On the night of the 21st-22nd December the 54th Division assaulted Bald Hill, a prominent mound south of the Auja from which a magnificent view of the country was gained.  Stiff fighting resulted, but the enemy was driven off with a loss of 4 officers and 48 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 41 men taken prisoners.  At dawn the Division reported that the enemy was retiring from Mulebbis and Fejja, and those places were soon in our hands.  H.M.S. Grafton, with Admiral T. Jackson, the monitors M29, M31, and M32, and the destroyers Lapwing and Lizard, arrived off the coast and shelled Jelil and Arsuf, and the 52nd Division, advancing on a broad front, occupied the whole of their objectives by five o’clock in the afternoon.  The 157th Brigade got all the high ground about Arsuf, and thus prevented the enemy from obtaining a long-range view of Jaffa.  A few rounds of shell fired by a naval gun at a range of nearly twenty miles fell in Jaffa some months afterwards, but with this exception Jaffa was quite free from the enemy’s attentions.  The brilliant operation on the Auja had saved the town and its people many anxious days.  By the end of the year there were three strong bridges across the river, and three others substantial enough to bear the weight of tractors and their loads were under construction.  The troops received their winter clothing; bivouac shelters and tents were beginning to arrive.  Baths and laundries were in operation, and the rigours of the campaign began to be eased.  But the XXIst Corps could congratulate itself that, notwithstanding two months of open warfare, often fifty to sixty miles from railhead, men’s rations had never been reduced.  Horses and mules had had short allowances, but they could pick up a little in the country.  The men were in good health, despite the hardships in the hills and rapid change from summer to winter, and their spirit could not be surpassed.

CHAPTER XVIII

BY THE BANKS OF THE JORDAN

We have seen how impregnable the defences of Jerusalem had become as the result of the big advance northwards at the end of December.  As far as any military forecast could be made we were now in an impenetrable position whatever force the Turk, with his poor communications, could employ against us either from the direction of Nablus or from the east of the Jordan.  There seemed to be no risk whatever, so long as we chose to hold the line XXth Corps had won, of the Turks again approaching Jerusalem, but the Commander-in-Chief determined to make the situation absolutely safe by advancing eastwards to capture Jericho and the crossings of the Jordan.  This was not solely a measure of precaution.  It certainly did provide a means for preventing the foe from operating in the stern, forbidding, desolate, and awe-inspiring region which has been known as the Wilderness since Biblical days, and doubtless before.