Tpr George Cassidy (Seville), 4^th Light Horse Regiment: In the field in Palestine. The following is a letter to his mother – ‘I will give you a brief description of the second Amman ‘stunt’ in which I took part as a signaller. I was attached to the 4^th Light Horse Regiment and on April 29^th, 1918, we were warned to get ready to move immediately after dark and to leave all fires burning, this was to deceive the enemy scouts. At about 7am we moved from our old camp under the Mount of Temptation and proceeded eastwards towards the Dead Sea, leaving only a few tins and cigarette packets as evidence that there had ever been a camp there.

We then moved around in a great semi-circle towards Esalt (a town near Amman) where we halted, having travelled about ten miles, it was then midnight and freezing. We were then told to tie our horses to something – our legs preferably – and have a few hours sleep. At 3.30am we were awakened rather roughly and told that we may have to charge at any time. All I could hear was the crackle of rifles, machine guns and the roar of bursting shells a few hundred yards to our right. The flashing of star shells, which I believe, are the signals for artillery fire, looked very beautiful in the half light, each different color meaning different batteries, but I had no time to think of their charm then. 

We then started to gallop up the Jordon Valley, where ‘Jacko’s’ artillery made things very uncomfortable for us. They put up barrage after barrage but each time they seemed to be just too late or too early; our casualties in this mad dash were comparatively small. A mate of mine had his horse blown to pieces beneath him but he was not hurt, only a little shell shock. I was riding alongside of him and received a shower of horseflesh but as the heat of the charge had got into my veins, I seemed to see red and thought no more of the dangers which prevailed although after it was all over I felt very nervy for a while. For three days after this we held a position east of the Jordan but in the end were forced to retire before superior numbers, which was rather a difficult job owing to the ‘Jackos’ being nearly around us. ‘Jacko’ paid very dear for his temporary triumph. As you will see by the result of the last big push’.