r-in-Chief
determined to make the situation absolutely safe by advancing
eastwards to capture Jericho and the crossings of the Jordan. This was
not solely a measure of precaution. It certainly did provide a means
for preventing the foe from operating in the stern, forbidding,
desolate, and awe-inspiring region which has been known as the
Wilderness since Biblical days, and doubtless before. In that rough
country it would be extremely difficult to stop small bands of
enterprising troops getting through a line and creating diversions
which, while of small military consequence, would have been
troublesome, and might have had the effect of unsettling the natives.
A foothold in the Jordan valley would have the great advantage of
enabling us to threaten the Hedjaz railway, the Turks' sole means
of communication with Medina, where their garrison was holding out
staunchly against the troops of the King of the Hedjaz, and any
assistance we could give the King's army would have a far-reaching
effect on neutral Arabs. It would also stop the grain trade on the
Dead Sea, on which the enemy set store, and would divert traffic in
foodstuffs to natives in Lower Palestine, who at this time were to a
considerable extent dependent on supplies furnished by our Army. The
Quartermaster-General carried many responsibilities on his shoulders.
Time was not the important factor, and as General Allenby was anxious
to avoid an operation which might involve heavy losses, it was at
first proposed that the enemy should be forced to leave Jericho by the
gradually closing in on the town from north and south. The Turks had
got an immensely strong position about Talat ed Dumm, the 'Mound of
Blood,' where stands a ruined castle of the Crusaders, the Chastel
Rouge. One can see it with the naked eye from the Mount of Olives,
and weeks before the operation started I stood in the garden of the
Kaiserin Augusta Victoria hospice and, looking over one of the most
inhospitable regions of the world, could easily make out the Turks
walking on the road near the Khan, which has been called the Good
Samaritan Inn. The country has indeed been rightly named. Gaunt, bare
mountains of limestone with scarcely a patch of green to relieve the
nakedness of the land make a wilderness indeed, and one sees a drop
of some four thousand feet in a distance of about fifteen miles. The
hills rise in continuous succession, great ramparts of the Judean
range, and instead of valleys bet