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This was a bivouac area near to the tomb of some ancient holy man and almost within the shadow of Tel el Jemmi, the huge circular earth-tower, which was the most southerly outpost of the Crusaders. There we began a hard programme of training in musketry, bayonet-fighting, physical and close-order drill and movements by night, a plain showing that we were entering again the valley of decision.
Troops are thrust into a forward position, and to keep them provided with the necessaries of life transport is organised to the very pitch of perfection. Often the position is occupied for a few days only, when the troops are sent elsewhere and the whole business starts again. So it happened at Tel el Jemmi.
There were at least six thousand horses to be watered daily, in addition to which their forage and the men's rations and drinking water had somehow to be brought, and quickly. About two miles from our position and under the shadow of Tel el Jemmi was a nullah, probably an off-shoot of the wadi, perhaps half a mile long by a couple of hundred yards broad.
As daylight gradually broke we got our first sight of Gaza and the country south of it, with which we were to become extremely familiar in the next seven months. We were a mile or so from the Wadi Ghuzzeh, with the extraordinary Hill of Tel el Jemmi away on our right, while the Red House among its fruit trees and the white dome of Sheikh Nebhan were conspicuous in the foreground.
Our position was near Tel el Jemmi, one of the three high hills, each artificially built in the form of a double cross, that once marked the southern boundary of the land conquered by the early Crusaders. It was too far away from the wadi for us to draw our water there; nor in point of fact was there sufficient for our needs had we been conveniently near.
As a defensive fighter, however, especially behind a machine-gun, the Turk has few equals, and, assisted no doubt by his fatalistic temperament, he will take the severest hammering for days without flinching. Tel el Jemmi being by far the most considerable hill in the neighbourhood, an observation post was established on the summit from which the whole wide plain of Gaza lay open to the view.
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