a wide breach in
the Turkish line by storming the defences between Jiljulieh and the sea,
whereupon the cavalry were to sweep forward on to the Esdraelon Plain and
close all possible lines of retreat to the Turks, while at the same time an
outflanking movement was to be carried out by the troops in the eastern
sector.

The main difficulties were to concentrate unseen a large force of infantry
in the plain of Sharon, and to bring the remainder of the cavalry from the
Jordan Valley without observation by the enemy. The vast olive-groves round
about Ludd and Jaffa comfortably concealed the infantry, whose movements
were carried out at night and with the utmost caution, but the transport of
the cavalry was a tougher problem, for the Turks were very much on the
alert in the Jordan Valley, and did in fact expect the attack to be made in
this direction.

Considerable guile was therefore necessary, into which entered a little
innocent fun. It was a general and strictly enforced rule that no lights
should be shown after dusk, on account of bombing raids, yet during the
last weeks of August long lines of bivouac fires twinkled nightly in the
Jordan Valley; and the authorities seemed to be singularly blind to this
flagrant disobedience of orders. During the day at stated hours groups of
men riding aged and infirm horses were strung out at 50-yard intervals,
engaged in the gentle pastime of dragging sacks and branches along the
roads; they made so much dust that it might easily have been caused by,
say, a cavalry division going to water. Also, thousands of tiny tents
sprang up round the bivouac areas, in front of which were equally
diminutive soldiers in squads and companies, whose function it was to stand
rigidly to attention all day long, and who treated the frequent bombing
raids with utter contempt. A careful observer would have noticed a certain
woodenness about them, but enemy airmen were profoundly impressed by this
large concentration of troops.

Meanwhile every night brigade after brigade of British cavalry left the
Jordan Valley on their fifty-mile ride across country to the friendly
shelter of the orange-groves of Jaffa and Sarona, and the men left behind
complained bitterly of the increase of work in having to light so many
extra bivouac fires! The whole concentration was carried out without the
Turks being any the wiser, and by the middle of September thirty-five
thousand infantry were ready to pour forth from their