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Updated: May 7, 2025
There were few habitations in sight, yet the hill-sides were cultivated, wherever it was possible for anything to grow. The wheat was just coming into head, and the people were at work, planting maize. After four hours' ride, we reached El Bireh, a little village on a hill, with the ruins of a convent and a large khan.
There is a bold eminence called Shab Saleh, a mile due south of Bireh. It rises almost sheer from a piece of comparatively flat ground, and the enemy held it in strength. The 2/19th and the 2/20th Londons attacked this feature, and displaying great gallantry in face of much machine-gun fire seized it at half-past three. Once again the gunners supported the infantry admirably.
The 2/17th and 2/18th Londons pushed past Saleh in a north-easterly direction and, leaving Bireh on their left, got into extremely bad country and took the Turks by surprise on a wooded ridge at Sheikh Sheiban.
The track was under hostile shell-fire, and it was found impossible to bring up guns to support the advance of the infantry. The advanced guard, pushing on towards Bireh, had got as far as Biddu, when it was held up there by intensive hostile shelling.
On the right of the 52nd Division the 54th Division was to attack Bald Hill on the night of 21st-22nd December, and on the following morning assault the trench system covering Mulebbis and Fejja; then later in the day to advance to Rantieh, while the 75th Division farther east was to attack Bireh and Beida. This plan was given to divisional commanders at a conference in Jaffa on December 12.
The 2/22nd and the 2/23rd Londons, working across the road, reached the Tahunah ridge, and after a heavy bombardment dashed into the Turkish positions, which were defended most stubbornly to the end, and thus won the last remaining hill which commanded our advance up the Nablus road as far as Bireh. On the eastern side of the main highway the 180th Brigade had once more done sterling service.
Before dark they had advanced their line from the left of the 60th Division in Rafat past the east of Beitunia to the hill east of Abu el Ainein, and this strong line of hills once secured, everybody was satisfied that the Turks' possession of Ramallah and Bireh was only a question of hours.
He began with the storming of Kalat er-rum, a fortress on the Upper Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Bireh, the possession of which was important both for the defence of Northern Syria and for attacks on Armenia and Asia Minor.
Eastwards the country falls away and there are several ragged narrow valleys between some tree-topped ridges till the eye meets a sheikh's tomb on the Zeitun ridge, standing midway between Foka and Beitunia, which rears a proud and picturesque head to bar the way to Bireh.
A regiment of the 8th Brigade sent to reinforce the 6th Brigade on their left got within 800 yards of the hill, when the guns about Bireh and Ramallah opened on them and they were compelled to withdraw, and a Turkish counter-attack forced our forward line back slightly in the afternoon. The enemy had a plentiful supply of ammunition and made a prodigal use of it.
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