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trees disappearing and had guessed the reason. But an even greater
protection than the devices of military engineers had been provided
for the Turks by Dame Nature. Along the southern outskirts of the town
all the fields were enclosed by giant cactus hedges, sometimes with
stems as thick as a man's body and not infrequently rearing their
strong limbs and prickly leaves twenty feet above the ground. The
hedges were deep as well as high. They were at once a screen for
defending troops and a barrier as impenetrable as the walls of a
fortress. If one line of cactus hedges had been cut through, infantry
would have found another and yet another to a depth of nearly two
miles, and as the whole of these thorny enclosures were commanded by
a few machine guns the possibility of getting through was almost
hopeless. There were similar hedges on the eastern and western sides
of Gaza, but they were not quite so deep as on the south. On the
western side, and extending south as far as the desert which the Army
had crossed with such steady, methodical, and one may also say painful
progression, was a wide belt of yellow sand, sometimes settled down
hard under the weight of heavy winds, and in other places yielding to
the pressure of feet. The Turks had laboured hard in this mile and
a half width of sand, right down to the sea, to protect their right
flank. There was a point about 4000 yards due west from the edge of
the West Town of Gaza which we called Sea Post. It was the western
extremity of the enemy's exceedingly intricate system of defences. The
beach was below the level of the Post. From Sea Post for about 1500
yards the Turkish front line ran to Rafa Redoubt. There were wired-in
entrenchments with strong points here and there, and a series of
communication trenches and redoubts behind them for 3000 yards to
Sheikh Hasan, which was the port of Gaza, if you can so describe an
open roadstead with no landing facilities. From Rafa Redoubt the
contour of the sand dunes permitted the enemy to construct an
exceedingly strong line running due south for 2000 yards, the
strongest points being named by us Zowaid trench, El Burj trench,
Triangle trench, Peach Orchard, and El Arish Redoubt, the nomenclature
being reminiscent of the trials of the troops in the desert march.
Behind this line there was many a sunken passageway and shelter from
gunfire, while backing the whole system, and, for reasons I have
given, an element of defence as stron