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Continuous pressure maintained by our troops in this neighbourhood, however, induced the enemy to withdraw the garrison of Khan Yunus, which place was entered by our cavalry without opposition on the 28th February. The enemy also evacuated without firing a shot the position which he had prepared near Weli Sheikh Nuran. Our troops had crossed the desert with success attending them at every stage.
The Turks had cut an elaborate series of trenches on Wali Sheikh Nuran, a hill covering Shellal, but they evacuated this position before we made the first attack on Gaza, and left an invaluable water supply in our hands.
After the destruction of their post at Rafa, the Turks immediately began to concentrate their forces near Shellal. West of this place they prepared a strong defensive position near Weli Sheikh Nuran, with the object of covering their lines of communication both along the Beersheba railway and along the Jerusalem-Hebron-Beersheba road.
Then he told me that we had barely missed coming face to face with Gratillus himself. This barely missed encounter with one of the most dreaded of the Emperor's spies, a man who knew me perfectly and who had always disliked me, so terrified both of us that we left Placentia by the Nuran Gate and made our way southwestward into the Apennines.
The mounted troops were disposed in various places along our right flank, some in the wadi, others more or less conveniently near; and they led an existence peculiar to themselves. For our part, after resting for a short time at Sheikh Nuran, we moved eastwards to El Chauth, one of the positions gallantly captured by the Imperial Camel Corps in the first battle of Gaza.
In the early hours of the morning we came to Sheikh Nuran, a position which had been very strongly fortified by the Turks but evacuated without a struggle, like those previously at Rafa, when we attacked Gaza the first time. I remember little about this camp save that the Turks had left it in an unspeakably filthy condition, causing us to spend days clearing away their refuse.
Then when 12,000 Turks were fortifying the Weli Sheikh Nuran country covering the wadi Ghuzze and the Shellal springs, not a redoubt or trench but was recorded with absolute fidelity on photographic prints, and long before the Turks abandoned the place and gave us a fine supply of water we had excellent maps of the position.
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