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Updated: May 15, 2025
We took the road again that same morning for our position in reserve at Montauban. I said we took the road well, we were on it sometimes, whenever we could shove the horses toward the centre to enable us to squeeze past otherwise we had to plough along above our knees in the soft mud. Even on the road the slush was up to our ankles, but it was metalled underneath.
Ruined, dismantled, crumbling temples; masses of masonry half submerged in the swift-running, treacherous, undermining stream; huge trees lying prostrate, twisted and jammed together where the angry flood had hurled them; bare unsightly poles and piles, sticking from the water at every angle, reminding us of the granaries and godowns that were wont to be filled with the agricultural wealth of the districts for miles around; hard metalled roads cut abruptly off, and bridges with only half an arch, standing lonely and ruined half way in the muddy current that swept noiselessly past the deserted city.
The 2nd Australian Light Horse Brigade during the morning advanced north to take the high hill Tel el Sakaty, a little east of the Beersheba-Hebron road, which was captured at one o'clock, and the brigade then swept across the metalled road which was in quite fair condition, and which subsequently was of great service to us during the advance of one infantry division on Bethlehem and Jerusalem.
There were the marshes of the Jordan Valley to be crossed, ridges of clay to be surmounted, scrub to be negotiated, followed by an ascent of 3,500 feet. The metalled road to Amman crosses the Jordan at the Ghoraniyeh Bridge, and reaches the hills at Shunet Nimrin. It then winds up a wadi to Es Salt, whence it strikes due eastward to Amman. The operations commenced in the latter part of March.
From this tree-clump could be seen, facing the junction of the sandy road with the metalled, the front and the swinging signboard of "The Goat in Boots." And here, that its two more ordinary-looking members might shed the oddity which they owed to the company of the third, the party was to separate. For in Amaryllis, sleep, Dick's care and Mrs. Brundage's wardrobe had worked transformation.
The Third, suddenly without the assistance of his anti-grav, crashed into the fence and dropped leadenly to the metalled surface. Thane crouched a moment watching him. Thane had a cut above one eye, and the blood was beginning to run. He stepped forward.... ... the knife in his hand ... what was it there for?
On the metalled road the rubbered tyres spun silently, and only the flying hoofs clattered and soon they had left the made road and turned on to the hard-beaten track that led to Billabong, where progress was even smoother. The tongues flew almost as swiftly as the wheels. The hot sun sank gradually, and the evening breeze sprang up. It was a time for quick questions and answers.
It would have been bad enough if it had been a metalled road in good order; but it was only a rough track alternating in mud and rock, that had never been good even in mid-summer, and it was now next to impassable.
A fair path runs up hillocks of red-yellow clay, metalled with rounded quartz and ironstone-gravel, roped with roots and barred with trees; their greatest elevation may have been 120 feet. Two parallel ridges, trending north-north-east, are bisected by torrents pouring westward to the river: now dry, they have rolled down huge boulders in their frequent floods.
In the months preceding our attack Royal Engineers were also concerned in improving the means of communication between railway depôts and the front line. Before our arrival in this part of Southern Palestine, wheeled traffic was almost unknown among the natives. There was not one metalled roadway, and only comparatively light loads could be transported in wheeled vehicles.
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