Defence of Jerusalem begins

On 26 December 1917, after two days of downpour that had turned the mountain roads into torrents of mud, the sky over the Judaean Hills finally cleared. In the British XX Corps, which since the capture of Jerusalem had held a front a few kilometres north and east of the city, it was already known that the day would not end quietly. Decoded Turkish wireless messages, prisoners’ statements and agents’ reports showed that Erich von Falkenhayn, the German commander of the Ottoman “Yıldırım” Army Group, was preparing an attempt to retake Jerusalem. The main blow was to be delivered along the road to Nablus by the crack 19th Division, with subsidiary attacks by other units east and south-east of the city. The information about the date was contradictory, but on 26 December new reports pointed almost certainly to the night of 26–27 December.

The corps commander, Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Chetwode, was not worried by this attack. Since mid-December he had been preparing his own advance northwards, which the rain had postponed several times. Now he decided to let the Turks strike, and once they were fully committed before Jerusalem, to launch an attack by his western wing, Major-General John Longley’s 10th (Irish) Division and a brigade of the 74th Division, along the parallel ridges eastwards, into the flank of the Turkish front. So sure of himself was he that he ordered Longley to move on the morning of 27 December, whatever the Turks did. During the night his battalions went down into deep ravines to their starting positions.

Before midnight an outpost of the 2/13th London battalion of the 60th Division, pushed forward by the Nablus road, came back reporting that it had made contact with the enemy. At about 1.30 a.m. on 27 December the Turkish attack began. At 1.45 the Turks drove a company of the 2/16th battalion off the hill of Ras at-Tawil, then attacked along the whole sector of the 179th Brigade, throwing grenades. In several places they broke into the positions, but were driven out with the bayonet, and red rockets brought down the British artillery barrage on the attackers. After a short pause the Turkish field guns and howitzers concentrated their fire on the hill of Tall al-Ful, a few kilometres north of the city, from which the whole surrounding country could be seen as far as Jerusalem. At dawn the Turks reached its lower slopes, but did not take the summit. West of the road the 181st Brigade beat off four increasingly heavy attacks from 2.30 onwards, though it finally had to fall back to a less exposed slope.

The last heavy attack on the 2/13th battalion came just before 1 p.m. Lieutenant-Colonel C. M. Mackenzie led his men in a counter-attack over the crest, and the Turks would not stand but fled, losing many men to fire. At about 6 p.m. the fighting ceased along the whole front of the 60th Division. East of the city the Turks attacked the outposts of the Welsh 53rd Division, and a Turkish cavalry regiment besieged a company of a Middlesex battalion all day in an old monastery east of Bethlehem, vainly trying to batter down its walls with the fire of two mountain guns. The British official history judges that the attack by the best Turkish troops, pressed with determination, failed almost completely. The Turks lacked the strength to break a calm and well-prepared defence.

Meanwhile on the western wing Longley’s troops had been climbing the Zeitun, Kereina and Deir Ibzia ridges since morning. By evening, without heavy losses, they had taken their first objectives, including a high hill the British called the Hog’s Back, and sappers began hauling guns up behind them. In the evening Chetwode was certain his plan had succeeded: the Turkish attack had been repulsed, and his own had gone into the enemy’s flank. The next day he intended to advance along the whole front.