By day the companies withdrew into the bivouac area on the
reverse slope of the hill, leaving observation posts well supplied with
machine and Lewis guns on the ridge. A mountain battery had taken up its
quarters close to our transport lines, and the enemy's search for it
made us acutely uncomfortable. On the 27th November he shelled the
bivouac area heavily, killing two men and wounding the Adjutant, Lieut.
L.H. Watson, and eight others. That night the 21st and 23rd London of
the 60th Division arrived to take over, and the Battalion moved back
through Biddu and Kubeibeh to a rest area below Beit Anan, where No. 1
company had spent such a terrible night on the 20th. Rumours of rest and
reserve, of letters and cigarettes, were current. A liberal rum ration
added cheerfulness and the Battalion settled down to await relief by a
brigade of the 74th Division. Then a long march back and a month of rest
and food and sleep would make the men fit for anything.

That relief never came. Our line at the time ran from north of Jaffa,
through El Yehudiyeh, Deir Tureif, and Beit Ur El Tahta to Nebi Samwil,
where it was swung back almost to Saris, and the enemy threw all his
reserves from Damascus against it in a last attempt to save Jerusalem.
He made his effort at Tahta, where the town and its prolonged ridge to
Khurbet Hellabi were held by the Yeomanry, who proved unequal to the
strain. Fortunately the 4th Australian Light Horse got up after a day's
hard riding and stopped the gap. They were in no condition for a
prolonged defence, and on the night of the 29th the battle-worn 52nd
Division was again taking over the work of danger. The 5th occupied the
line from the village of Tahta to the ruins at Hellabi with No. 2
company, under Captain Morrison, on the right and No. 1, commanded by
Captain N.R. Campbell, who had returned from D.H.Q. for duty, on the
left.

The ridge was about 1400 feet high, covered with rocky out-croppings and
fell sheer away to the valley below; the same valley which saw the
slaughter of the Amorites that day when Joshua stayed the sun's going
down. The enemy held the ridges across the valley and from them directed
an accurately ranged machine-gun fire in enfilade. No trenches could be
dug. On the left was a short sangar or breastwork of stones, which
afforded both protection and cohesion of forces, but between that and
the village the men sheltered behind rocks and in the natural
depressions of the ground, th