from counter-attack.  During the morning General Chetwode gave orders for a general advance to the line laid down in his original plan of attack, which may be described as the preliminary line for the defence of Jerusalem.  The 180th and 181st Brigades were already on the move, and some of the 53rd Division had marched by the main road outside the Holy City’s walls to positions from which they were to attempt to drive the enemy off the Mount of Olives.  The 180th Brigade, fresh and strong but still wet and muddy, went forward rapidly over the boulders on the hills east of the wadi Beit Hannina and occupied the rugged height of Shafat at half-past one.  Shafat is about two miles north of Jerusalem.  In another half-hour they had driven the Turks from the conical top of Tel el Ful, that sugar-loaf hill which dominates the Nablus road, and which before the end of the year was to be the scene of an epic struggle between Londoner and Turk.  The 181st Brigade, on debouching from the suburbs of Jerusalem north-east of Lifta, was faced with heavy machine-gun and rifle fire on the ridge running from the western edge of the Mount of Olives across the Nablus road through Kh. es Salah.  On the left the 180th Brigade lent support, and at four o’clock the 2/21st and 2/24th Londons rushed the ridge with the bayonet and drove off the Turks, who left seventy dead behind them.  The London Division that night established itself on the line from a point a thousand yards north of Jerusalem and east of the Nablus road through Ras Meshari to Tel el Ful, thence westwards to the wadi behind the olive orchards south of Beit Hannina.  The 74th Division reached its objective without violent opposition, and its line ran from north of Nebi Samwil