there were
no roads at all, except several miles of badly metalled track from
Junction Station to Julis. We could not keep many troops with such
ill-conditioned communications, but Turkish soldiers require far less
supplies than European troops, and the enemy had done such remarkable
things in surmounting supply difficulties that he was given credit for
being able to support between sixty and seventy battalions in the line
and reserve, with an artillery somewhat weaker than our own.

If we made another frontal attack at Gaza we should find ourselves up
against a desperately strong defensive system, but even supposing we
got through it we should come to another halt in a few miles, as
the enemy had selected, and in most cases had prepared, a number of
positions right up to the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, where he would be in
a land of comparative plenty, with his supply and transport troubles
very considerably reduced. No one could doubt that the Turks intended
to defend Jerusalem to the last, not only because of the moral effect
its capture would have on the peoples of the world, but because its
possession by us would threaten their enterprise in the Hedjaz, and
the enormous amount of work we afterwards found they had done on the
Judean hills proved that they were determined to do all in their
power to prevent our driving them from the Holy City. The enemy, too,
imagined that our progress could not exceed the rate at which our
standard gauge railway could be built. Water-borne supplies were
limited as to quantity, and during the winter the landing of supplies
on an open beach was hazardous. In the coastal belt there were no
roads, and the wide fringe of sand which has accumulated for centuries
and still encroaches on the Maritime Plain can only be crossed by
camels. Wells are few and yield but small volumes of water. With the
transport allotted to the force in the middle of 1917 it was not
possible to maintain more than one infantry division at a distance of
twenty to twenty-five miles beyond railhead, and this could only be
done by allotting to them all the camels and wheels of other divisions
and rendering these immobile. This was insufficient to keep the enemy
on the move after a tactical success, and he would have ample time to
reorganise.

General Chetwode held that careful preliminary arrangements, suitable
and elastic organisation of transport, the collection of material at
railhead, the training of platelaying gang