Battle of Jaffa

The Battle of Jaffa was the last operation of the British XXI Corps on the coastal plain of Palestine in 1917. Since mid-November the port of Jaffa had been in British hands, but the Turks stood only a few kilometres further north, behind the Nahr el Auja river, today called the Yarkon. From the hills on its northern bank they could see the town and shell it. On the night of 20/21 December 1917 the Scottish 52nd (Lowland) Division of Major-General John Hill crossed the swollen river on canvas rafts, footbridges and by a ford at its mouth. The Turkish defence was completely surprised, and by dawn the Scots had taken all the hills above the river with the bayonet. On 22 December both wings of the corps moved forward and drove the Turks back several kilometres, as far as the cliffs near Arsuf. The British official history calls the crossing one of the most remarkable feats of the Palestine campaign.

Name and dates

The name “Battle of Jaffa” and the dates 21–22 December 1917 were given to this fighting by the British Battles Nomenclature Committee. The British chronology of the war of the time dates it the same way. The name can be misleading, because no one fought in Jaffa itself. The New Zealanders had taken the town without a fight as early as 16 November, and the battle was fought a few to a dozen or so kilometres north and north-east of it. The aim was to push the front away from Jaffa. The participants themselves and the official history (Cyril Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, vol. II) spoke rather of “the passage of the Nahr el Auja” (The Passage of the Nahr el ‘Auja). The crossing began as early as 8 p.m. on 20 December, which is why some accounts, including the English Wikipedia, date the battle to 20–21 December. General Sir Edmund Allenby described it in his despatch as a crossing on the night of 20/21 December and a general advance on 22 December. The name has nothing to do with the fight at Jaffa in 1192, the last battle of Richard the Lionheart in the Holy Land.

Background

After the capture of Jaffa on 16 November the Ottoman Eighth Army fell back behind the Nahr el Auja and dug in on the hills on its northern bank. On the night of 24/25 November New Zealand mounted troops and two battalions of the 54th Division crossed the river and took the village of Sheikh Muannis (Al-Muwannis), but the next day Turkish counter-attacks pushed them back. According to the official history the British lost 437 men on that occasion. The attention of both sides then shifted to the hills. Allenby’s main forces, after the fighting for Nabi Samwil, were preparing to advance on Jerusalem, which surrendered on 9 December.

Both Jerusalem and Jaffa, however, lay within range of the Turkish artillery. Allenby decided that he had to push the Turks back on both wings before they grew stronger and before the winter rains came. He needed Jaffa as a port through which supplies were to come, and as long as Turkish guns stood a few kilometres from the quays and observers at Sheikh Muannis could see every movement in the harbour, it could not be used in peace. The formal order from headquarters was issued on 18 December, but the plans of both corps were ready earlier. XXI Corps of Lieutenant-General Edward Bulfin, which on 7 December had taken over command on the plain from the Desert Mounted Corps, was to move the front forward to a line from Kibbiye through Rantye, Fejja and Mulebbis to Sheikh el Ballutah and Jelil by the sea. At the same time XX Corps was to push the Turks back north of Jerusalem.

Bulfin’s corps held the front with three divisions: the 75th on the right wing, at the foot of the hills, the 54th (East Anglian) in the centre, by the railway, and the 52nd (Lowland) by the sea. Preparatory operations began in mid-December. On 15 December the 75th and 54th Divisions took the Ibanne ridge above the plain near Lydda and the hills near Et Tireh, which made it possible to consider a crossing of the river on the left wing. Opposite them stood the Ottoman XXII Corps of Refet Bey, according to Edward Erickson with the 3rd and 7th Divisions. It formed part of the Eighth Army, which according to Turkish sources had been commanded since 2 December by a Turkish general, Cevat Pasha, the successor of Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein. The whole was commanded from Nablus by Erich von Falkenhayn.

The river and the plan

The Nahr el Auja is one of the few rivers of Palestine that flows all year round. On the plain, according to the official history, it was 12–15 metres wide and about 3 metres deep, and at its mouth it spread out to nearly 40 metres. In the rainy season its banks were soft and muddy, and the northern bank overlooked the lower, flat southern one. The village of Sheikh Muannis, on the site of today’s Ramat Aviv in Tel Aviv, lay on a hill from which the whole road to Jaffa could be seen, and the ruins of Khirbet Hadrah dominated the river almost to the sea. The Turks had dug in on the hills and fortified bridgeheads on the southern bank by the bridges. The bridge at Hadrah and the mill dam at Jarisha had been destroyed, so the only place where it was possible to cross without bridges and boats was the ford over the sandbar at the river mouth.

Bulfin wanted to bombard the Turkish trenches and batteries for a day and then cross by night. Time was pressing, because the river rose with the rains every day and its southern bank was turning into a swamp. On 7 December twelve pontoons were ordered from Egypt by telegraph. The engineers had left them in Egypt when the army set out across Sinai, because until then they had not been needed. They reached Jaffa only on 16 December. Meanwhile the engineers of the 52nd Division built light rafts from wooden frames covered with canvas from army water tanks, which could later be joined into footbridges for infantry and pack mules. Two barrel bridges were also built, using local wine barrels, which were larger than army ones. The timber was obtained by dismantling sheds in Jaffa, and orange boxes also went into the construction.

The longer Hill studied the river, the less he believed in the success of a crossing after a bombardment that would announce it. The orange, lemon and eucalyptus groves between Jaffa and the river hid the preparations, but any attempt to build a bridge by day would have been swept away by Turkish machine guns. On 14 December he proposed to Bulfin a surprise crossing, at night and without artillery preparation. Bulfin agreed on condition that, if it failed, the original plan would be resumed the next day. That same night the commander of the 6th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, Lieutenant-Colonel J. Anderson, and Lieutenant C. H. Hills of the same battalion swam out to sea from a British post on the beach, rounded the river mouth and came ashore behind the Turkish lines. They established where the ford was, that the water in it was about a metre deep and that the Turks had not sunk any obstacles in it. Unnoticed by the sentries, they went back into the sea and swam back.

According to the plan the 156th Brigade was to cross the river on rafts below Sheikh Muannis and take the village, the 157th Brigade was to cross by the ford at the mouth and take the sandy hill of Tell er Rekkeit a few kilometres to the north, and the 155th Brigade was to cross higher up, in the bend between Jarisha and the bridge at Hadrah, and take Khirbet Hadrah. The infantry was to cross in silence. For several nights beforehand the divisional artillery kept up slow harassing fire, so that the night of the attack would not stand out in any way. Meanwhile the heavy guns of the corps were hidden behind the lines, ready to support the further advance.

Course of the battle

Night of 20/21 December: the crossing. On 20 December a cold wind blew from the north-west and there was torrential rain. According to the official history it cleared up in the afternoon, and at night the sky was almost cloudless and a half-moon shone. The Australian official historian Henry Gullett, on the other hand, writes of three days of downpour that flooded the river valley and made the crossing difficult. Zero hour was 8 p.m. By 8.35 p.m. a company of the 7th Battalion, Scottish Rifles, had crossed on four rafts less than two kilometres from the mouth and covered the engineers, who began joining rafts into footbridges. The canvas leaked, new rafts had to be brought up, and the carriers waded knee-deep in mud. Ferrying a dozen or so men at a time on one raft to the other bank went very slowly. Gullett writes that many rafts fell apart and that the Scots, holding hands, crossed the river in water up to their chests. The attack was put back from 10.30 to 11 p.m. Then the 7th Battalion, Highland Light Infantry, moved against the trenches covering the ford at the mouth. The Turkish guard was completely surprised. Two officers in a boat and eighteen soldiers in a dugout were found asleep, and in the trenches beyond the ford 4 officers, 62 men and 3 machine guns were captured. The 4th Battalion, Royal Scots, took without much difficulty the buildings the British called Slag Heap Farm. By midnight the first footbridge was ready and the whole 156th Brigade was on the northern bank. Two of its battalions took the trenches in front of Sheikh Muannis and the village itself, where there was fighting among the houses. About 50 prisoners were taken, among them the commander of a Turkish battalion.

At the mouth the river had risen so much since the previous night that the engineers could not find the marks indicating the ford. Lieutenant-Colonel Anderson, the only one who knew its position, undressed and swam about in the darkness until he found it, now under more than a metre of water. Without waiting for a rope to be stretched across, he ordered his battalion to cross in fours, shoulder to shoulder. The Turkish artillery had already opened fire, and the battalion lost 30 men in the crossing. By 1.35 a.m. it was on the other bank, and a battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders crossed after it. The Scots took the intermediate trenches with the bayonet, capturing several Turkish officers in their nightclothes, and at 3.30 a.m. took Tell er Rekkeit.

The 155th Brigade had the hardest time. Two days earlier it had occupied a house on the southern bank called Pink House and placed machine guns on its upper floor, aimed at the Turkish trenches by the bridge at Hadrah. While a platoon of a King’s Own Scottish Borderers battalion feigned an attack across the marshes east of the bridge, two companies of that battalion crossed on rafts to cover the building of a footbridge. The rafts, however, became soaked with water and mud, the men could barely carry them and the construction dragged on. The brigade commander therefore ordered two battalions of the Royal Scots Fusiliers to be ferried across on rafts without waiting for the footbridge. This took until 3.30 a.m., and the Turks had already begun shelling the crossing. Even so, after a short artillery bombardment the Scots took Khirbet Hadrah and two neighbouring hills, losing a dozen or so men and taking 131 prisoners. At 5 a.m. the company from Pink House attacked the trench by the bridge. Only here was there fierce hand-to-hand fighting. About twenty Turks, weighed down with grenades, drowned in the river. The company crossed over the remains of the destroyed bridge and established a bridgehead.

By dawn the whole infantry of the 52nd Division was on the northern bank and held a line from Khirbet Hadrah to Tell er Rekkeit, about three kilometres beyond the river. Allenby stressed in his despatch that the resistance had been broken with the bayonet without a single shot. The official history puts it more cautiously, saying that the infantry did not fire a shot before dawn.

21 December: the bridges. At dawn the engineers threw pontoon bridges across at Jarisha and at the river mouth, and even earlier two field batteries had crossed by the ford. The stone bridge at Hadrah was also repaired. All day the Turks shelled the river valley, above all from the right flank, from the area of Mulebbis, from where they had a good view of it. Even so, by dusk the whole divisional artillery had crossed to the other bank. On the night of 21/22 December the 54th Division of Major-General Steuart Hare prepared an attack on the right wing. A company of a Bedfordshire battalion took the forward hill of Yafa Hill, and the 11th Battalion, London Regiment, attacked the fortified Bald Hill. Hare ordered it to be attacked from the south-east, because its trenches faced south-west. The Turks were taken in by a short bombardment and manned the trenches on the wrong side, and Bald Hill fell at little cost. The defenders counter-attacked three times across open ground and tried to retake the trenches with grenades. One of these attacks was beaten off single-handed by Lance-Corporal John Christie, who went out several dozen metres in front of the line and drove the Turks back with grenades. He received the Victoria Cross for it.

22 December: the advance. At dawn it was seen that Turkish guns and transport along the whole front were withdrawing northwards. When the advance began at 8 a.m., the Turks offered no serious resistance. The 54th Division cleared the orchards around Mulebbis, the Jewish settlement of Petah Tikva, took Rantye and Fejja and reached a line running through Wilhelma railway station. On the coast the advance was supported by the Royal Navy. The old cruiser HMS Grafton with Rear-Admiral Thomas Jackson, three monitors and two destroyers shelled the retreating columns, and aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps bombed them and machine-gunned them. The Turks fled north as fast as the mud allowed. The same mud prevented a pursuit by the New Zealand Auckland Mounted Rifles Regiment attached to the 52nd Division. The artillery had to harness eight horses to each gun, so only half the guns of each battery followed the infantry. The 52nd Division reached without opposition a line from Ferrikhiye on the river to the village of Jelil by the sea. In the early afternoon Bulfin himself came to Jelil and ordered the 157th Brigade to go a further three kilometres and take the hills near Arsuf, from which the Turks could have observed the port of Jaffa. At Arsuf in 1191 Richard the Lionheart had defeated Saladin. In the evening the new line, from Rantye through Fejja and Tell el Mukhmar to Arsuf, was being fortified.

Losses

British losses were very small. According to the official history the 52nd Division lost only 102 men in the crossing. The official history describes the losses of the 54th Division at Bald Hill and on 22 December as slight, without giving figures. According to Allenby’s despatch, 11 Turkish officers, including two battalion commanders, and 305 men were taken prisoner in the crossing itself, as well as 10 machine guns. How many Turks were killed is not known. Falkenhayn, in his report to Germany, admitted that the British had won “an easy and unexpected success” because of the “complete negligence” of the covering troops of XXII Corps.

Significance

The battle moved the front in front of Jaffa about eight kilometres to the north. According to Allenby’s despatch the distance between the Turks and the town grew from about five to about thirteen kilometres. Jaffa and its port were put out of range of the Turkish artillery, and the British gained freedom of movement around Lydda, Ramleh and the Jaffa–Jerusalem road. The Turks lost the hills above the river, which they had been fortifying for a month, and had to fall back to a weaker position. Falkenhayn considered a counter-attack that would push the British back across the river, but gave it up, because it would have wrecked the attack on Jerusalem that was being prepared. That attack began five days later and failed.

The official history regards the crossing as one of the most remarkable feats of the Palestine campaign. It considers its greatest merits to be its boldness, justified against an enemy who kept careless watch at his outposts and was already shaken by defeat, careful planning, the ingenuity of the engineers and the combination of discipline and dash in the infantry. At the same time it notes that fortune favoured the bold: had the Turks defended themselves vigorously, the conditions of the crossing would have been very unfavourable to the attackers, and the fighting proved easier than that which the 52nd Division had fought earlier at Gaza, El Mughar and in the Judean Hills. It was one of the last operations of the Scottish division in Palestine, because in spring 1918 it was transferred to France. The orange groves north of Jaffa, in which the Scots had hidden their rafts, less than a year later hid Allenby’s cavalry before his last great offensive in Palestine.