Start of the second raid on Es Salt

On the night of 29/30 April 1918 British forces crossed the Jordan for the second time in less than six weeks. The first raid on Amman had ended at the beginning of April in retreat, but General Edmund Allenby decided to try once more, this time with larger forces. Lieutenant-General Harry Chauvel’s Desert Mounted Corps was to destroy the Turkish position at the foot of the mountains of Moab at Shunet Nimrin and take the town of Es Salt on the plateau. The date was dictated by the Beni Sakhr Bedouin from near Madaba: their envoys had promised to close the Turks’ last supply road through Ain es Sir, but only before 4 May.

Major-General Henry Hodgson’s Australian Mounted Division left its camp near Jericho in the evening, leaving lights burning to deceive Turkish reconnaissance, and in its allotted time, between 10 p.m. and 2.30 a.m., crossed the bridge at Ghoraniyeh. After midnight, in bright moonlight, Major-General John Shea’s 60th (London) Division approached to within 500–700 metres of the Turkish hills and went into the attack. The 2/19th Battalion of the London Regiment tried to climb onto the Makkar ed Derbasi plateau by two narrow paths, but its three attacks before dawn and two more in the morning broke down under machine-gun fire. North of the Wadi Nimrin the 2/20th, 2/14th and 2/16th Battalions took the forward trenches with the bayonet and captured nearly 300 prisoners in all, but were held up in front of the main position below the hill of El Haud. Communication with the artillery and ammunition were lacking, because the soldiers had fired off the spare pouches for the machine guns and Lewis guns. The brigade commanders put off any further attack until the following morning. In the south the Australian 7th Light Horse Regiment and infantry from the Indian princely state of Patiala took Turkish works on the flank before dawn, at places called Kabr Said and Kabr Mujahid, but the latter were soon abandoned under accurate fire.

At 4 a.m. Hodgson’s horsemen rode out of the bridgehead and set off north along the eastern bank. The 4th Light Horse Brigade, fired on from Red Hill above the Umm esh Shert ford, broke into a gallop, extended its formation across almost the full width of the valley and, in the clouds of its own dust, swept past the outposts of the Turkish cavalry. According to Henry Gullett’s Australian official history, only six men were killed and 17 wounded in this long gallop. At 5.30 a.m. the head of the brigade reached the road from the Jisr ed Damieh bridge to Es Salt, 24 kilometres from Ghoraniyeh. A squadron sent towards the bridge, however, was stopped by machine-gun fire, and Turkish cavalry and infantry crossed the bridge and forced the Australians to fall back a kilometre and a half. The crossing remained in enemy hands, and at the second ford, Mafid Jozele, the Turks had a pontoon bridge. The brigade commander, General Grant, looked anxiously at a gap of several kilometres on his left flank, but Chauvel had no reinforcements for him.

Meanwhile General Lachlan Wilson’s 3rd Light Horse Brigade turned into the mountains by the road from Damieh. On the ridge of Jebel Jil’ad the Australians surprised a Turkish outpost and then, with the help of the Hong Kong mountain battery, took on foot the position barring the road, capturing 28 prisoners. Wilson kept the 8th Light Horse Regiment in reserve with its horses, ready to move straight on the town. At 6.30 p.m. the first troop galloped into Es Salt, where the headquarters of the Turkish Fourth Army was located. According to the British official history (Cyril Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, vol. II), its commander, Lieutenant Foulkes-Taylor, forced the surrender of a German officer who was rallying the Turks for defence. The Australians, often fighting with bayonets as if with swords, quickly broke the resistance. They took about 200 prisoners, transport and 28 new machine guns, still in their cases. The commander of the Fourth Army, Mehmed Cemal Pasha, barely managed to escape. The British 5th Mounted Brigade, which was coming up a steep path from Umm esh Shert and on the way had to work round one machine-gun nest after another, reached the plateau only at dusk and, not knowing that the town had already been taken, made camp.

A month earlier Australian horsemen had entered Es Salt without a fight; this time they took it by storm. The army group commander, General Otto Liman von Sanders, later called this raid a “quite exceptional” feat. The first day had another side, however. The position at Shunet Nimrin held, the Beni Sakhr did not appear, and already in the morning Liman had ordered the rested Turkish 24th Division to march to the Jordan, cross to the eastern bank and strike the Australians in the valley. The next day its counter-attack drove back the screen at Damieh and threatened to cut off the troops in the mountains, and on 4 May the British withdrew across the river again.