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From the Camel Camp on the hill overlooking General Allenby's Headquarters at Bir Salem we saw several battles in the air, for G.H.Q. was a favourite mark of the Turks, and these almost invariably went in favour of the British.
An interesting feature about General Allenby's army was that, from this time forward, the greater portion consisted of Territorials. It was in the late summer of 1917 that the regiment with which I was serving joined the Expeditionary Force. Coming from India, we landed at Suez and were railed through at once to Kantara.
For it was the preparations in this area which made possible General Allenby's tremendous gallop through Northern Palestine and Syria, and gave the Allies Haifa, Beyrout, and Tripoli on the seaboard, and Nazareth, Damascus, and Aleppo in the interior.
General Allenby's unassuming entry, on foot, into the Holy City and his assurance that every man might worship without let or hindrance according to the tenets of the religion in which he believed, whether Christian or Mussulman, profoundly impressed the inhabitants and made the whole proceedings a triumph for British diplomacy and love of freedom.
On the 8th, we were relieved at the Apex by Lines of Communication troops, in order that we might take part in the pursuit of the enemy who were now in full retreat. The quotations in this and the three following chapters, are from General Allenby's Despatch, dated the 16th December, 1917. We have seen that during the night of the 7th/8th November, the enemy had retreated all along the line.
Wharton at last did pay it, and he also paid the rent of the rooms in the Belgrave Mansions, and between £30 and £40 for dresses which Emily had got at Lewes and Allenby's under her husband's orders in the first days of their married life in London. "Oh, papa, I wish I had not gone there," she said. "My dear, anything that you may have had I do not grudge in the least.
An Australian officer, seeing it at Faustine Quarry, asked if it was the badge of the 74th Division. "Well," he added, "we call you 'Allenby's Harriers, because you are the only Division we can't keep up with." Coming from an Australian that was "some" praise. I don't know which was the more popular the G.O.C. or "Reggie."
Let me quote the description of Jezar from George Adam Smith's Historical Geography of the Holy Land, a book of fascinating interest to all students of the Sacred History which many of the soldiers in General Allenby's Army read with great profit to themselves: 'One point in the Northern Shephelah round which these tides of war have swept deserves special notice Gezer, or Gazar.
Hence salients, which when viewed in the light of older conditions seemed traps which could not be eluded, were in practice evaded because, with Allenby's one exception, cavalry failed to atone for the slower movement of the more powerful arm of artillery.
Here on these flats to my right were Lord Cavan's Guards, and on either side of him General Allenby's cavalry, and General Byng's; while, if one turns to the north towards the distance which hides Sonnebeke and Bixschoote, one is looking over the ground so magnificently held on our extreme left by General Dubois and his 9th French Corps.
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