The infantry attack was as fine as anything done in the campaign.  I had the advantage of witnessing the centre column carry out the whole of its task and of seeing the right column complete as gallant an effort as any troops could make, and as one saw them scale frowning heights and clamber up and down the roughest of torrent beds, one realised that more than three months’ fighting had not removed the ‘bloom’ from these Cockney warriors, and that their physique and courage were proof against long and heavy trials of campaigning.  The chief objective of the centre column was Talat ed Dumm which, lying on the Jericho road just before the junction of the old and the new road to the Jordan valley, was the key to Jericho.  It is hard to imagine a better defensive position.  To the north of the road is the wadi Farah, a great crack in the rocks which can only be crossed in a few places, and which a few riflemen could cover.  Likewise a platoon distributed behind rocks on the many hills could command the approaches from all directions, while the hill of Talat ed Dumm, by the Good Samaritan Inn, and the height whereon the Crusader ruins stand, dominated a broad flat across which our troops must move.  This position the 180th Brigade attacked at dawn.  The guns opened before the sun appeared above the black crest line of the mountains of Moab, and well before long shadows were cast across the Jordan valley the batteries were tearing to pieces the stone walls and rocky eyries sheltering machine-gunners and infantry.  This preliminary bombardment, if short, was wonderfully effective.  From where I stood I saw the heavies pouring an unerring fire on to the Crusader Castle, huge spurts of black smoke, and the dislocation of big stones which had withstood the disintegrating effect of many centuries of sun power, telling the Forward Observing Officer that his gunners were well on the target and that to live in that havoc the Turks must seek the shelter of vaults cut deep down in the rock by masons of old.  No enemy could delay our progress from that shell-torn spot.  Lighter guns searched other positions and whiffs of shrapnel kept Turks from their business.  There are green patches on the western side of Talat ed Dumm in the early months of the year before the sun has burned up the country.  Over these the infantry advanced as laid down in the book.  The whirring rap-rap of machine guns at present unlocated did not stop them, and as our machine-gun sections, ever on the alert to keep down rival automatic guns, found out and sprayed the nests, the enemy was seen to be anxious about his line of retreat.  One large party, harried by shrapnel and machine-gun fire, left its positions and rushed towards a defile, but rallied and came back, though when it reoccupied its former line the Londoners had reached a point to enfilade it, and it suffered heavily.  We soon got this position, and then our troops, ascending some spurs, poured a destructive fire into the defile and so harassed the Turks re-forming for a counterattack as to render feeble their efforts to regain what they had lost.