enchments was in their hands by seven o'clock. The brigade at once
set about reorganising for the attack on the second objective, which,
as will be remembered, was a wheel to the left and, passing well on
the outside of the western suburbs of Jerusalem, an advance to the
rocky ground to the north-west of the city down to the wadi Beit
Hannina. The commander of the 2/18th Londons in his preparations
had pushed out a platoon in advance of his left, and these men at
half-past nine saw 200 of the enemy with pack mules retiring down a
wadi north-east of Kulonieh. The platoon held its fire until the Turks
were within close range, and then engaged them with rifles and machine
guns, completely surprising them and taking prisoners the whole of the
survivors, 5 officers and 50 men. The Turks now began to develop a
serious opposition to the 180th Brigade from a quarry behind Deir
Yesin and from a group of houses forming part of what is known as the
Syrian colony, nearly a mile from the Deir Yesin system. There were
some Germans and a number of machine guns in these houses, and by noon
they held up the advance.

The brigade was seriously handicapped by the difficulty in moving
guns. The road during the morning had got into a desperate state. It
was next to impossible to haul field guns anywhere off the road, and
as the Turks had paid no attention to the highway for some time--or
where they had done something it was merely to dump down large stones
to fill a particularly bad hole--it had become deeply rutted and
covered with a mass of adhesive mud. The guns had to pass down from
Kustul by a series of zigzags with hairpin bends in full view of enemy
observers, and it was only by the greatest exertion and devotion to
duty that the gunners got their teams into the neighbourhood of
the wadi. The bridge over the Surar at Kulonieh having been wholly
destroyed, they had to negotiate the wadi, which was now in torrent
and carrying away the waters which had washed the face of the hills
over a wide area. The artillery made a track through a garden on the
right of the village just before the road reached the broken bridge,
and two batteries, the 301st and 302nd, got their guns and limbers
across. They went up the old track leading from Kulonieh to Jerusalem,
when first one section and then another came into action at a spot
between Deir Yesin and Heart Redoubt, where both batteries were
subjected to a close-range rifle fire.

For several hou