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The decisive victory was not to be ours until Foch and Sir Henry Wilson were at the head of military affairs and D'Esperey at Cerna and Allenby at Armageddon had won their Waterloo in the September of 1918; and when Stockwell's Force fired the last shots at Ath in Belgium I was there! We now commenced that early rising and continuous training with which we soon became heartily "fed up."
The meeting must have been a pregnant one to them both. Sir Edmund Allenby came home victor of our most successful campaign in the war to receive a peerage, while inside and outside the station London was roaring its welcome. General Murray, after the failure of the battle of Gaza, had been transferred home and had been received there with the severest criticism and some personal attacks.
A notable presentation was the Spanish Consul, who had been in charge of the interests of almost all countries at war, and whom General Allenby congratulated upon being so busy a man. The presentations over, the Commander-in-Chief returned to the Jaffa Gate and left for advanced General Headquarters, having been in the Holy City not more than a quarter of an hour.
That was disappointing, but in the end it could not have suited us better, for it showed to our own people and to the world how after the Turks had declined an opportunity of showing a desire to preserve the Holy Places from attack an opportunity prompted by our strength, not by any fear that victory could not be won General Allenby was still able to achieve his great objective without a drop of blood being spilled near any of the Holy Sites, and without so much as a stray rifle bullet searing any of their walls.
Advancing steadily upon Jerusalem in the Palestine campaign against the Turks, the British forces under General Allenby finally, on December 10, captured the Holy City and restored it to Christendom. The Turks were driven to the north, with heavy losses, the port of Joppa was occupied, and Palestine was slowly but surely freed from Mussulman dominion.
Early in the morning the cavalry under General Allenby swept out from the town of Braisne on the Vesle and harried in every direction the strong detachments that had been sent forward, driving them back to the Aisne.
They got farther forward than the infantry and met the full force of an opposition which, if not stronger than that about Nebi Samwil, was extremely violent, and they came back to a line which could be supplied with less difficulty when it was apparent that the Turks were not going to accept the opportunity General Allenby gave them to withdraw their army from Jerusalem.
I am not going to suggest that the two events were in point of fact connected, but I do know that the sudden and welcome change was universally attributed to General Allenby, and that thenceforward the E.E.F. was "on him," as the phrase goes, to a man.
New circumstances came to light after the advance was first arranged, and these demanded that the enemy should be driven across the Jordan as soon as possible. General Allenby decided that the operations should be carried out in two phases.
The light was somewhat slow to penetrate elsewhere. Even in Palestine it took Allenby months to substantiate his position.
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