Capture of Amman

On the afternoon of 25 September 1918 Australian and New Zealand horsemen of Major-General Edward Chaytor’s force burst into Amman. Through the town ran the Hejaz Railway, the main line of retreat of the Turkish Fourth Army and the only route by which the garrisons in the south, as far as Ma’an, could return north. In the spring the British had twice tried to reach Amman and twice had to withdraw: in March their assault on the town was repulsed, and at the turn of April and May the second raid on Es Salt ended in a retreat across the Jordan. At the third attempt, when the Turkish front west of the river had already collapsed, Amman fell in a single day. According to the British Battles Nomenclature Committee, that day saw the end of the battles of Megiddo, which had begun six days earlier with the breaking of the front by the Mediterranean.

The road to the plateau

Chaytor’s force, made up of the Anzac Mounted Division, the Indian 20th Infantry Brigade, two battalions of the British West Indies Regiment and two Jewish battalions of the Royal Fusiliers from the Jewish Legion, had held the Jordan Valley throughout the summer. In the first days of the offensive its task was only to pin down the Turks and wait for the Fourth Army to begin falling back. On 22 September the New Zealanders took the bridge over the Jordan at Jisr ed Damieh, and the next day the whole force moved into the hills. On the evening of 23 September the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade occupied Es Salt for the third time in half a year, taking over 500 prisoners and three guns. That same day, on the coast, the British took Haifa and Acre.

On 24 September the force advanced slowly, because the Turks had blown up the road from Es Salt. The New Zealanders occupied Suweile, and from there a hundred picked horsemen of the Auckland Regiment rode across country and cut the railway eight kilometres north of Amman. After eleven hours and about 30 kilometres in the saddle they were back.

The fight for the town

At six in the morning of 25 September the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the Australian 2nd Light Horse Brigade moved on Amman, while the 1st Light Horse Brigade covered the left flank. The Australians were held up for a time by Turkish outposts about six kilometres short of the town. At 10.40 a.m. an aircraft dropped a message that the Turks were leaving Amman, but their rearguard defended itself stubbornly. The horsemen had only two mountain batteries with them, and machine guns were firing from the citadel and the hills. The Canterbury Regiment tried to charge on horseback, but fire from the citadel stopped it. The New Zealanders dismounted and took the citadel with the bayonet, capturing 119 prisoners and six machine guns.

At about 1.30 p.m. the defence suddenly collapsed. The Australian 5th Light Horse Regiment rode into the southern part of the town and after brief street fighting drove the Turks out. The local authorities and notables came out with a white flag to Brigadier-General Granville Ryrie and surrendered the town to him. New Zealanders of the Canterbury Regiment galloped onto the railway station. According to Cyril Falls’s British official history, 2,563 prisoners were taken, along with ten guns, many machine guns and 300 horses. The Australian official historian Henry Gullett writes of about 2,360 Turks, Germans and Austrians captured around the town. The troops found fodder in the town, and bought food, including cattle, from the inhabitants at exorbitant prices.

Only the rearguard fell into Chaytor’s hands. The main body of the Fourth Army, which Otto Liman von Sanders had ordered to retreat as early as 21 September, had left for the north, the last trains just before the line was cut on the night of 24/25 September. Their columns were bombed by airmen near Mafraq, and further north the track was being destroyed by the Arabs of Emir Faisal. Chaytor’s new task was now to bar the way to the Turkish garrison from Ma’an, which according to airmen’s reports was moving north along the railway. His men, after months spent in the Jordan Valley about 300 metres below sea level, froze at night on the plateau, and malaria spread among them.

The end of the battles of Megiddo

That same morning, 25 September, at the other end of the front, the Australian 4th Light Horse Brigade took Samakh, a railway station on the southern shore of the Sea of Galilee, after fierce fighting. The charge was made while it was still dark, and the station buildings were fought over hand to hand for an hour. The defenders were mainly Germans, about a hundred of whom were killed. Falls gives 364 prisoners taken, with the Australians losing 78 men. In the afternoon Australian horsemen and armoured cars occupied Tiberias, which the Turks were abandoning. The last position with which Liman had tried to cover the retreat of the remnants of his armies had fallen.

In six days General Edmund Allenby’s British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and French troops, supported by Faisal’s Arabs, had smashed the Turkish Seventh and Eighth Armies and forced the Fourth Army into a disorderly retreat. Chaytor’s force alone took over 10,000 prisoners by the end of September, losing 139 men. On 25 September Allenby sent a staff officer to the corps commanders with news of the new objective, and the next day he issued orders for the advance on Damascus.