How Jerusalem Was Won eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 303 pages of information about How Jerusalem Was Won.

How Jerusalem Was Won eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 303 pages of information about How Jerusalem Was Won.

In front of the 60th Division the Turks were still holding some strong positions from which they should have been able seriously to delay the Londoners’ advance had it not been for the threat to their communications by the pressure by the 10th and 74th Divisions.  The Londoners had previously tested the strength of Adaseh, and had found it an extremely troublesome hill.  They went for it again—­the 179th Brigade this time—­and after a several hours’ struggle took it at dusk.  Meanwhile the 181st Brigade had taken the lofty villages of Bir Nebala and El Jib, and after Adaseh became ours the Division went ahead in the dark and got to the line across the Nablus road from Er Ram to Rafat, capturing some prisoners.  The 74th Division also made splendid progress.  In the early hours the Division, with the 24th Royal Welsh Fusiliers and the 24th Welsh Regiment attached, secured Jufeir and resumed their main advance in the afternoon, the 230th and 231st Brigades cooperating with the 229th Brigade which was under the orders of the 10th Division.  Before dark they had advanced their line from the left of the 60th Division in Rafat past the east of Beitunia to the hill east of Abu el Ainein, and this strong line of hills once secured, everybody was satisfied that the Turks’ possession of Ramallah and Bireh was only a question of hours.  Part of this line had been won by the 10th Division, which began its advance before noon in the same battle formation as on the 27th.  Soon after the three groups started the heavy artillery put down a fierce fire on the final objectives, and before three o’clock the Turks were seen to be evacuating Kefr Skyan, Ainein, and Rubin.  The enemy put up a stout fight at Beitunia and on a hill several hundred yards north-west of the village, but the 229th Brigade had good artillery and machine-gun assistance, and got both places before four o’clock, capturing seventy prisoners, including the commander of the garrison, and a number of machine guns.  The left group was hotly opposed from a hill a mile west of Rubin and from a high position south-west of Ainein.  The nature of the ground was entirely favourable to defence and for a time the Turk took full advantage of it, but our artillery soon made him lose his stomach for fighting, and doubtless the sound of many shell-bursts beyond Ramallah made him think that his rock sangars and the deep ravines in front of him were not protection against a foe who fought Nature with as much determination as he fought the Turkish soldier.  Six-inch howitzers of the 378th Siege Battery had been brought up to Foka in the early hours, and all the afternoon and evening they were plastering the road from Ramallah along which the enemy were retreating.  The left group defied the nests of machine guns hidden among the rocks and broke down the defence.  The centre group had been delayed by the opposition encountered by the left, but they took Skyan at six o’clock and all of the objectives for one day were in our hands

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How Jerusalem Was Won from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.