Fighting at Es Salt

On the morning of 24 March 1918, after the crossing of the Jordan, Major-General John Shea’s 60th (London) Division set off eastwards towards the mountains of Moab. Its objective was Es Salt, a hillside town about 800 metres above sea level and some 24 kilometres from the bridge at Ghoraniyeh, on the only road leading from the Jordan valley up onto the plateau and on to Amman. Before the war it had about 10,000 inhabitants, half of them Christians. According to the British official history (Cyril Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, vol. II), the advance began at 8.30 a.m. On the right, along the road, went the 181st Brigade, and on the left, by a track through the gorge of Wadi Abu Turra, the 179th Brigade.

Resistance was weak, and the few Turkish guns fired inaccurately. At the mouth of the gorge near Shunet Nimrin the 2/14th Battalion, London Regiment, captured on the conical hill of El Haud 3 officers and 33 men of the German 703rd Battalion, which had only just returned from an expedition against the Arabs at Tafileh. Further south the road ran straight towards the hill of Tell el Mistah, a formidable position that could have been held for a long time. The 2/22nd Battalion, however, shot down the crews and horses of a Turkish battery and captured three guns. In the evening the 181st Brigade halted in the hills, still a few kilometres short of the bridge over the Wadi Shuqayb stream, which it was supposed to take that day. Meanwhile the Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division crossed by the pontoons at Hajla, and its columns set off by other tracks straight for Amman.

On 25 March cold rain and sleet fell all day. The road, metalled by the Turks only as far as Es Salt and badly maintained, turned to mud. The 181st Brigade, although harassed only by individual snipers, covered 13–15 kilometres and at 4.15 p.m. halted not far from the town. The 179th Brigade advanced slowly along the track to the north, occupying one summit after another, until Shea informed it that the airmen could see no enemy in front of it. The brigade therefore marched straight ahead and some six kilometres short of Es Salt met the Australian 3rd Light Horse Regiment of the 1st Brigade, which had come up from the Jordan valley. The brigade commander instructed the Australians to occupy the town that same evening. At 6 p.m. the first squadron rode into Es Salt without meeting resistance. According to Falls, the head of the 179th Brigade entered the town two hours later; according to some Australian sources, only around midnight.

The Turkish garrison withdrew towards Amman. The next day the British rounded up 49 prisoners in the town and found 90 sick and wounded in the hospital, including one British soldier. The inhabitants, and especially the local Christians, welcomed the British with undisguised joy. Falls recorded that the orchards around Es Salt and neighbouring Suweile were just then in blossom. The occupation, however, was to last only a week. When at the beginning of April the British withdrew from Amman, many inhabitants who had shown them such open sympathy did not dare to wait for the return of the Turks and fled with the army to the Jordan.