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This narrative of the work accomplished for civilisation by GeneralAllenby's Army is carried only as far as the occupation of Jericho.The capture of that ancient town, with the possession of a line ofrugged hills a dozen miles north of Jerusalem, secured the Holy Cityfrom any Turkish attempt to retake it. The book, in fact, tellsthe story of the twenty-third fall of Jerusalem, one of the mostbeneficent happenings of all wars, and marking an epoch in thewonderful history of the Holy Place which will rank second only tothat era which saw the birth of Christianity. All that occurred in thefighting on the Gaza-Beersheba line was part and parcel of the takingof Jerusalem, the freeing of which from four centuries of Turkishdomination was the object of the first part of the campaign. The HolyCity was the goal sought by every officer and man in the Army; andthough from the moment that goal had been attained all energies wereconcentrated upon driving the Turk out of the war, there was not amember of the Force, from the highest on the Staff to the humblestprivate in the ranks, who did not feel that Jerusalem was the greatestprize of the campaign.
In a second volume I shall tell of that tremendous feat of arms whichoverwhelmed the Turkish Armies, drove them through 400 miles ofcountry in six weeks, and gave cavalry an opportunity of proving that,despite all the arts and devices of modern warfare, with fightersand observers in the air and an entirely new mechanism of war, theycontinued as indispensable a part of an army as when the legionsof old took the field. This is too long a story to be told in thisvolume, though the details of that magnificent triumph are so firmlyimpressed on the mind that one is loth to leave the narration of themto a future date. For the moment Jerusalem must be sufficient, and ifin the telling of the British work up to that point I can succeed ingiving an idea of the immense value of General Allenby's Army to theEmpire, of the soldier's courage and fortitude, of his indomitablewill and self-sacrifice and patriotism, it will indeed prove the mostgrateful task I have ever set myself.
April 1919.
Chap.