forward move, but as the 54th had
five days' rations in dumps close at hand it was able to maintain
itself, and the railway was being pushed on from the wadi Ghuzze with
the utmost speed. The iron road in war is an army's jugular vein,
and each mile added to its length was of enormous value during the
advance.

General Allenby, looking well ahead and realising the possibilities
opened out by his complete success in every phase of the operations on
the Turks' main defensive line, on the 10th November ordered the 52nd
and 75th Divisions to concentrate on their advanced guards so as
to support the cavalry on their front and to prevent the Turk
consolidating on the line of the wadi Sukereir. The enemy was
developing a more organised resistance on a crescent-shaped line from
Et Tineh through Yasur to Beshshit, and it was necessary to adopt
deliberate methods of attack to move him. The advance on the 11th was
the preliminary to three days of stirring fighting. The Turks put up
a very strong defence by their rearguards, and when one says that
at this time they were fighting with courage and magnificent
determination one is not only paying a just tribute to the enemy but
doing justice to the gallantry and skill of the troops who defeated
him. The Scots can claim a large share of the success of the next two
days, but British yeomanry took a great part in it, and their charge
at Mughar, and perhaps their charge at Abu Shushe as well, will find a
place in military text-books, for it has confounded those critics who
declared that the development of the machine gun in modern warfare has
brought the uses of cavalry down to very narrow limits.

The 156th Brigade was directed to take Burkah on the 12th so as to
give the infantry liberty of manoeuvre on the following day. Burkah
was a nasty place to tackle. The enemy had two lines of beautifully
sited trenches prepared before he fell back from Gaza. The Scots had
to attack up a slope to the first line, and having taken this to pass
down another slope for 1000 yards before reaching the glacis in front
of the second line. The Scottish Rifles assaulted this position by day
without much artillery support, but they took it in magnificent style.
It looked as if the Turks had accepted the verdict, but at night they
returned to a brown hill on the right and drove the 4th Royal Scots
from it. This battalion came back soon afterwards and retook the
hill with the assistance of some Gurkhas of Ge