"تاريخ الحرب الكبرى استنادًا إلى وثائق رسمية. الحملة في بلاد الرافدين ١٩١٤-١٩١٨. المجلد IV". [ظ‎‎١‎٨‎٥] (٥٤٠/٣٧٥)

312 HISTORY OF THE WAR : MESOPOTAMIA
point some four miles to the south, though there might be some
a mile further north. General Cassels then asked the airman
to locate the nearest enemy troops to the south and also to
reconnoitre for fifteen miles to the north and north-west •
and he received a reply just before 9 a.m. saying that
there were no enemy forces of importance to the north and
northwest and that the nearest enemy troops to the south
were those who had been facing him all night. He then asked
the airman to reconnoitre for fifteen miles to the west; and by
10 a.m. he heard that there were no enemy troops for ten miles
to the west and that the most advanced troops of the 17th
Division were about four miles to the south. General Cassels,
coming to the conclusion that the troops seen three miles to
the south must be Turks, then sent directions to General
Norton to carry out his original orders. During his uncertainty
in regard to the enemy situation, General Cassels had heard
that C/337th Field Battery was crossing the ford and had
told General Norton to retain it. He now cancelled this order
and directed General Norton to keep A/337th Battery but to
send C/337th to join General Cassels.
At 11 a.m. a further air report gave General Cassels the
exact situation of the Turkish main position three miles south
and also a clearer idea of the position of the 17th Division.
He at once sent this information on to General Sanders and he
added that there was no indication that Turks had escaped
to the north and that he was going to turn his own guns on
to the Turkish main position, which he suggested General
Sanders’ guns should also fire at. At 11.30 a.m., C/337th
Field Battery arrived at General Cassels’ position and came
into action to the northeast of Huwaish. Half an hour later
he heard from General Sanders that his guns were in action
against the Turkish main position, that he was pushing infantry
and machine guns to the Tigris bank to the eastward of this
position and that he would like to know if General Cassels
wanted the l/3rd Gurkhas. General Cassels answered this
query in the affirmative.
General Norton, in the meantime, had been engaged with the
enemy detachment, which was holding a bluff about one
thousand yards north of Cemetery Hill and which was obviously
m greater strength than the air reports had led him to expect.
This bluff, over a hundred feet above the plain bordering the
Tigris bank, was at the south-eastern edge of a broad plateau
(see Map 44). After such personal reconnaissance as was
possible, General Norton ordered the 13th Hussars, supported