The forcing of the passage of the Auja was a magnificent achievement, planned with great ability by General Hill and carried out with that skill and energy which the brigadiers, staff, and all ranks of the Division showed throughout the campaign. One significant fact serves to illustrate the Scots' discipline. Orders were that not a shot was to be fired except by the guns and machine guns making their nightly strafe. Death was to be dealt out with the bayonet, and though the Lowlanders were engaged in a life and death struggle with the Turks, not a single round of rifle ammunition was used by them till daylight came, when, as a keen marksman said, they had some grand running-man practice. During the day some batteries got to the north bank by way of the ford, and two heavy pontoon bridges were constructed and a barrel bridge, which had been put together in a wadi flowing into the Auja, was floated down and placed in position. There was a good deal of shelling by the Turks, but they fired at our new positions and interfered but little with the bridge construction.
On the night of the 21st-22nd December the 54th Division assaulted Bald Hill, a prominent mound south of the Auja from which a magnificent view of the country was gained. Stiff fighting resulted, but the enemy was driven off with a loss of 4 officers and 48 other ranks killed, and 3 officers and 41 men taken prisoners. At dawn the Division reported that the enemy was retiring from Mulebbis and Fejja, and those places were soon in our hands. H.M.S. _Grafton_, with Admiral T. Jackson, the monitors M29, M31, and M32, and the destroyers _Lapwing_ and _Lizard_, arrived off the coast and shelled Jelil and Arsuf, and the 52nd Division, advancing on a broad front, occupied the whole of their objectives by five o'clock in the afternoon. The 157th Brigade got all the high ground about Arsuf, and thus prevented the enemy from obtaining a long-range view of Jaffa. A few rounds of shell fired by a naval gun at a range of nearly twenty miles fell in Jaffa some months afterwards, but with this exception Jaffa was quite free from the enemy's attentions. The brilliant operation on the Auja had saved the town and its people many anxious days. By the end of the year there were three strong bridges across the river, and three others substantial enough to bear the weight of tractors and their loads were under construction. The troops received their winter clothing; bivouac shelters and tents were beginning to arrive. Baths and laundries were in operation, and the rigours of the campaign began to be eased. But the XXIst Corps could congratulate itself that, notwithstanding two months of open warfare, often fifty to sixty miles from railhead, men's rations had never been reduced. Horses and mules had had short allowances, but they could pick up a little in the country. The men were in good health, despite the hardships in the hills and rapid change from summer to winter, and their spirit could not be surpassed.