W.T. Massey - How Jerusalem Was Won. Allenby's Campaign in Palestine
to continue their games. Football was their favourite sport, and the British Tommy is such a remarkable
fellow that it was usual to see him trudge home to camp looking 'fed up' with exercise, and then, after
throwing off his pack and tunic, run out to kick a ball. The Italian and French detachments used to look at
him in astonishment, and doubtless they thought his enthusiasm for sport was a sore trial. He got
thoroughly fit for marches over sand, over stony ground, over shifting shingle. During the period of
concentration he had to cross a district desperately bad for marching, and it is more than probable the
enemy never believed him capable of such endurance. He was often tired, no doubt, but he always got to
his destination, was rarely footsore, and laughed at the worst parts of his journey. The sand was choking,
the flies were an irritating pest, equipment became painfully heavy; but a big, brave heart carried Tommy
through his training to a state of perfect condition for the heavy test.
To enable about two-thirds of the force to carry on a moving battle while the remainder kept half the
enemy pinned down to his trench system on his right-centre and right, it was necessary to reinforce
strongly the transport service for our mobile columns. The XXIst Corps gave up most of its lorries,
tractors, and camels to XXth Corps. These had to be moved across from the Gaza sector to our right as
secretly as possible, and they were not brought up to load at the supply depots at Shellal and about Karm
until the moment they were required to carry supplies for the corps moving to attack.
It is not easy to convey to any one who has not seen an army on the move what a vast amount of
transport is required to provision two corps. In France, where roads are numerous and in comparatively
good condition, the supply problem could be worked out to a nicety, but in a roadless country where
there was not a sound half-mile of track, and where water had to be developed and every gallon was
precious, the question of supply needed most anxious consideration, and a big margin had to be allowed
for contingencies. It will give some idea of the requirements when I state that for the supply of water
alone the XXth Corps had allotted to it 6000 camels and 73 lorries. To feed these water camels alone
needed a big convoy.
We got an impression of the might and majesty of an army in the field as we saw it preparing to take the
offensive. The camp of General Headquarters where I was located was situated north of Rafa. The
railway ran on two sides of the camping ground, one line going to Belah and the other stretching out to
Shellal, where everything was in readiness to extend the iron road to the north-east of Karm, on the plain
which, because the Turks enjoyed complete observation over it, had hitherto been No Man's Land. We
saw and heard the traffic on this section of the line. It was enormous. Heavily laden trains ran night and
day with a mass of stores and supplies, with motor lorries, cars, and tractors; and the ever-increasing
volume of traffic told those of us who knew nothing of the date of 'Zero day' that it was not far off. The
heaviest trains seemed to run at night, and the returning empty trains were hurried forward at a speed
suggesting the urgency of clearing the line for a fully loaded train awaiting at Rafa the signal to proceed
with its valuable load to railhead. Perfect control not only on the railway system but in the forward
supply yards prevented congestion, and when a train arrived at its destination and was split up into
several parts, well-drilled gangs of troops and Egyptian labourers were allotted to each truck, and
whether a lorry or a tractor had to be unshipped and moved down a ramp, or a truck had to be relieved of
its ten tons of tibbin, boxes of biscuit and bully, or of engineers' stores, the goods were cleared away
from the vicinity of the line with a celerity which a goods-yard foreman at home would have applauded
as the smartest work he had ever seen. There was no room for slackers in the Army, and the value of
each truck was so high that it could not be left standing idle for an hour. The organisation was equally
good at Kantara, where the loading and making up of trains had to be arranged precisely as the needs at
the front demanded. Those remarkable haulers, the caterpillar tractors, cut many a passage through the
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