In the last weeks of 1916, whilst the battles on the Somme and the Ancre were fading away, Mr Lloyd George was preparing his bid for taking over the Premiership. Being far-sighted in such matters he well knew that in order to justify his actions he would need some striking proof of the superiority of his administration, and that soon. The Western Front had nothing to offer. In Mesopotamia General Maude had already taken Baghdad. One possibility remained. If only the Turk could be driven from Jerusalem the newspaper headlines would be heart-warming. Mr Lloyd George needed the fall of Jerusalem more than any man had done since Godfrey de Bouillon.
Before Jerusalem could be approached, however, one obstacle had to be overcome. Gaza, now a fortress by Middle Eastern standards, barred the way. Neither Sir Archibald Murray nor his subordinate Sir Charles Dobell was a Wellington, but they must be given every means of cracking this particular nut. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, though of fine quality, was an old-style army. It needed bringing up to date so far as resources permitted. During the last month of the year eight tanks, all contemporaries of ‘Mother’, arrived to help along with 22 officers and 226 other ranks. Nobody was awestruck at the sight of them. Cyril Falls, writing many years afterwards, called them ‘a handful of ancient tanks’. This was unkind, for they were still the last word in armoured fighting vehicles. Colonel (as he then was) Wavell, in The Palestine Campaign, merely observes that the eight were ‘not in the best condition’. By common consent they were regarded as curiosities rather than as serious weapons of war.
The Second Battle of Gaza, in mid-April, 1917, took place at about the same time as Arras and Bullecourt. The eight machines in Palestine were luckier. They were given impossible tasks – tasks that Stern claims would have demanded a couple of battalions in France – and in spite of valiant efforts they achieved very little. In this place the adversary was not mud but sand; sand so loose that not only did it engulf lorries to axle depth but that infantrymen at times found themselves knee-deep in it. The various histories hardly mention armoured vehicles. Stern, who had access to men who had been there, made the best of it: ‘What the Tanks could do they did.’ One was knocked out by a shell, another had a track broken and fell into Turkish hands. The entire battle was muddled and the actions of the tanks were hardly worth a mention. Very few accounts give them one.
Wavell makes two excellent, though hardly consistent points. The battles fought later by Allenby were, in the main, cavalry battles and were highly successful. This, however, was not a vindication of those devoted to the horse or camel. The winning factor was mobility, and in 1917 and 1918 only animal transport could provide this. Wavell mentions that the most dangerous enemy to horsemen was the aeroplane. Luckily for the British Army they were not all that numerous and the RAF had them well under control. At a later stage in the campaign MacAndrew’s 5th Cavalry Division demonstrated the superiority of the armoured car.
When the time came at the beginning of November, 1917, for the third and final attack on Gaza three Mk IVs had arrived and once again eight tanks went into action, this time to help 54th Division. Allenby does not even mention them in his Despatch of 31 October, 1918. Even Stern could say no more than that they did useful work but not all that was asked of them. This was hardly surprising. Six tanks were assigned twenty-nine different objectives. All the same they earned their rations. Five reached the first objective, four the second, third and fourth, and one the fifth. The two reserve machines were used to bring up sandbags; both caught fire. One man was killed and two wounded. Thus ended the first public appearance of tanks in the desert. Much needed to be learnt before they could cope with it.