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The events of the next six weeks showed their estimate of the Turkish soldier was justified. The 53rd Division with the Imperial Camel Corps on its right moved to Towal Abu Jerwal on November 1 to protect the flank guard of the XXth Corps during the pending attack on the Kauwukah system. The infantry had some fighting on that day, but it was mild compared with the strenuous days before them.
That movement being made, the XXth Corps and Desert Mounted Corps were to advance against Beersheba, and, having taken it, to secure the valuable water supply which was known to have existed there since Abraham dug the well of the oath which gave its name to the town.
Next morning the 75th Division captured Beer trenches and Tank and Atawineh Redoubts and linked up with the Irish Division of XXth Corps on its right. They were shelled heavily, but it was the shelling of rearguards and not attackers, and soon after twelve o'clock we had the best of evidence that the Turks were saying good-bye to a neighbourhood they had long inhabited.
Many of the stones used in its construction have inscriptions on them; and in the covered passage, leading from the cottage down to the burn, we come upon one of them inscribed with the name of our old friend the XXth Legion, and its crest, the running boar. The most interesting relic of all in the neighbourhood is a Roman mile-stone, standing in its original position on the Stanegate.
Ben Hecht chopping away at the ever-forgiving and all-condoning Bugaboo of Puritanism. Ruth Hale as a XXth Century woman guarding the Home Brew. Wallace Irwin composing under the influence of synthetic gin and Andrew Volstead. Robert Keable urging the Automaton called Citizen to turn on his oppressor. Helen Bullitt Lowry watching Puritanism set the Flapper free.
To say they were equal to the finest troops in the world might lay one open to a charge of exaggeration when it was impossible to get a fair ground of comparison, seeing the conditions of fighting on different fronts was so varied, but the trials through which the troops of XXth Corps passed up to the end of the first week of November, and their magnificent accomplishments by the end of the year, make me doubt whether any other corps possessed finer soldierly qualities.
On the day after the XXth Corps became responsible for this front General Chetwode had a conference with Generals Barrow, Hill, and Girdwood, and after a full discussion of the situation in the hills decided to abandon the plan of getting on to the Jerusalem-Nablus road from the north in favour of attempting to take Jerusalem from the west and south-west.
The XXth Corps plan was to attack the enemy's works between the Khalasa road and the wadi Saba with the 60th and 74th Divisions, while the defences north of the wadi Saba were to be masked by the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade and two battalions of the 53rd Division, the remainder of the latter division protecting the left flank of the Corps from any attack by enemy troops who might move south from the Sheria area.
The last heavy piece of fighting on the XXth Corps' front before the attack on Jerusalem was on December 3, when a regiment of yeomanry, which like a number of other yeomanry regiments had been dismounted to form the 74th Division, covered itself with glory. All the officers had made reconnaissances and had learned the extreme difficulties of the ground.
Surely this monument was erected somewhat later, for the inscription is in German. Stiff, contracted, hard to read, but this is the rendering of it "Here lies Christina Sorel, wife of Eberhard, xxth Baron von Adlerstein, and mother of the Barons Eberhard and Friedmund. She fell asleep two days before her son, on the feast of St. John, mdxliii. "Her children shall rise up and call her blessed.
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