THE WAR IN PALESTINE.

Taranaki Daily News, 15 November 1917, Page 6

THE WAR IN PALESTINE.

A FAMOUS RIVER. GAZA A.VD ITS DEFENCES.

In the following article a correspondent of the Manchester Guardian with tlie Egyptian Expeditionary Force gives an interesting description of the country in which the British oll'ensive in Pales■tine is now developing. The river of Gaza, or the Wndj tluzzeh, as it is called on the map.-,. is to the Palestine front what the River Somme was for so long to the Western front. A few miles ahead of its serpentine meanderings, from the sea to the mountainous backbone of the Holy Land, run the lines of trenches which cover the armies attacking and defending Gaza, now in deed as well as in name a Strong Place. It is not, indeed, a full, broad stream like the river of the Western front, but for the most part a dry river-bod hollowed between steep banks. In the summer a thin silvery streak of water runs between the stone*, and here and there widens to a pool fringed with reeds and oleanders. In the winter, when the rains pour down from the hills, it is said to be a rushing torrent which overflows its banks and tears through the sandy soil to the sea. The Wadi Guzzeh is a narrow ditch in comparison with the Wadi El-Arish, whick sprawls out at its mouth a fair half-mile in breadth. But for that reason it is more headlong. At, Shellal, where the Turkish army had taken up its main position to meet our advance in March, it falls in regular rapids. The name Shellal. in fact, is the Ahrabie fm a fall; and here, as at the more famous Shellal above Assouan, British engineers will one day construct a dam to bring a new fertility to the country around. AX ANCIENT BATTLELINE.

The river of Gaza, runs in curious and devious windings from its source above the Byzantine ruins to Khalassa to the sea. and all the way it is full of history. It has been at all periods the defensive, line between Syria and Egypt, along which the armies of the Pharaohs faced the hordes of the Hittites, Assyrians met Egyptians, Selneid conquerors countered the 'Ptolemies, and Crusaders fought with Saracens, and now for nearlv six months Britons and Turks have fought each other here. The relics of war are imprinted on its banks. Tracing its career backwards, at its mouth we fin<? large deep cave.- now inhabited by owls, hut once the Mug-outs" of warriors. Then passing Cm Djcrrar, the Gerar of the Bible, where Abraham and Isaac dwelt, we come to the fastness of Tel-cl-Djeinmi. It is a towering earthwork where man's hand ha.s improved o* Nature. Our amateur antiquaries declare it to he ,1 Crusader's bastion, because the skeleton of a man was found there with crossed knees. At Shellai a few miles beyond, cur amateur archaeologists, to wit ,1 squadron of Anzac. cavalry, lighted on a splendid .mosaic pavement, with a design and an inscription which proclaimed it Bv/.antino of the early centuries of the Christian era. The pavement was lying half-exposed in one rf the Turkish prepared positions, and is to find its way to one of the museums of the Dominions. Beyond Shellai. again, rises another of those dominating mounds. Tel-el-Fara, which is likewise ascribed'to the Crusaders, and provides a providential place for an observation post. Thence the wadi runs eastwards, almost at right angles to its original course, and is known now as the Wadi Siianag. and later as the Wadi Khalasra after the ancient .stronghold at the meeting of its sources. GAZA IX THE DISTANCE.

The country on either side of the river-bed is a rolling greasy plain, broken with sandy ridges. Beautiful in the spring, when the barley waved for miles, it has been sadly cut up by the engines, wagons, and guns which have passed over it, till it is now almost as arid as the desert, save where the shells of some enemy battery secure respect from our transport. Here and there a splash of bright green marks a garden or an orchard, and an occasional homestead stands cut of the plain, while in the distance southwards is the wooded oasis of Khan Yunis, and northward the enticing orchards and olive groves of our immediate goal—Gaza of it he Philistines. To-day the wadi is the great waterin*.placc of the British army. Tf is fortunate that the Turks abandoned their lines on tlio southern side, which they had elaborated prepared from Sheikh-Nuran to Shellai. Had they been aide to bold them the summer might have gone more hardly for us- as it is, we are safe from the trials of thirst. Although its bed is apparently dry and stony, the wadi has a wealth of water underground; nnd men, horses, and camels net their drink from it all along the line. For miles you pass from one enclosed area to another, each the jealously guarded water-ing-place of some unit, and hedged around with friendly wire and a chevaux-dc-frisc of waving tins. The inextricable maze of barbed coils we reserve for the Turks, but as a sign ol property over man's most precious commodity we hang out these ornamental fences. THE BRITISH LINES.

In front of the wadi arc our systems of trendies, skilfully devised along the slopes of the hills that rise up around fiaza and continually drawing eloper to that objective. batteries are hidden away in every unlikely spot and sequestered nook—irritable things which are ever ready to spit out fire when thej see, or think they see, something or somebody moving ahead. It is at night that they vent their full spleen, and when they are all irritated together they make a terrible din. By the mornins we usually find it has been much ado about nothing, and as a display of fireworks the illumination hardly compensates for the noise. But we have the consolation that the enemy appreciate it still less than ourselves. Behind the wadi is gathered the more ■peaceful apparatus of war—troops in reserve, ambulance and dressing stations, supply depots with s.tacks of forage and biscuits high as the earthworks that dominate the river itself, treeless parks of all kinds—parks of barbed wire in coils, parks of mo'tor-ears, parks of wagons and limbers, parks of caterpillar tractors. There also are the companies of camels in their thousands. Roads innumerable cross the riverbed from the peaceful to the warlike region, over which at night the motors, the tractors, the wagons, and (lie camels wend their way. The Seine at Paris has not more bridges than the wadi lias of tlie,;e well-made crossings. To-day the river of fiaza is a highway of (lie commerce of destruction, but in Hiegood days in come, when the waters from its upper sources are properly husbanded, it will bo a highway of the commerce that reclaims and creates prosDer-