horses were watered at
Solomon's Pools one afternoon without opposition from the Urtas
garrison.

December 8 was the date fixed for the attack. On December 7 rain
fell unceasingly. The roads, which had been drying, became a mass of
slippery mud to the west of Jerusalem, and on the Hebron side the
Welsh troops had to trudge ankle deep through a soft limy surface. It
was soon a most difficult task to move transport on the roads. Lorries
skidded, and double teams of horses could only make slow progress with
limbers. Off the road it became almost impossible to move. The ground
was a quagmire. On the sodden hills the troops bivouacked without a
stick to shelter them. The wind was strong and drove walls of water
before it, and there was not a man in the attacking force with a dry
skin. Sleep on those perishing heights was quite out of the question,
and on the day when it was hoped the men would get rest to prepare
them for the morrow's fatigue the whole Army was shivering and awake.
So bad were the conditions that the question was considered as to
whether it would not be advisable to postpone the attack, but General
Chetwode, than whom no general had a greater sympathy for his men,
decided that as the 53rd Division were within striking distance by the
enemy the attack must go forward on the date fixed. That night was
calculated to make the stoutest hearts faint. Men whose blood had been
thinned by summer heat in the desert were now called upon to endure
long hours of piercing cold, with their clothes wet through and water
oozing out of their boots as they stood, with equipment made doubly
heavy by rain, caked with mud from steel helmet to heel, and the
toughened skin of old campaigners rendered sore by rain driven against
it with the force of a gale. Groups of men huddled together in the
effort to keep warm: a vain hope. And all welcomed the order to fall
in preparatory to moving off in the darkness and mist to a battle
which, perhaps more than any other in this war, stirred the emotions
of countless millions in the Old and New Worlds. Yet their spirits
remained the same. Nearly frozen, very tired, 'fed up' with the
weather, as all of them were, they were always cheerful, and the man
who missed his footing and floundered in the mud regarded the incident
as light-heartedly as his fellows. An Army which could face the trials
of such a night with cheerfulness was unbeatable. One section of the
force did regard the prospects wit