mbers had to be left midway between Berfilyah and Beit
Likkia. Darkness came down and with it heavy rain, with a strong,
driving south-west wind. The distance as the crow flies is twelve miles
but the actual distance covered must have been nearer twenty. At 22.00
the Battalion reached Likkia, just occupied by the 156th Brigade, and
bivouacked beside the road. The ground was sodden. The men were in light
tropical uniform and drenched to the skin. No fires could be lit and so
the hours passed until the Battalion got orders at dawn to move. Our
objective was Beit Dukka and the establishment of defensive positions to
the south and south-east of it. If ever a road disgraced its name it was
this Roman Road of the maps. Here was no purposeful track, broad, smooth
and white, keeping its way straight through every obstacle. It bent and
twisted and turned. Often it crept underneath a great rock and lost
itself. Fifty yards farther on one would find it, shy and retiring,
slipping down the face of a slab of rock, always with the deceitful
promise that over the next hill it would be better behaved. Instead it
grew worse, until the column was walking in Indian file up steep hill
sides and across the necks of the valleys. At 08.00 the 7th H.L.I.
branched off to strike the town from the north, while the rest of the
Brigade kept on, trying to identify their objective among the numerous
villages which clung under the crests of the hills. The maps were not
exact and the information from G.H.Q. was that Dukka was a village on a
hill commanding considerable country. The village did sit on a hill,
but, unfortunately, the hill was commanded on every side by much higher
hills and Dukka was of no tactical value. So the Brigadier decided to
move on Beit Anan, a similar village situated on the hill commanding
Dukka from the south, and on the road to Kubeibeh, the ancient Emmaus.
Scouts were pushing forward to search Beit Anan, and the head of the
column had just appeared over a crest about 1500 yards from the village,
when a brisk rifle-fire threw the leading companies into some confusion,
and the second in command and scout officer had an experience they will
not quickly forget, lying flat in the open being sniped at by a
machine-gun. The enemy were not in any strength, but it was ten o'clock
before the village was secured. Losses were not slight for they included
Captain W.L. Buchanan, commanding No. 1 company, who was mortally
wounded and died n