Austrian troops marching up Mount Zion, Jerusalem. Austria-Hungary sent heavy artillery and support troops to Palestine in very limited numbers. These fresh-looking and well equipped soldiers have probably just arrived in theatre.
In 1916, the leader of the Arab nationalist movement entered into an alliance with Great Britain and France. This led to the dispatch of a young captain named Thomas Edward Lawrence to aid the Arabs in their revolt against Turkish rule. The resultant campaign would tie down thousands of Turkish troops in the theatre, and eased the threat posed to the vital Suez Canal by the Ottoman Army.
The remaining months of 1915 were quiet in Palestine, following the withdrawal of Cemal Pasha’s defeated expeditionary force from the Suez Canal. When the British failed to pursue him, or even advance beyond the waterway, the theatre lapsed into stasis. As a result, the general staff stripped many of Cemal Pasha’s experienced units and personnel from his order of battle and sent them to more active theatres. Fortunately, the British were quiet throughout this time and contented themselves with running railways and logistical lines out into the Sinai to facilitate future operations. In the absence of fighting, the Fourth Army’s main effort in 1915 was directed against the rebellious Armenians, in large-scale counter-insurgency operations north of Antioch.
A Turkish train on the Damascus–Medina railway at el-Kasr station. The Ottoman railway system in Palestine was an essential lifeline for their armies deployed there. Its purpose was to connect Damascus to Mecca and Medina.
Along the front, Cemal reorganized his forces into the Desert Force Headquarters, which would command and control the forces in the Sinai. This headquarters was located at Beersheba and Cemal placed the German Colonel Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein in command. The headquarters was organized into two components: the GHQ Desert Force, which was charged with operational and tactical matters, and the Desert Lines of Communications Inspectorate, which was tasked with logistics and communications. As 1915 wore on, the Ottoman 8th, 10th and 25th divisions, by now combat hardened and experienced, were sent to the Gallipoli Peninsula. Most of the machine guns and field howitzers went with them. The Ottoman Army in Palestine was left unable to renew offensive operations.
In February 1916, Enver Pasha made an extended tour of the Fourth Army area. He was more concerned with the political situation regarding the Arabs than with military matters. Like the Armenians, many Arabs, especially among the elites, were increasingly resentful of the policies of the Young Turks, and were becoming more attracted to the idea of pan-Arab nationalism. Active nationalist committees were at work, the most famous being Ahad and Fatah, which were dedicated to the independence of the Arab lands. By 1914, these organizations even included Ottoman Army officers of Arab ethnicity. Indeed, for hundreds of years, some part of the Ottoman’s Arab lands had been in revolt on a more or less continuous basis. When war broke out in 1914, the Turks were in the process of suppressing a violent rebellion in Yemen.
Enver and Cemal met with several Arab leaders in an attempt to alleviate the increasingly tense situation. They were particularly concerned about the continued Turkish control of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, as well as the continued security of the railway system. Sharif Faisal, who was then on friendly terms with the Turks, was wooed into compliance.However, dealings with Sharif Hussein ibn Ali, the Hashemite king of the Hedjaz, were quite different, and negotiations quickly broke down. In fact, he was then in the early stages of raising his rebellion against the Turkish yoke, which began in the spring of 1916. Hussein’s followers proceeded to take Mecca and several Red Sea ports, and Hussein appealed to the Allies for support. The British in Egypt were quick to respond and began to send weapons and gold to help Hussein, and soon advisers followed to coordinate operations, one of whom was a junior officer named Thomas Edward Lawrence.
T.E. Lawrence went on to became widely known as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, although there were a number of other British and French advisers in Arabia doing much the same thing at the same time. Lawrence was an archaeologist and academic, who had spent time in Syria studying Crusader castles before the war. He was an ascetic, spoke passable Arabic, and became enamoured with Arab culture. Because of his regional expertise, when war broke out Lawrence was commissioned and sent to Cairo to work in the intelligence division and later in the Arab Bureau. He wrote reports, but his restless nature drove him to volunteer for the dangerous mission of being an adviser to the Arabs, and he found himself in Ottoman territory working with Hussein. Along with Lawrence the British sent around 1000 Arabic former prisoners of war of the Ottomans, and an ex-Ottoman Army officer named Ja’afar al Askari. The British intended this group of trained and seasoned soldiers to become the hard nucleus around which Hussein could build an effective regular army. Originally clothed in British uniforms, the Arabs soon reverted to traditional garb.
Kress and Baron Lager, the chief Austrian commander. Kress spent almost three years in the Syrian and Palestine theatres. He was relieved after his failure to hold Gaza and Beersheba, and was replaced by Ottoman generals.
Lawrence was born in Wales, the illegitimate son of Thomas Chapman. He was educated at Oxford and in the summer of 1909 he began a walking tour in Syria and Palestine studying Crusader castles for his thesis. In 1910 Lawrence obtained a first-class degree in history and the next year he participated in an archaeological expedition excavating the Hittite site of Carchemish. Lawrence acquired a working knowledge of Arabic and the customs of the Arab people. At the outbreak of the war, he was assigned to the intelligence staff in Cairo as an Arab expert. In 1916 he volunteered to go into Arabia and raise a rebellion against the Turks. Lawrence soon became an influential figure in the Arab forces and became an advocate of guerrilla warfare. He took part in the capture of Aqaba in July 1917. After the war Lawrence accompanied the Arab delegation to Paris in 1919 but failed to influence the outcome. Disgusted by politics, Lawrence resigned and enlisted in the RAF under the name of Ross, but he was discovered and joined the army calling himself Shaw. In 1925 he returned to the RAF as Shaw and moved to a cottage named Clouds Hill where he lived out the remaining years of his life. He died in a motorcycle accident. His book about the Arab revolt The Seven Pillars of Wisdom: a Triumph (1927), is considered a classic on guerrilla warfare. Lawrence remains one of the most enigmatic and complex personalities to emerge from World War I.
Hussein’s chief of staff was an ex-Ottoman officer named Major Aziz al-Masri, who had come over to the rebels when Hussein called for volunteers. Aziz al-Masri evolved a strategic plan for the revolt, which was taken up and became the signature characteristic of the operations of the Arab army. He envisioned a hard core of regulars (8000 in total) supported by a large number of irregular Arab tribesmen (20,000 altogether), which would avoid sustained combat by conducting raids and destroying the railway system. The constant pin-prick attacks reinforced by the cutting of rail communications would eventually bleed the Ottoman garrisons to death. In late 1916, to accommodate this strategy, the Sharifian Arab Army was reorganized into a Northern Army under Emir Faisal and a Southern Army under Emir Ali. Both contained a regular brigade, several artillery batteries and a varying but larger number of tribesmen. Faisal was sent up the railway towards Damascus, and Ali went south to take Medina. The Turks for their part were determined to hold on to their Arab provinces, and when Sharif Hussein’s revolt broke out that spring, Cemal appointed Fahri Pasha to take command of Medina and to maintain control of the Hedjaz railway. With only a handful of Turkish battalions, this officer performed outstanding service in defending the city and, for the remainder of 1916, the Turks managed to keep the railway open on a more or less regular basis.
Significant German and Austro-Hungarian military assistance began to arrive in April in the form of German aircraft and Austro-Hungarian howitzers. The German airmen and machines were immediately employed on reconnaissance missions over the Suez Canal. The British, now commanded by General Sir Archibald Murray, began to advance slowly along the Mediterranean coast. Most of Murray’s divisions had been evacuated from Gallipoli and were experienced in fighting the Turks. Many of the men, however, were struck down by malaria and assorted tropical diseases.
Cemal decided to resume offensive operations in mid-April, and the Turks pushed forward towards the unsupported British outpost at Katia in the Sinai. On 23 April 1916, Kress sent his cavalry forward to pin the British reserves near Kantara while a small infantry force of two battalions supported by a four-gun artillery battery successfully encircled a British cavalry unit at Katia. In a classic encirclement operation, Kress captured most of a British cavalry regiment and its commander. It was a small defeat, but alerted the British to the dangers of forward deployment.
In late April, the first reinforcements from the victorious Gallipoli army arrived in Palestine. This was the experienced 3rd Division, full of hardened and disciplined combat veterans. Concerned about British offensive preparations along the coast, Cemal and Kress decided to launch a second expedition against the British. They intended to keep the British off-balance by conducting a limited attack, which would again encircle the forward British units. The attack force was built around the 3rd Division and in addition this contained four batteries of German and Austrian artillery, a machine-gun battalion and two anti-aircraft gun sections, totalling some 12,000 men. At the beginning of July 1916, this force closed with the British at Katia and Bir Romani. On the evening of 16 July 1916, the Turks pressed an infantry regiment forward to fix the British front-line troops, and began to prepare their attack. Kress planned to pin down the British 52nd Division in its defences forward of Bir Romani and then to swing a left hook around it in the hope of cutting it off. The British were vulnerable to this by being spread out along their newly built railway and deployed in divisional clusters stretching back into Egypt. The attack began at 5.15am on 4 August 1916 and as the 31st Infantry Regiment went forward to pin down the British, Kress swung his 32nd and 39th Infantry regiments around their left flank and into the British rear. At 2pm, effective British counterattacks halted Kress. His follow-on attacks stalled later that day, and on the next day British reserves hammered his troops to a halt. Kress recognized failure, and began to pull back his forces on 7 August. The Turkish losses were light, but failure put an end to offensive action, and thereafter the Sinai front lapsed into a period of stasis for several months.
British-led forces in the Battle of Katia, 1916. Kress’s capture of a large part of a British cavalry regiment provided a limited but welcome victory for Ottoman forces.
The British advance across the Sinai, April 1916–April 1917. The Turks relied on camels and oxen for logistics support in the Sinai Desert. The British, who were much more reliant on material, built a railroad and a water pipeline to support their eastward advance.
As British strength grew, Murray began to advance his forces along the coast to exploit the weakening Ottoman posture. His first attack came at Magdhaba on 23 December 1916 against an isolated Turkish position held by two battalions of the 80th Infantry Regiment. The British threw the 1st and 2nd Australian Light Horse brigades, the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and the Imperial Camel Corps against the Turks. At 6.30am, 11 Australian aircraft began to strafe and bomb the enemy, thus exposing their positions. At dawn the attack began and immediately it ran into heavy fire that halted it for the next six hours. About 2.30pm a determined Australian bayonet attack breached the defences, causing a Turkish rout. Within two hours a cavalry encirclement brought victory, from which very few Ottomans escaped.
The British brought up more men and worked on extending their water pipelines and coastal railroad. On 9 January 1917, the British launched another encircling attack on the Turkish outpost in the old fort at Rafa. Like their position at Magdhaba, Rafa was weakly held and isolated. The Anzac Mounted Division conducted a similar attack that resulted in a similar triumph from which few Turks escaped. This victory brought Murray’s army to the gates of Palestine and positioned him to conduct further advances. The twin victories of Magdhaba and Rafa encouraged both London and Murray to consider a major offensive towards Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Gallipoli and Kut al-Amara notwithstanding, these victories also encouraged the British to interpret their success as a sign of Ottoman weakness and lack of fighting spirit. This underestimation of Ottoman combat effectiveness would have serious repercussions, as Murray’s generals began to plan operations against Gaza.
The British Army in the Sinai grew substantially in 1916 and was renamed the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF). Tired divisions withdrawn from Gallipoli arrived as reinforcements, but later Territorial and cavalry units from England were sent as well. Murray spent the summer improving his logistics and constructed rail lines and a water pipeline towards el-Arish in late 1916. Kress recognized the vulnerability of el-Arish, which he abandoned in mid-December 1916, falling back to a line on the old frontier. It was apparent to the Ottoman Fourth Army staff that this position could not be held either and Cemal Pasha ordered the establishment of a new defensive position at Gaza. Kress began withdrawing, and by mid-March 1917 the Ottoman Fourth Army was in position in its Gaza defences. The Turks also received important reinforcements, in the form of the 3rd Cavalry Division – which finally gave them a mobile mounted capability. In the vicinity of Gaza, Kress now had some 18,000 men.
British prisoners captured during the First Battle of Gaza. Two full years after their painful experiences at Gallipoli, British commanders launched infantry poorly supported by artillery into hard Ottoman defensive positions at Gaza. The results were predictable.
The British attacked Gaza with an infantry division on the morning of 26 March 1917. Murray sent two cavalry divisions to bypass the city itself and take it from the rear, and he retained his remaining two infantry divisions to shield his ever-lengthening and open right flank. This was a prescient decision, as Kress was planning to envelop the British with forces he had positioned in the desert. The well dug-in Turks held in the face of repeated British assaults, but by the end of the day British cavalry had nearly cut off the city. However, by this time Kress’s 3rd and 16th divisions and 3rd Cavalry Division were well under way and advancing to cut off Murray’s army from its water points and rail heads. With victory in sight, but learning of the Ottoman envelopment, Chetwode and Dobell, the corps commanders, decided to withdraw from Gaza. Since Murray was 70km (43.5 miles) to the rear at el-Arish, he was unable to stop the withdrawal. Overall, however, it is hard to criticize the decision to withdraw, which was made by the men on the spot. Had Murray been closer to the front, he might have been able to use aircraft to discover Kress’s intent.
A regimental standard presented to the defenders of Gaza during the First Battle. All Ottoman Army regiments were numbered and had regimental colours called sanjacklar. Carefully picked men guarded them and carried them into combat. As in Britain, Ottoman colours were awarded distinctions based on campaign participation.
The 26 March battle came to be known as First Gaza, and it was the best chance that Murray had to break the Turkish line without committing major forces to the region. The Gaza–Beersheba line was the finest natural defence line between the frontier and Jerusalem. The city of Gaza lay on the Mediterranean Sea and Beersheba sat at the foot of the rugged Judean Hills. At the First Battle of Gaza, three full-strength British infantry divisions and two full-strength Imperial cavalry divisions were stopped by three understrength Turkish divisions. Murray’s failure earned the Turks enough time to reinforce the Palestine front, and the British would eventually commit seven infantry divisions and four cavalry divisions to Palestine.
Political pressure on Murray intensified and he was pushed prematurely into attacking again. He rebuilt his army into the Eastern Force (of three infantry divisions), under General Dobell, to attack Gaza. Murray brought up additional infantry and mounted formations as well as 4000 poison gas shells and eight tanks (in the desert for the first time in history). Importantly, the EEF deployed over 170 artillery pieces as well. Murray’s attack began on 17 April 1917, and continued ineffectively for three days. This was because the Ottoman 53rd Division had been brought into the Gaza defences, now considered by the Turks as something of a fortress, contributing several thousand rifles to the defence. Moreover, in the time since First Gaza the Turks had dramatically increased the depth and scale of their fortifications (particularly by increasing overhead cover). A British two-hour artillery attack was followed by infantry being launched directly into the Turkish front. Tanks were employed for the first time in the Middle East (but were shot to pieces), wind dissipated the poison gas, and the infantry was stopped by well emplaced machine guns. Two days later, after sustaining about 6500 casualties, Murray called off the attack. The Turks lost about a third of this number, but they still held Gaza. Murray and Dobell were relieved of command and sent home to England. Turkish sources record that the British left three of their eight tanks within the Turkish trench lines. The gas attack was scarcely noticed at all. Murray’s army was not inexperienced (many of his infantry were Gallipoli veterans) and it is hard to understand why the British, two full years after Gallipoli, still attempted frontal assaults (with inadequate artillery support) on strongly prepared Ottoman Army positions.
In May 1917, the Ottoman Fourth Army was organized into five army corps, two of which garrisoned the Gaza–Beersheba line. Facing the British on the Gaza line were XXII Corps, composed of the 3rd, 7th, and 53rd divisions, and XX Corps, containing the 16th and 54th divisions (the 3rd Cavalry Division was in reserve). With these troops, the Turks continued to improve their defensive lines. By July, the Fourth Army had grown to 151,742 rifles, 354 machine guns and 330 artillery pieces (its highest recorded strength). However, the defensive lines had also been extended, now almost encircling the oasis town of Beersheba, and stretching continuously for almost 50km (30 miles).
Encouraged by success, Enver Pasha began to toy with the idea of taking the strategic initiative by forming a combined Turkish–German field army. This was a logical outcome of the evolving favourable levels of cooperation between the Germans and the Turks. On the German side the idea of a large Turkish–German army group was encouraged by General Erich von Falkenhayn, the victor of the Romanian campaign. In any case, sometime after the fall of Baghdad and before the arrival of Falkenhayn in Turkey for staff discussions on 7 May 1917, Enver was seized with the idea of retaking Baghdad. He intended to accomplish this by forming what he styled the Yildirim Army (or the Thunderbolt Army Group). Enver envisaged this force concentrating in upper Mesopotamia to retake Baghdad. From there it would either complete the reconquest of lower Mesopotamia or perhaps invade Persia. Unfortunately for the Turks, the elements of grand strategy appealed to Enver and, once again, overwhelmed his common sense. The Yildirim Army would comprise two main elements: Halil’s Sixth Army and a newly formed Seventh Army. The two Ottoman armies, reinforced by Germans, would regain the strategic initiative for the empire. The new Seventh Army was to be formed by divisions returning from the European fronts in Galicia, Romania and Macedonia. These experienced divisions represented Enver’s last strategic reserve and could not be replaced. However, with the Caucasian, Palestine and Mesopotamian fronts stabilized for the summer of 1917, a momentary window of opportunity appeared on the strategic horizon wherein the initiative might be regained in one theatre of war.
The main Turkish base of Hafir el-Aujar. Ottoman Army logistics units were modelled on the German Army system and formed a conveyor belt to the front. Most of the supplies were hauled to the front by animal cart.
Enver met his senior commanders in Aleppo on 24 June 1917 to discuss his plans. Attending this meeting were Ahmet Izzet Pasha, Mustafa Kemal Pasha (now in command of the Second Army), Cemal Pasha, Halil Pasha and Bronsart von Schellendorf of the Ottoman general staff. Enver unveiled his plan to create a new Seventh Army on the upper reaches of Mesopotamia using the divisions made available by the conclusion of the European operations. It would attack southeast along the Euphrates River, while Halil’s Sixth Army attacked south along the Tigris River. Then the armies might encircle and destroy the British at Baghdad.
Cemal Pasha thought that the Turks should concentrate their dwindling number of fresh divisions in the vicinity of Aleppo as a centrally positioned strategic reserve. This force might then respond to threats in the Caucasus, in Palestine or in Mesopotamia. He also put forth the idea of maintaining troops in the Adana region as insurance against an amphibious landing by the Entente powers. Cemal concluded his summary of the strategic situation by stating that an all-out offensive against Baghdad was dangerous for the Turks because failure would destroy the last strategic reserve. Enver, however, had already decided upon this course of action but promised that his German ally would provide significant assistance. He told Cemal that the Germans would provide a light division, heavily laden with a large number of machine guns, and that Falkenhayn himself would come down to command the combined armies. Izzet Pasha and Mustafa Kemal were uncomfortable with the plan, but were also overruled. Cemal Pasha then cabled the government in Constantinople directly to express his reservations over the plan. However, the decision had already been made and planning was well under way to begin the deployments. In fact the Grand Vizier had personally requested that the Germans send Falkenhayn himself.
A German Mauser Gewehr 98 rifle. The Ottoman Army stressed rifle marksmanship and trained its men well at regimental depots before assigning them to combat units.
The unhappy Cemal went to Constantinople in mid-August to argue his case in person. Another council of war was held, in which Cemal and his chief of staff presented their appreciation of the weakness of the Palestine front along the Gaza–Beersheba line. Their conclusion reaffirmed their belief that a large theatre reserve in Syria was more necessary than an attack in Mesopotamia. Enver and Falkenhayn began conversing in fluent German and conducted an animated discussion at the map boards. Much to Cemal’s surprise, Enver explained that Falkenhayn agreed with Cemal about the vulnerable condition of the Fourth Army. Moreover, Falkenhayn now advocated using the Yildirim Group to throw the British back across the Suez Canal, before attempting to retake Baghdad. Cemal was uncomfortable with this new proposal, preferring instead to simply abandon the Baghdad scheme and maintain a theatre reserve. In the end, Cemal was relieved of responsibility for the Palestine front and was reduced to providing logistical support to Falkenhayn. Unhappy with this turn of events, but willing to continue to serve in a diminished capacity, Cemal settled into a new headquarters in Damascus. There he observed the destruction of Falkenhayn’s army during the next year. Cemal noted later in his memoirs that there were continuous disputes between Mustafa Kemal and Falkenhayn over command and policy issues in the Yildirim Group. Cemal further stated that, were it not for Falkenhayn, the Turks could have held the Gaza–Beersheba line for years.
As the war progressed, the Ottoman high command keenly followed the tactical developments on the Western Front and attempted to implement new ideas in the army. In the summer of 1917, the Ottomans began to move towards the new German stosstruppen (stormtroop) doctrine. Initially a local initiative of Kress von Kressenstein in the 7th Division, the activity was spurred by the arrival of the 19th Division from Galicia, which had already formed a stormtroop battalion. On 1 September 1917, Enver Pasha ordered the formation of three assault troop battalions (hucum tabur), composed of young, fit and aggressive men. The troops were put through a four-week assault course and equipped like their German counterparts with bags of hand grenades and light machine guns. Pamphlets explaining the latest German tactics were written and distributed as well. The battalions were never used in offensive operations, but were mostly used for the remainder of the war as counterattack forces or as immediate tactical reserves. They were instrumental in repelling Allenby’s Trans-Jordan raids in the spring of 1918.
Members of the Turkish Machine-Gun Corps on the Tel el-Sheria–Gaza line. The Ottoman Army set up a tactical schools system in Palestine to maintain its fighting proficiency. In addition to a machine-gun school, it had courses for staff officers and for throwing hand grenades.
Falkenhayn arrived in July 1917 to command what the Germans called Army Group F (or the Yildirim Army, as the Turks called it). The army was almost entirely Turkish, while Falkenhayn’s army staff was mostly German. This soon became a sore point with the Ottoman officer corps, who became aware that Falkenhayn did not trust them to carry out complex staff procedures. The Germans also sent the German Asia Corps, which was in reality only a brigade-sized force, to help the new army. The Turks had expected to see some kind of light German infantry divisions, but instead received three infantry battalions, and three machine-gun and three cavalry detachments. Accompanying the Asia Corps were an artillery battalion, artillery-spotting aircraft, communications experts and motor transport. Of particular value was a small aviation group of about 30 modern German aircraft and pilots.
Enver began to send troops to Aleppo, and by September substantial forces were assembling there. In July, XV Corps’ headquarters arrived from Galicia followed in August by the 19th Division and the 20th Division in September. A new III Corps was activated and deployed, as were its subordinate units, the 50th Division from Macedonia and the 59th Division from Aydin. Four or five trains a day ran south to bring these formations into Syria. Eventually the German Asia Corps also arrived after an arduous journey from its staging area in Silesia. Given the abysmal condition of the Ottoman rail network in 1917, the Ottoman concentration of troops in Syria was remarkable.
As the new armies gathered there, Enver made his final choices regarding the Ottoman strategy. Based on reports coming from the Gaza–Beersheba front that indicated a significant British offensive was in the works, Enver cancelled the proposed plan to retake Baghdad. Embracing Falkenhayn’s ideas, Enver decided to reinforce the Gaza–Beersheba line with the Yildirim troops. On 26 September 1917 he split the old Fourth Army area, giving Cemal both Syria and West Arabia, and ordered the Yildirim Army Group and the Seventh Army to Palestine. In subsequent orders, given on 2 October, Enver activated the new Eighth Army in Palestine, appointing Kress to command it. Falkenhayn’s newly formed Yildirim Army Group now controlled the Sixth Army in Mesopotamia and the two armies in Palestine.
The German aerodrome at Huj. Four flieger abteilung (squadrons) participated in the campaigns in Palestine. These squadrons enabled the Ottomans to establish air parity until late in the war.
Dissent over the Ottoman Empire’s strategic direction continued. The newly appointed Seventh Army commander, Mustafa Kemal, sent a strongly worded letter to Enver Pasha advocating a return to a defensive military policy based on large, centrally positioned reserves able to respond to any threat by the British. Unfortunately, Kemal also bitterly condemned German influence in Turkish strategy and expressed his concern that Turkey was becoming a ‘German colony’, which led to his resignation several weeks later.
The infantry divisions near Aleppo began to move south, but not all went to Palestine. Recognizing the need to reinforce Halil Pasha with additional troops, the 50th Division was sent eastwards to Mesopotamia, while the 59th Division was deactivated and its troops used to fill out the other divisions departing the Aleppo staging area. To make up for these lost forces, Enver dispatched two infantry divisions and a cavalry division to the theatre. However, it would take quite a while for these formations to arrive in the Syria–Palestine area of operations and ready themselves for battle, and time for the Ottoman defenders ran out at dawn on 31 October 1917, when Allenby’s long-awaited offensive began.
Cemal Pasha inspecting Austrian troops entering Jerusalem. Cemal lost control of the Palestine front in the autumn of 1917. The newly formed Yildirim Army, commanded by Erich von Falkenhayn, took command of the Gaza–Beersheba line.
After the relief of General Murray, the imperial general staff sent out General Sir Edmund Allenby as the new British commander in June 1917. Allenby came from France where he had successfully commanded Third Army against the Germans. He was a large and imposing man and was nicknamed ‘the Bull’. He was known throughout the army as an able trainer of soldiers, although his curt and abrupt manner often irritated his subordinates. More importantly, he thoroughly understood the dynamics of modern warfare and was especially aware of the need to carefully integrate infantry and artillery operations. Allenby would spend the summer of 1917 preparing his great offensive aimed at breaking the Gaza–Beersheba line.
The British Lee-Enfield Mk II rifle. The British Army lowered the rifle strength of its infantry divisions in 1917. However, the divisions grew in combat power as Lewis guns and grenade launchers were added in lieu of riflemen.
Most of Allenby’s divisions were Territorials mobilized at the outbreak of the war, including the 52nd, 53rd and 54th divisions, which had fought against the Turks at Gallipoli. He also had the 10th, 60th, 74th (Yeomanry) and 75th divisions, which likewise had combat experience against the Turks. Moreover, his Desert Mounted Corps comprised three mounted or cavalry divisions. He requested and received over a hundred additional heavy artillery pieces, extra divisional artillery, and thousands of replacements to bring his battalions to full strength.
However, it was not in material terms that Allenby made the greatest changes in his army. In truth, the army he inherited from Murray was something of an ad hoc construct within which infantry divisions were combined with cavalry divisions in composite army corps. Allenby immediately deconstructed Murray’s army and reorganized it into two conventional infantry corps (XX and XXI) and a cavalry corps. This mirrored standard British Army organizational architecture and aligned the EEF with its counterpart BEF in France.
In doing this, Allenby enabled the most current British tactics and doctrines to take root in Palestine. In particular, he provided his army with an infantry-based capability that stressed fire and manoeuvre built around the Lewis light machine gun. In parallel, Allenby reorganized his corps-level artillery, consisting mostly of his heavy guns and howitzers. Coming from France, he recognized that simply adding more guns did not alter the tactical equation and that control of artillery was an essential element of gaining battlefield superiority. To accommodate this, in the summer of 1917 Allenby put his heavy guns together in heavy artillery groups, which supported his two infantry corps. These artillery groups were tasked with counterbattery operations designed to knock out the Turkish artillery. Thus a coherent and complementary system of artillery support appeared in Palestine, light divisional guns directly supporting the infantry and heavy guns suppressing the enemy’s artillery. Finally, and of great importance, Allenby’s strength of character and personal presence visibly improved the morale of the EEF. He exuded confidence and he visited his men often to set the example.
Allenby was also fortunate to inherit a capable command team composed of seasoned officers familiar with the theatre and their opponents’ capabilities. However, he reassigned them to new positions that he thought were suited to their talents. Sir Edward Bulfin was promoted to command XX Corps; Sir Philip Chetwode, one of the best-known cavalrymen in the army, was given XXI Corps; and the Australian Sir Henry Chauvel received command of the Desert Mounted Corps. Allenby also replaced Murray’s chief of the general staff with Sir Louis Bols, who had served with Allenby in Third Army. The professional and conventional Bols then received the brilliant and desert-wise Guy Dawnay as his assistant. It was a sweeping change for the EEF, but it made the army in Palestine Allenby’s army.
Allenby began his military career with the Inniskilling Dragoons in 1882 following an education at the Royal Military Academy (Sandhurst). He served in South Africa and in the Second Boer War from 1899 to 1901. He was a staff college graduate of Camberley and served in successive staff positions. In the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, Allenby commanded the 1st Cavalry Division. After the First Battle of Ypres, he was promoted to command the Third Army. He was nicknamed ‘the Bull’ and was prone to fits of anger and quietude. At times he clashed with his superiors and in 1917 he was sent to command the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (chiefly because of a disagreement with Haig over tactics used at the Battle of Arras). He captured Gaza and then Jerusalem in December 1917. His most famous victory at Megiddo in September 1918 was one of the most decisive victories of the war. In 1919 he was created a field marshal and ennobled. He served as High Commissioner to Egypt until 1925, before retiring.
The British plan envisaged an envelopment of the Turkish left flank at Beersheba by XX Corps and the Desert Mounted Corps. Using carefully orchestrated plans, Allenby’s logisticians proposed to support seven divisions far out in the desert. The major problem, especially for the cavalry, was one of ensuring an adequate supply of water. To this end, pipelines were laid and depots were built, but the plan hinged upon the seizure of the historic wells at Beersheba before the Turks could destroy them. Surprise was paramount and Allenby’s intelligence staff devised a plan to deceive the Turks. This turned on the Ottoman intelligence estimate that the British main attack would centre on the coastal city of Gaza while a single division hit Beersheba. This was the result of the Turks’ analysis of British logistics (mainly railways and pipelines laid along the coast road). Their estimates and suspicions were confirmed on 10 October 1917 when an intelligence bonanza dropped into their laps. This was the famous ‘lost haversack’ episode hatched by Major Richard Meinertzhagen of the intelligence staff. Meinertzhagen set up a phoney front-line reconnaissance, during which he appeared to drop a blood-stained haversack while fleeing from Turkish cavalry. The haversack contained personal letters, sandwiches and false operational documents relating to an impending British attack. These documents revealed that the British would attack Gaza while landing simultaneously on the coast north of the city. Moreover, the plans confirmed that a single division would be sent against Beersheba as a diversion. Although some histories claim that Meinertzhagen was a fraud and that the Turks were not fooled by his ruse, it is a fact that between 10 and 28 October 1917, Kress moved the 7th Division to the coast north of the city to guard against an amphibious attack while placing the fresh 53rd Division in the Gaza fortress. Moreover, he placed the 24th Division in a reserve position to support Gaza and he moved the 19th Division away from Beersheba and closer to the city of Gaza. It is clear from these movements that Kress believed, for whatever reason, that a British plan mirroring Meinertzhagen’s false documents was about to unfold.
The 94th Heavies, which shelled the Turks in capturing Jerusalem. Allenby’s reorganization of his heavy artillery and its employment in Western Front-style roles was a critical element in the success of his army.
BEERSHEBA AND THE THIRD BATTLE OF GAZA
Falkenhayn held the Gaza–Beersheba line with the strongest forces yet assembled by the Ottomans in Palestine. Many of the Ottoman divisions were composed of veterans of Gallipoli or the European fronts. Kress von Kressenstein’s Eighth Army held Gaza and was composed of XXII Corps (with the 3rd and 53rd divisions) in Gaza and XX Corps (26th and 54th divisions) stretching eastward toward Beersheba. A newly activated army, the Seventh, continued the Ottoman line into the town of Beersheba. The line was thinly held by the 16th Division, but the town of Beersheba itself was garrisoned by III Corps (27th Division and 3rd Cavalry Division), commanded by Ahmet Izzet Pasha. The 27th Division was composed almost entirely of Arabs and was thought to be unreliable. British preparations were highly visible, but the Turks believed that Allenby could only move a division and cavalry on Beersheba because of logistical constraints. The Ottoman defensive layout relied on strongly dug-in frontline forces and counterattacks, but the towns of Gaza and Beersheba acted as anchors at each end of the line. Because of the previous British attacks, Kress ringed each with entrenchments for an all-around defence. In Beersheba there were 4400 riflemen, 60 machine guns and 28 artillery pieces (about a single brigade equivalent in the British Army). The Ottoman chain of command informed III Corps that the British could be expected to attack with a force of two divisions, and Ahmet Izzet Pasha felt that he could defend the important town, with its important water wells, with the troops on hand.
On 31 October 1917, after a carefully concealed night movement, Allenby’s army attacked Beersheba at dawn. However, instead of one or two divisions he moved two entire British corps to execute his attack. The British XX Corps (with four infantry divisions) attacked from the west and the south, while the Cavalry Corps enveloped and attacked Beersheba from the east. XX Corps’ attack drove into the mostly Arab regiments of the Ottoman 27th Division and the Arabs surprisingly held the British off for the better part of the day. This attack was designed to pin down Ahmet Izzet’s reserves while the Imperial cavalry enveloped the town from the east, which was almost undefended. In desperation, Ahmet Izzet Pasha sent the 3rd Cavalry Division into action to hold open the road to the north. Although the Arabs and Turks fought stubbornly, by the end of the day the battle was all but over. Famously an Australian light horse regiment charged the Ottoman defences on the eastern perimeter, seizing a key hill controlling access into the town. Recognizing that his defence was untenable, Ahmet Izzet ordered his corps to withdraw from Beersheba. Although the Turks had demolitions plans in place to destroy the wells, the defence collapsed so quickly that Allenby’s troops captured them intact. Given that the Turks expected a divisional attack, a concentric attack by seven full-strength British divisions caught them by surprise, and the fact that III Corps was able to withdraw successfully was a minor miracle.
One of more controversial personalities of the war in the Middle East was Major Richard Meinertzhagen (1878–1967), who was born to a wealthy London Jewish banking family. Joining the army in 1905, he spent his early years fighting natives with the King’s African Rifles and acquiring a reputation for eccentricity and self-aggrandizement. Meinertzhagen was an expert ornithologist who wrote diaries wherever he went. Early in the war he was appointed to a military intelligence post in Palestine. In hatching the lost haversack episode, Meinertzhagen created a compelling scenario that convinced Kress von Kressensein to move his scant reserves to oppose the presumed landings and attacks that the documents in the haversack revealed. After the war he became an ardent advocate for the Zionist movement and worked to establish the new state of Israel. He was sacked from the army in 1926 for insubordination. He published four books about his experiences. Opinions are mixed today regarding some of his claims to have been a force in the making of the modern Middle East.
Allenby’s army then hit Gaza, with a deliberate attack by XXI corps (of three British infantry divisions). The Gaza garrison was twice the size of that in Beersheba and was more strongly dug in. Allenby conducted a coordinated bombardment from artillery on land and from naval gunfire from the sea. However, the British were unable to break through, and Ottoman counterattacks were able to restore the situation. Kress was able to hold most of the line and British progress was slow, disappointing some officers. However, the attack on Gaza was never more than a supplementary attack to pin Kress in the city. Allenby’s main effort was the seizure of Beersheba, from which point his cavalry would collapse the Ottoman left wing and envelop Gaza from the east. By 6 November, Allenby’s cavalry was pushing towards the city.
The Third Battle of Gaza–Beersheba. The Turks expected Allenby to move a single division against Beersheba. To their surprise, Allenby massed two entire army corps of six divisions on the Ottoman positions there. They never recovered from this mistake.
The Yildirim Army staff recognized that the battle was lost and Falkenhayn ordered his battered forces to conduct a fighting withdrawal to new defensive positions about 10km (six miles) to the north. Kress and Fevzi Pasha, the Seventh Army commander, began to disengage, leaving rearguard detachments to delay the British. These detachments were sacrificed to allow the main body of troops to escape. The 3rd Cavalry Division, fortunately preserved by Ahmet Izzet after the debacle at Beersheba, retained enough combat power to successfully screen the army’s open flank. By 9 November, the Eighth Army had withdrawn 20km (12.4 miles) north while the Seventh Army fell back more slowly under less British pressure. Falkenhayn moved his headquarters to Jerusalem, where he began to restore his communications and re-establish control of his forces. Although the British captured many Ottoman soldiers and guns in the retreat, every Ottoman division survived to fight another day. However, Allenby and his army were now inside Palestine itself.
Allenby relentlessly continued his attack, driving Kress’s Eighth Army back even more on 11 November. The attacks continued along the coast and had the effect of making the forward position of the Seventh Army, now commanded by Fevzi Pasha, vulnerable to a flanking attack. Fearing encirclement, Fevzi was forced to withdraw. Maintaining his cavalry as a screen, he pulled his scattered infantry formations tighter around Jerusalem. Between 19 and 21 November, the British wheeled again and attacked east towards Jerusalem. On 25 November, Kress executed a counter-offensive with the 3rd and 7th divisions, driving the British back and restoring the tactical situation along the coast. During the next week, the British shifted their main effort towards the capture of Jerusalem, but Fevzi’s Seventh Army fought them to a standstill. For the first seven days of 1918, Fevzi’s XX Corps held out. Nevertheless, by dusk on 7 December, the British were in the outskirts of the holy city. That night, the battered but intact XX Corps abandoned the city and withdrew to new defensive positions 4km (2.5 miles) to the east of Jerusalem. The defenceless civil administration then sent out emissaries to arrange for the peaceful turnover of the city. On 11 December 1917, Allenby entered the city on foot through the Jaffa Gate.
British attacks continued from 13 to 17 December. The New Year found the Turks battered, but holding a solid line anchored in the east on the Dead Sea and in the west on the Mediterranean Sea. Every Turkish infantry division that had begun the fight on 31 October on the Gaza–Beersheba line was intact and still fighting (although some were reduced to cadre strength). Screened by the Dead Sea and the Jordan River, the Turks still held the railway from Dera to Medina, although this line was constantly being harassed and cut by Lawrence and his Arab army. As 1917 came to an end, so too did Allenby’s offensive. Exhausted and living on lean logistical support, his army ceased offensive operations and the Turks earned yet another respite.
Turkish troops awaiting a British attack at Beersheeba. The Turks had a single understrength cavalry division in Palestine. Its horses were under-fed and under-watered. Allenby’s cavalry arm, by comparison, was massive: four full-strength divisions that were well mounted and well trained.
The two British sergeants who met the flag of surrender at Jerusalem, pictured outside the city. Because of the religious significance of the city to Muslims, Jews and Christians, the Ottomans decided to surrender Jerusalem intact. It fell on 8 January 1918.
General Allenby leaving Jerusalem after reading of the Proclamation. Allenby’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem was a huge propaganda victory for the British. However, the city had little, if any, military significance.
Casualties for the Turks had been severe during the period from 31 October to 31 December 1917, with the Yildirim Army Group losses approaching 26,000 men killed, wounded, captured or missing. Allenby lost about 18,000 men, but these would be replaced, while the Turks received few new men. According to British historian Cyril Falls, ‘considering that he [Allenby] had odds of well over two to one in infantry and eight to one in cavalry, his achievement may not seem so remarkable. In fact, it was hard and costly to turn Turkish troops out of defensive positions in this hilly, rocky country’. Falls’s tribute does not include the massive artillery superiority that Allenby enjoyed, or the huge logistical support that he amassed, nor does it attribute any advantage to the Royal Navy. Considering all of these factors in combination, it is remarkable that any Turks survived the onslaught at all. Indeed, not only did they survive, but the divisions of the Turkish Army retired in fair order to continue the fight.
By 1917, the Arab Revolt was in full swing, financed and aided by the British. There were four principal bands of armed Arabs, which operated mainly against the Dera–Medina railway. In the north, Prince Faisal conducted large-scale raids on 25 January and on 23 July 1917 against the garrison towns of Tafile and Fulye, respectively. Farther south, the Emir Ali operated against Tebuk, Abdullah operated against el-Ala, and Sheriff Hussein attacked the fortified city of Medina itself. Most of these Arab bands numbered between 3000 and 4000 men. While these Arabs could not (and would not) hold ground, they were capable of repeatedly cutting both the rail and the telegraph lines extending south.
One of the most dramatic moments in the Arab campaign came when T.E. Lawrence and Faisal made a daring approach across the desert to attack Aqaba. They swept into the port city and took it almost without a fight on 6 July 1917. Nevertheless, this was an important victory because it unleashed Faisal’s army to move north. Moreover, the capture of the port enabled the British to begin regular supply convoys, which provided important logistical support to the Arab armies.
While these raids were bothersome, they were not significant in the military sense. Nevertheless, larger and larger numbers of Turkish soldiers were called upon to guard the lines of communications south to Medina. Consequently, Liman von Sanders (then still in Constantinople) urged the Ottoman general staff to abandon entirely the Hedjaz. However, the importance of the retention of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina made this politically unthinkable (especially after the loss of Baghdad and Jerusalem later that year).
Lawrence, pictured here during the Arab Revolt, often clad himself in the robes of an Arab sheik. Many regular army professional officers found his unconventional appearance, and thinking, very disturbing.