Battle of Nabi Samwil begins

On 17 November 1917, the day after the capture of Jaffa, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force of General Sir Edmund Allenby was preparing for the most difficult part of the autumn campaign, the march into the Judean Hills on Jerusalem. The British Battles Nomenclature Committee later recognised this day as the start of the Battle of Nabi Samwil, named after the hill with a mosque over the traditional tomb of the prophet Samuel, a few kilometres north-west of the city. On 17 November itself, however, there was no major fighting. The troops sorted out their supplies and took up their starting positions. The cavalry set off into the hills on 18 November, and the infantry on 19 November.

After the victory at El Mughar and the capture of the railway junction station on the line to Jerusalem, the Ottoman forces had split into two parts. The Eighth Army fell back on the plain behind the Nahr el Auja river, a few kilometres north of Jaffa, and the Seventh Army was pushed into the hills. Allenby decided to pin down the Eighth Army on the plain and pursue the Seventh Army in the hills before it could recover. He did not, however, intend to storm Jerusalem. He wanted to cut the road from Jerusalem to Nablus near Ramallah and El Bireh, about 13 kilometres north of the city, so that the Turks would have to abandon it without a fight and the holy places of three religions would come to no harm. The orders issued on 16 November envisaged that the hills would be entered mainly by the Desert Mounted Corps, supported by one infantry division. The Deputy Quartermaster-General, Major-General Walter Campbell, warned, however, that until the captured Turkish railway was running he could not feed more than one additional division in the hills. Allenby therefore changed the plan. The 54th Division and the Anzac Mounted Division were to remain on the plain, and the 52nd and 75th Infantry Divisions, the Yeomanry Mounted Division and the Australian Mounted Division were to go into the hills.

The biggest problem was supply. The British railway still ended far to the rear, around Gaza, and lorries and camels had to cover ever longer distances. On 17 November the point where supplies were landed from the sea was moved almost 30 kilometres north, from the mouth of the Wadi el Hesi to the mouth of the Nahr Sukereir, so that the next day the main base of XXI Corps could be moved forward to Yebna. At the same time the captured Turkish railway from Beit Hanun to the junction station was being repaired. On the right wing the Australian Light Horse and the yeomanry had for several days been reconnoitring towards Latrun and Amwas, the biblical Emmaus, where the road from Jaffa enters the hills. Turkish rearguards armed with machine guns defended every hill there.

The terrain did not favour the attackers. Beyond the fertile plain covered with orange groves began stony ridges, cut by steep ravines and covered with terraces. The only good road to Jerusalem was the road from Jaffa through Ramleh, which beyond Latrun passed through the narrow defile of Bab el Wad. The other tracks in the hills were little better than mule paths. Water was scarce, and the soldiers, who had been fighting for weeks in the desert heat, were still wearing summer drill uniforms and shorts. The winter rains were due to begin any day.

On 18 November the Australian 9th Light Horse Regiment went round Latrun to the north and reached the village of Yalo, and the Yeomanry Mounted Division set off along mountain paths towards Beit Ur et Tahta. That day the command decided that the infantry of the 75th Division would take the road instead of the cavalry. The next morning it found Latrun abandoned and entered the defile of Bab el Wad, and in the evening the first downpours reached the hills. After a week of fighting in rain and cold the British were to take Nabi Samwil, but they never reached the Nablus road.