ine with
light forces.

In this description of the operations I have made little mention of
the work of the Australian Mounted Division which covered the gap
between XXth and XXIst Corps. These Australian horsemen and yeomanry
guarded an extended front in inaccessible country, and every man in
the Division will long remember the troubles of supply in the hills.
They had some stiff fighting against a wily enemy, and not for a
minute could they relax their vigilance. When, with the Turks' fatal
effort to retake Jerusalem, the 10th Division changed their front
and attacked in a north-easterly direction, the Australian Mounted
Division moved with it, and they found the country as they progressed
become more rugged and bleak and extremely difficult for mounted
troops. The Division was in the fighting line for the whole month of
December, and when they handed over the new positions they had reached
to the infantry on the last day of the year, their horses fully needed
the lengthened period of rest allotted to them.

CHAPTER XVII

A GREAT FEAT OF WAR

From the story of how Jerusalem was made secure (for we may hope the
clamour of war has echoed for the last time about her Holy Shrines and
venerable walls) we may turn back to the coastal sector and see how
the XXIst Corps improved a rather dangerous situation and laid the
foundations for the biggest break-through of the world struggle. For
it was the preparations in this area which made possible General
Allenby's tremendous gallop through Northern Palestine and Syria,
and gave the Allies Haifa, Beyrout, and Tripoli on the seaboard, and
Nazareth, Damascus, and Aleppo in the interior. The foundations were
soundly laid when the XXIst Corps crossed the Auja before Christmas
1917, and the superstructure of the victory which put Turkey as
well as Bulgaria and Austria out of the war was built up with many
difficulties from the sure base provided by the XXIst Corps line. The
crossing of the Auja was a great feat of war, and this is the first
time I am able to mention the names of those to whom the credit of the
operation is due. It was one of the strange regulations of the Army
Council in connection with the censorship that no names of the
commanders of army corps, divisions, brigades, or battalions should be
mentioned by correspondents. Nor indeed was I permitted to identify
in my despatches any particular division, yet the divisions
concerned--the 52nd, 53rd, 54th, 60th,