on the southern bank near the bridge. It was only after the Khurbet Hadrah village and bridge posts had been evacuated that the Somerset battery was able to come into action, assisted by guns of the 161st (Essex) Brigade. This support came too late, and the infantry at Sheikh Muannis near the ford were also ordered to retire. They were supported by the Somerset battery, which continued firing from a position south, on the southern side of the river, until after the Ottoman Army had reoccupied the village. Two troops of 10th Squadron retired slowly towards the ford on the beach near Sheikh Muannis, with the 2nd Squadron and the infantry crossing the river by means of a boat and over the weir head at the mill. The Ottoman attack was now concentrated on the Canterbury Mounted Rifles Regiment. The 1st Squadron held off the enemy until the regiment and the troops from Sheikh Muannis had crossed the ford then the squadron fell back, under covering fire from machine guns. Casualties from the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade during this operation were 11 killed, 45 wounded, and three missing. From 25 November until 1 December the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade remained in support of the 54th (East Anglian) Division, which continued to hold the outpost line. At the beginning of December, the brigade was withdrawn to a rest camp near Sarona a few miles north of Jaffa until 5 January, when it relieved the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade in the foothills of the Judean Hills. About this time the Ottoman Eighth Army's fighting commander Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, was relieved of his duties. He had been in the Sinai and Palestine since 27 September 1914, leading two armies and a raiding party across the Sinai Peninsula to unsuccessfully attack the British Empire on the Suez Canal in January 1915, at Romani in August 1916, and the very successful raid on Katia in April 1916. Subsequently, he commanded the defences at Magdhaba in December 1916, at Rafa in January 1917, at Gaza and Beersheba in March, April and October 1917 and during rearguard battles up the maritime plain to Jaffa in November 1917. He was replaced by Brigadier General Djevad Pasha. On hearing the news, Allenby wrote to his wife on 28 November 1917: "I fancy that there is little love lost now between Turk and Boche." Ottoman counterattacks