File 756/1917 Pt 2-3 ‘ARAB BULLETIN Nos 66-114’ [‎273r] (554/834)

Arar, which commanded a complete view of Deraa, about four
miles off, and we realised that there were nine enemy machines
on the aerodrome. Our Bristol had been badly shot about, so
they had no competition to fear, and for a time they did what
they liked to us with bombs and machine-gunning. We had
luck, and used our mountain guns and Hotchkiss for what they
were worth, but were getting much the worst of it, till our only
surviving machine, a B.E. 12 from Azrak turned up and sailed
into the middle of the show. We watched with very mixed
feelings, for the four Turkish two-seaters, and their four scouts
were all of them much more than its equal in the air : however,
by good hap or skill the B.E. came through them and led the
whole circus of them away westward, and after to Ghazale, in
pursuit, while we took advantage of our respite to organize and
send off a mixed column to Mezerib, to cut the Palestine line.
Just after this was done, the B.E. came back again with its
attendant swarm, and telling us that it had finished its petrol,
landed near us and turned over on to its back in the rough,
while a Halberstadt came down and scored a direct hit on it
with a bomb. Our pilot was unhurt, and with his Lewis gun
and tracer bullets was soon most usefully running about just
outside Deraa in a Ford, cutting the railway to prevent any
kind of sortie of rolling stock.
We reached the lake at Mezerib about one p.m.,and by two,
had taken and looted the French station. The main station on
the Palestine line proved too difficult, and we waited till three
for the Camel Corps and guns to arrive, and then attacked it
formally, and carried it by assault a few minutes later. As our
oidy demolition parties were on the Damascus line, still demolish
ing, we could not do anything very extensive, but cleared the
station, burnt a lot of rolling stock and two lorries, broke the
points, and planted a fair assortment of “tulips” down the line.
The interruption of their main telegraph between Palestine and
Syria, here and at Tell Arar, bothered the Turks a good deal.
We spent the night at Mezerib, and were joined by hundreds and
hundreds of the Hauran peasants : during the night some of us
marched to within three hundred yards of Tell el-Shehab,intending
to attack, but found that a German colonel with guns and rein
forcements had just arrived. It was a consolation to know that on
the critical 18th of the month we had moved the reserve regiment
at Afuleh up to meet us, and we also pleased ourselves with
blowing up the line west of Shehab, and, further west, at Zeizun.
Next morning we did some leisurely work on Mezerib
station, and then moved past Remthe till mid-afternoon, when
we were in position west of Nasib station. After considerable
resistance and artillery work, we were able to carry the post
on the big bridge north of the station, and to blow up the
bridge. This was my seventy-ninth bridge. It had three seven-
metre arches, Avas about twenty-five feet high, and had piers five
feet thick—quite one of the finest we have destroyed.