he head
when leading his squadron in a glorious charge. His body rests in the
garden of the French convent at Ramleh not far from the spot where
humbler soldiers take their long repose, and these graves within
visual range of the tomb of St. George, our patron saint, will stand
as memorials of those Britons who forsook ease to obey the stern call
of duty to their race and country.

The overwhelming nature of this victory is illustrated by a comparison
of the losses on the two sides. Whereas ours were 37 all told, we
counted between 400 and 500 dead Turks on the field, and the enemy
left with us 360 prisoners and some material. The extraordinary
disparity between the losses can only be accounted for first by the
care taken to lead the cavalry along every depression in the ground,
and secondly by rapidity of movement. The cavalry were confronted by
considerable shell fire, and the volume of machine-gun fire was heavy,
though it was kept down a good deal by the covering fire of the 17th
Machine Gun Squadron.

I have referred to the importance of Jezar as dominating the
approaches to Latron on the north-east and Ramleh on the north-west.
Jezar, as we call it on our maps, has been a stronghold since men of
all races and creeds, coloured and white, Pagan, Mahomedan, Jew, and
Christian, fought in Palestine. It is a spot which many a great leader
of legions has coveted, and to its military history our home county
yeomen have added another brilliant page. Let me quote the description
of Jezar from George Adam Smith's _Historical Geography of the Holy
Land_, a book of fascinating interest to all students of the Sacred
History which many of the soldiers in General Allenby's Army read with
great profit to themselves:

'One point in the Northern Shephelah round which these tides of war
have swept deserves special notice--Gezer, or Gazar. It is one of the
few remarkable bastions which the Shephelah flings out to the west--on
a ridge running towards Ramleh, the most prominent object in view of
the traveller from Jaffa towards Jerusalem. It is high and isolated,
but fertile and well watered--a very strong post and striking
landmark. Its name occurs in the Egyptian correspondence of the
fourteenth century, where it is described as being taken from the
Egyptian vassals by the tribes whose invasion so agitates that
correspondence. A city of the Canaanites, under a king of its
own--Horam--Gezer is not given as one of Joshua's conquests