cost of only 26 casualties took the ridge with 5 officers and 121 other ranks prisoners, and buried 46 enemy dead.  One battalion went up the hill on one side, while the Sussex crept up the opposite side, the Turks being caught between two fires.  The 53rd Division also improved their position on the 21st December.  As one leaves Bethany and proceeds down the Jericho road one passes along a steep zigzag with several hairpin bends until one reaches a guardhouse near a well about a mile east of Bethany.  The road still falls smartly, following a straighter line close to a wadi bed, but hills rise very steeply from the highway, and for its whole length until it reaches the Jordan valley the road is always covered by high bare mountains.  Soon after leaving the zigzag there is a series of three hills to the north of the road.  It was important to obtain possession of two of these hills, the first called Zamby and the second named by the Welsh troops ‘Whitehill,’ from the bright limestone outcrop at the crest.  The 159th Brigade attacked and gained Zamby and then turned nearer the Jericho road to capture Whitehill.  The Turks resisted very stoutly, and there was heavy fighting about the trenches just below the top of the hill.  By noon the brigade had driven the enemy off, but three determined counter-attacks were delivered that day and the next and the brigade lost 180 killed and wounded.  The Turks suffered heavily in the counter-attacks and left over 50 dead behind them; also a few prisoners.  At a later date there was further strong fighting around this hill, and at one period it became impossible for either side to hold it.

By the 21st there was a readjustment of the line on the assumption that the XXth Corps would attack the Turks on Christmas Day, the 53rd Division taking over the line as far north as the wadi Anata, the 60th Division extending its left to include Nebi Samwil, and the 74th going as far west as Tahta.  As a preliminary to the big movement the 180th Brigade was directed to move on Kh.  Adaseh, a hill between Tel el Ful and Tawil, in the early hours of December 23, and the 181st Brigade was to seize a height about half a mile north of Beit Hannina.  The latter attack succeeded, but despite the most gallant and repeated efforts the 180th Brigade was unable to gain the summit of Adaseh, though they got well up the hill.  The weather became bad once more, and meteorological reports indicated no improvement in the conditions for at least twenty-four hours, and as the moving forward of artillery and supplies was impossible in the rain, General Chetwode with the concurrence of G.H.Q. decided that the attack should not be made on Christmas Day.  The 60th Division thereupon did not further prosecute their attack on Adaseh.  On the 24th December, while General Chetwode was conferring with his divisional commanders, information was brought in that the Turks were making preparations to recapture Jerusalem by an attack on the 60th Division, and the Corps Commander