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Updated: June 11, 2025
On the other hand, should the Turks withdraw from in front of the Welsh Division, the alternative plan provided that the latter attack should take the form of making a direct advance on Jerusalem and a wheel by the 60th and 74th Divisions, pivoting on the Beit Izza and Nebi Sainwil defences, so as to drive the enemy northwards. The operations were to be divided into four phases.
Descending from the ridge the brigade gave the Turk little chance to stand, and with a bayonet charge they reached the day's objective in the dark. At two o'clock, when the Turks' final effort against Jerusalem had just failed, the 60th and 74th Divisions both sent in the good news that the Turkish commander was moving his reserve division from Bireh westwards to meet the attack from our left.
By December 2 the fine exertions of the troops on the line of communications had enabled the XXth Corps Commander to make his plans for the capture of Jerusalem, and at a conference at Enab on the following day General Chetwode outlined his scheme, which, put in a nutshell, was to attack with the 60th and 74th Divisions in an easterly direction on the front Ain Karim-Beit Surik and, skirting the western suburbs of Jerusalem, to place these two divisions astride the Jerusalem-Nablus road, while the 53rd Division advanced from Hebron to threaten the enemy from the south and protect the right of the 60th Division.
The escort consisted of seventy-five Northumberland Fusiliers, twenty-four local troops, and 100 of the 74th Irish Yeomanry. Fifteen miles from Griquatown, at a place called Rooikopjes, the convoy was attacked by the enemy several hundred in number. Two companies of the Irishmen seized the ridge, however, which commanded the wagons, and held it until they were almost exterminated.
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.
They describe him as "having completed his 74th year, and having thus lived longer than any of his ancestors for the last two centuries; that his existence had been without any great misfortune, and without any acute disease, and that he owed all praise and thanksgiving to the Supreme Being; that the next step would probably be his last; that he was now too much exhausted, both in mind and body, to be of service to his country, but was fortunate in leaving his children well and happy; and that he now waited the Divine will with becoming resignation."
Prisoners of the 351st Regiment, which lost thirteen hundred men in fifteen days, told of officers who had refused to take their men up to the front-line, and of whole companies who had declined to move when ordered to do so. An officer of the 74th Landwehr Regiment is said by prisoners to have told his men during our preliminary bombardment to surrender as soon as we attacked.
The 60th had, by 2 P.M., advanced some way beyond the captured trenches towards Beersheba, and the 74th crossed the Wadi Saba and cleared the trenches northward to the barrier on the Fara-Beersheba road.
The Turks held on very obstinately to their ground east of the railway, and kept the 74th Division at bay till one o'clock in the afternoon, but the artillery of that Division had for some time been assisting in the wire-cutting in front of the trenches to be assaulted by the 60th Division, and the latter went ahead soon after noon, and with the assistance of one brigade of the 10th Division, had won about 4000 yards of the complicated trench system and most of the Rushdi system by half-past two.
That our services on the Somme front were appreciated is shown by the following letter received by our Division from General Rawlinson, Commanding Fourth Army, dated 28th September: "74th Division. The 74th Division has taken a prominent part in the successful advance of the Fourth Army during the past month, and, much to my regret, has been ordered to another part of the British front.
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