and Amphis, and the destroyers Staunch and Comet, was worthy of the King’s Navy.  They were assisted by the French battleship Requin.  We lost a monitor and destroyer torpedoed by a submarine, but the marks of the Navy’s hard hitting were on and about Gaza, and we heard, if we could not see, the best the ships were doing.  On one day there was a number of explosions about Deir Sineid indicating the destruction of some of the enemy’s reserve of ammunition, and while the Turks were still in Gaza they received a shock resembling nothing more than an earthquake.  One of the ships—­the Raglan, I believe—­taking a signal from a seaplane, got a direct hit on an ammunition train at Beit Hanun, the railway terminus north of Gaza.  The whole train went up and its load was scattered in fragments over an area of several hundred square yards, an extraordinary scene of wreckage of torn and twisted railway material and destroyed ammunition presenting itself to us when we got on the spot on November 7.  There was another very fine example of the Navy’s indirect fire a short distance northward of this railway station.  A stone road bridge had been built over the wadi Hesi and it had to carry all heavy traffic, the banks of the wadi being too steep and broken to permit wheels passing down them as they stood.  During our advance the engineers had to build ramps here.  A warship, taking its line from an aeroplane, fired at the bridge from a range of 14,000 yards, got two direct hits on it and holed it in the centre, and there must have been thirty or forty shell craters within a radius of fifty yards.  The confounding of the Turks was ably assisted by the Navy.

CHAPTER IX

CRUSHING THE TURKISH LEFT

Now we return to the operations of XXth Corps and Desert Mounted Corps on our right.  After the capture of Beersheba this force was preparing to attack the left of the Turkish main line about Hareira and Sheria, the capture of which would enable the fine force of cavalry to get to Nejile and gain an excellent water supply, to advance to the neighbourhood of Huj and so reach the plain and threaten the enemy’s line in rear, and to fall on his line of retreat.  It was proposed to make the attack on the Kauwukah and Rushdi systems at Hareira on November 4, but the water available at Beersheba had not been equal to the demands made upon it and was petering out, and mounted troops protecting the right flank of XXth Corps had to be relieved every twenty-four hours.  The men also suffered a good deal from thirst.  The weather was unusually hot for this period of the year, and the dust churned up by traffic was as irritating as when the khamseen wind blew.  The two days’ delay meant much in favour of the enemy, who was enabled to move his troops as he desired, but it also permitted our infantry to get some rest after their long marches, and supplies were brought nearer the front.  ‘Rest’ was only a comparative term.  Brigades were on the move each day in country which was one continual rise and fall, with stony beds of wadis to check progress, without a tree to lend a few moments’ grateful relief from a burning sun, and nothing but the rare sight of a squalid native hut to relieve the monotony of a sun-dried desolate land.