Читать книгу Australia in Palestine - Various - Страница 28

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This was the scheme. We faced the Turks on a fifty-mile line running from a point on the Mediterranean coast about twelve miles north of Jaffa south-eastward across the Plain of Sharon, thence eastward over the Mountains of Samaria at a height of 1500 to 2000 feet, falling to 1000 feet below sea-level where it crossed the Jordan Valley, and terminating in the foothills of the Mountains of Gilead. The Sharon Plain sector was some fifteen miles in length, across Samaria fifteen miles, and the stretch in the Jordan Valley about eighteen. The Turkish position was a strong one. On Samaria, or the Central Palestine Range, south of Nablus, the enemy had ideal defensive country, rugged and broken, yet well served by rail—on the north-west to Haifa, and on the north-east across the Jordan at Beisan and by way of Damascus to Turkey; he had also good roads to Haifa and to Damascus by way of Nazareth.

To push the Turk on the mountains by a frontal attack would have meant at best the gradual withdrawal of his forces. In Jordan Valley the enemy’s safety lay in the fact that his guns on the foothills of either side covered the limited ground which was practicable for horse and transport. And, even if we had galloped up Jordan Valley, it would have been extremely difficult from there to swing in behind the Turkish position on the Central Range. General Allenby took the Plain of Sharon for his great enterprise. Forty miles behind the Turkish position the Jordan Valley and the Plain of Sharon are joined to the Esdraelon Plain—the old Plain of Armageddon. In other words, the Jordan and Sharon and Esdraelon formed a half-circle round the main central Turkish position on the mountains. All the enemy lines of communication led across Esdraelon. If we could seize the Plain swiftly, cut the railways and hold the roads, the Turkish army west of the Jordan was in our hands. It was a scheme calculated to test the mettle of any army. If we were to succeed, every branch of the service had to show at its best. First our airmen had to destroy or drive off the German aeroplanes and so keep the enemy ignorant of our plans; then the artillery barrage had to make the way possible for our infantry; in its turn, the infantry had, in one rush, to drive a gap for our cavalry, and the cavalry, galloping through the gap, had to cover fifty miles and reach Esdraelon Plain on the night of the first day. Lastly, the cavalry must hold the communications they had cut, and to do so, they had to be fed. The transport necessary for feeding tens of thousands of men and horse had to travel almost as fast as the cavalry. The scheme had to go through to time-table or it might not go through at all. If the artillery had failed to do its work in a swift half-hour’s bombardment, or if the infantry had faltered, the enemy would have had time to redistribute his forces, and General Allenby might have been robbed of his victory.