Item 14: George Washington Thomas Lambert papers, October 1917-March 1919 - Page 35

[Page 35]

MILITARY STORES

     The following is a list of Brigade casualties during these operations:-

     The appearance of mounted troops at Es Salt came as a great surprise to the enemy.  From conversations with prisoners and a Turkish staff officer, who surrendered later at Damascus, but who was with Djemel Pasha at Es Salt a few minutes prior to our arrival there, it appears they considered the tracks used by us as impassable to mounted troops.  They knew there was a movement on.  From their positions at El Haud, with good glasses they could observe the slightest movements in our lines.  They knew the advance had started, on the night of the 29th, as the head lights of scores of our motor ambulances were observed after dark moving from Jericho to Ghoraniyeh.  The enemy expected the attack at Shunet Nimrin position only.  This Staff Officer informed us that the IV. Army lost seven Staff Officers, that evening - five killed and two captured.  A captured German Staff Officer, one of the two captured, remarked with reference to the charge, into Es Salt on the evening of the 30th, that we galloped our horses where no one else would think of riding at all.  He had good reasons for his surprise as the tracks were steep and rocky and the streets of Es Salt were paved with smooth and slippery cobble stones.  At the capture of the Turkish Headquarters at Nazareth in October various documents were captured, amongst them copies of correspondence with reference to the operations, between the Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal Limon Von Sanders, Major Von Papen, the Chief of Staff, which was then occupying Es Salt.  Copy of correspondence is annexed hereto Appendix "G".  The Higher Command was very satisfied with the work done by this Brigade during these - the Es Salt - operations.  The Divisional Commander, Major-General H.W. Hodgson, C.B., C.V.O., in an official report dealing with these operations to Desert Mounted Corps, stated:-  "The work of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade was brilliant in the extreme".
     That the enemy appreciated the Brigade's action in these operations is evidenced by an intercepted wireless report of theirs;  which stated that "Es Salt was captured