POSTSCRIPT

POLITICAL BETRAYAL BREEDS FUTURE CONFLICT

In the history of the world, there never was a greater victory than that which was achieved in Palestine, and in it, also, as in France, the soldiers of Australia played a great part.

PRIME MINISTER WILLIAM HUGHES, SEPTEMBER 1919

The year after World War I ended, Australia’s politically astute Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, who had just returned home after signing the Treaty of Versailles, praised both the Light Horse and the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during a speech to parliament. He was right, of course. The Light Horse under Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel had helped win the Palestine campaign, punching well above their weight. It had been one of the greatest Allied victories of the war. He was also right about the AIF’s enormous role on the Western Front, where, under the Melbourne-born commander-in-chief of the Australian Army, Lieutenant- General Sir John Monash, they had helped win the war in Belgium and France. (A little known fact is that a small contingent of Light Horse troopers had also helped the AIF while serving on the Western Front in a wide variety of roles.)

But unfortunately, the Allied leaders who negotiated the terms of peace for that Palestine campaign were not as politically astute. In fact, the way they sorted out the new post-war arrangements sowed the seeds for today’s modern conflicts in the Middle East. These Allied leaders ignored pre-war and war-time promises to the Arabs and imposed self-serving and unjust post-war governments that contained the kernel for future rebellion and war.

The Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes aka ‘The Little Digger’ was a strong supporter of the Australian Imperial Force, and won the hearts of the Light Horsemen when he told parliament, ‘In the history of the world, there never was a greater victory than that which was achieved in Palestine’.

For a start, Britain and France — the superpowers of the day — betrayed Lawrence of Arabia and his Arab forces by not giving them the Arabian territories they had promised in return for helping to drive the Turks out of Palestine. Yet had it not been for Lawrence’s Arab Revolt and the Arab Army that grew out of it, the British and Allied forces, including the Australian Light Horse, may not have been able to liberate this land. The Arab Army fought a parallel and complementary campaign beside the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, fighting as a guerrilla unit by destroying Turkish fortifications, railway and communication lines and forcing the Turks to retreat. These Arabs only helped the British because they believed they could inherit and govern their lands once the Turks were driven out. Britain’s military leader in the Middle East, General Sir Edmund Allenby, had actually promised Lawrence and the Arabs that if they helped the British drive out the Turks they could govern these lands.

Assigned by the British to help lead the Arab forces against the Turks, Lawrence united their warring tribes for this purpose. He told Prince Feisal, the leader of the Arab Army, that the Arabs would be given control of their own lands once they had liberated them. In turn, Lawrence said, ‘Feisal had won over and set aflame all the different tribes bringing a sense of shared nationality to their minds inspiring them to sacrifice everything to achieve their long desired dream of self rule’. That is why Lawrence wanted the Arab Army to liberate the final town, Damascus, ahead of the British so they could claim their long-coveted prize. He and his Arabs believed it would be a case of ‘first come first served’. Although Lawrence and his Arabs only arrived second, behind the Australians, Lawrence quickly helped Feisal establish the Arab National Council before Allenby and his British troops took over the town.

Unbeknown to Lawrence, Feisal, and the Arab forces, however, the British and French had signed that agreement in the early part of the war — the Sykes-Picot Agreement — in which the two superpowers divided Arabia between themselves, excluding the Arabs from government and ownership. This highly secretive and political ‘gentlemen’s agreement’, signed in May 1916 with 12 clauses, was drafted by two upper-class, well-travelled Middle Eastern experts, Britain’s Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Mark Sykes, 6th Baronet, and France’s François Georges-Picot, 45. The agreement assumed victory over the Turks and the dismantling of the old Ottoman Empire, and divided the post-war Middle East into British- and French-governed territories. It included that map with the future British and French prizes coloured in red for and blue. Britain planned to seize most of Iraq — which had oil reserves — and control Palestine (where the British hoped to create a new nation for the Jews). France planned to take over most of Syria and Lebanon. Britain would also supervise puppet Arab governments in any other remaining land on the map to the south and France would do the same to the north. The ever shrewd commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, Sir Edmund Allenby, who led the liberating forces and urged Lawrence and his Arabs to fight harder to the end, knew this was the secretly planned outcome.

So no matter how hard the Arabs fought and no matter how fast they rode to try and get to Damascus first — they did not stand a chance. And this was the heartless betrayal eventually revealed at the post-war negotiating sessions that shocked Lawrence, Feisal, and the Arabs, and soured the victory of that uneasy coalition.

But with hindsight, if the superpowers had allowed the Arabs to govern all Arab lands instead of dividing the newly won territory between themselves, the Arabs might have established a peaceful modus vivendi as masters of their own destiny — instead of rebelling against their European masters and fermenting the bloody conflicts that have undermined peace in the Middle East to this day. Had the British not helped create the new state of Israel in Palestine in 1948 based on the Balfour Declaration hatched by Zionists during World War I, the Arabs in Palestine itself could perhaps have lived a more peaceful life.

In early October 1918, Allenby told Feisal to ‘moderate his aims and await decisions from London’ when they met in Damascus, saying at the outset that the French would control Lebanon. Allenby also explained he was in supreme command of all administration, but that both French and British governments ‘agreed to recognize the belligerent status of the Arab forces fighting in Palestine and Syria, as Allies against the common enemy’.

But Prince Feisal told Allenby that Lawrence had promised him the Arabs would administer the whole of Syria, including access to the Mediterranean Sea through Lebanon, if his forces reached northern Syria by the end of the war — and they knew nothing about France’s claim to Lebanon.

Australia’s Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel, who had commanded the Desert Column, then carefully recorded the formal meeting between Allenby (the Chief) and Feisal at the Hotel Victoria, Damascus, 3 October 1918, revealing how Lawrence and Feisal saw this as a betrayal. Chauvel wrote:

‘The Chief explained to Feisal:

‘(a) That France was to be the Protecting or Mandatory Power over Syria.

‘(b) That he, Feisal, as representing his Father, King Husein, was to have the Administration of Syria (less Palestine and the Lebanon Province) under French guidance and financial backing.

‘(c) That the Arab sphere would include the hinterland of Syria only and that he, Feisal, would not have anything whatever to do with the Lebanon, which would be considered to stretch from the Northern boundary of Palestine (about Tyre) to the head of the Gulf of Alexandretta.

‘(d) That he was to have a French Liaison Officer at once, who would work for the present with Lawrence, who would be expected to give him every assistance.

‘Feisal objected very strongly. He said that he knew nothing of France in the matter; that he was prepared to have British assistance; that he understood from the adviser that Sir Edmund Allenby had told him that the Arabs were to have the whole of Syria including the Lebanon but excluding Palestine; that a Country without a Port was no good to him; and that he declined to have a French Liaison Officer or to recognise French guidance in any way.

‘The Chief turned to Lawrence and said: “But did you not tell him that the French were to have the Protectorate over Syria?” Lawrence said: “No Sir, I know nothing about it.” The Chief said: “But you knew definitely that he, Feisal, was to have nothing to do with the Lebanon”. Lawrence said: “No Sir, I did not.”

‘After some further discussion the Chief, Allenby, told Feisal that he, Sir Edmund Allenby, was Commander in Chief and that he, Feisal, was at the moment a Lieut-General under his Command and that he would have to obey orders. That he must accept the situation as it was and that the whole matter would be settled at the conclusion of the War. Feisal accepted this decision and left with his entourage (less Lawrence) and went out of the City again to take on his triumphal entry which I am afraid fell rather flat as the greater bulk of the people had seen him come in and out already!

As leader of the Arab Army, Lawrence of Arabia had promised King Feisal and other Arab chiefs that they would be given Arabian territory to rule if they supported the campaign.

Although the British and French superpowers initially refused to install King Feisal as a monarch in return for mobilising the Arabs to serve in Lawrence of Arabia’s Army, Lawrence finally got him installed as king of British-controlled Iraq.

‘After Feisal had gone, Lawrence told the Chief that he would not work with a French Liaison Officer and that he was due for leave and thought he had better take it now and go off to England. The Chief said: “Yes! I think you had!”, and Lawrence left the room.

Chauvel concluded his recording of the meeting with the words, ‘The Chief afterwards relented about Lawrence and told me (Chauvel) to tell him (Lawrence) that he would write to Clive Wigram about him and arrange for an audience with the King, also, that he would give him a letter to the Foreign Office in order that he might explain the Arab point of view.’

Lawrence left Damascus next morning for England. This betrayal, so carefully recorded by Chauvel, affected the rest of Lawrence’s life, as he resigned his military commission soon after, found it difficult to fit back into British society again, drifted from job to job in the British defence forces, changed his name, became a recluse hiding in the countryside, refused a knighthood personally offered by King George V, and published his version of events. He was killed in a motorbike accident on an English country road in 1935. In his books, especially Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he writes about his belief that the Arabs achieved more than enough in that desert war to have earned territories of their own.

Yet in 1921, Lawrence had made a temporary comeback. By then, he had become a famous figure celebrated in the British media, which published more and more stories about his achievements, and also in the theatres, which staged Lawrence of Arabia Lantern and Lecture Shows that attracted hundreds of thousands of patrons. He had also played a role as an Arab specialist at the subsequent Peace Conference in Paris, where the French used the Sykes-Picot Agreement to try and grab even more land in the Middle East. He had warned the conference that if French rule was imposed on the unwilling Arabs of Syria, ‘There will be trouble and even war between the French people and the Arabs’.

Then the new Secretary of State for Colonies, Winston Churchill, listened to Lawrence (whom he appointed his official adviser on colonial affairs) and subsequently created a new nation state called Transjordan (later Jordan) and installed Abdullah Hussein as leader, with Amman as its capital. Fighting back even harder, Lawrence also persuaded Churchill to install Feisal as king of British-controlled Iraq, so that the Arab leader who had done so much to drive the Turks out at least got a face-saving position. Sadly, neither of these Arab leaders lasted long due to factional infighting, worsened by King Feisal’s untimely death in 1933, and before long, both Jordan and Iraq were beset with problems that eventually undermined peace and stability, leading to today’s conflicts.

The Australian Light Horse did not help Lawrence’s political post-war cause either, as they gazumped him and his Arabs by stealing into Damascus first, angering Lawrence. After he got to Damascus, hours after the Australians, he asked them to retreat into the background, so he could ride into town officially and capture this strategic Turkish stronghold with his Arabs in a colourful show of flowing robes.

Light Horsemen like Norman Crosthwaite could now tell their sweethearts they were coming home.

After his long and distinguished service in Palestine, Lieutenant Reg Garnock won a rare award: the Sultan’s Order of the Nile.

The Australians had never liked the Arabs during the war, though, so they did not care whether or not the Arabs were given control of these newly captured territories. The 5th Regiment trooper Ion Idriess said most of the troopers actually hated their Arab ‘comrades’ — especially the nomadic Bedouins — who were meant to be fighting alongside them against the Turks. Idriess reported many times that he had seen that the Bedouins mutilated the bodies of wounded Australians left to die on the battlefield and dug up bodies from the shallow desert graves to rob the dead of their possessions.

Then, on 10 December 1918, a raiding party of exhausted New Zealand Light Horse troopers ran out of patience with the Arabs and blotted their copybook. These troopers raided an Arab village in revenge after an Arab from that village crept into their camp in the dead of night to steal things — as they had through most of the desert war. But this time the Arab thief killed New Zealand trooper Leslie Lowry, who had tried to stop the thief when he was woken by the Arab pulling his kitbag out from under his pillow. The sleepy Light Horseman caught up to the fleeing Arab, grabbed him before the thief escaped, and tried to wrestle his kitbag from the robber’s hands.

Like all Light Horsemen, (Lawrence) Hunter Edmunds was relieved to have survived the war after so many battles in which he could have been killed — and so he treasured his Discharge Certificate, which he then left to his descendants, who keep it in pride of place.

The thief pulled out a revolver and shot Lowry in the chest before bolting empty-handed. Lowry was found bleeding to death on the sand. His rescuer, trooper Ambrose Stephen Mulhall from the Australian 3rd Light Horse, reported that Lowry told him that, ‘A Bedouin from the nearest Bedouin village had tried to steal his kitbag, shot him and then ran to the nearest Bedouin village’. Mulhall then reported, ‘Lowry died in agony’. His abandoned kitbag and an Arab skullcap were found nearby.

Incensed by this crime, Lowry’s mates — who like Lowry had just spent years liberating these Arab’s lands from the Ottoman Empire — took revenge. By then, the New Zealand Light Horsemen had run out of patience, so they tracked the murderer’s footprints to a hole in the fence near Surafend, an Arab village near a Jewish settlement, Richon le Zion, close to the Mediterranean coast not far from today’s Tel Aviv. Then an angry posse of these New Zealand Light Horsemen raided the murderer’s village to avenge Lowry’s death and to teach the Arabs a lesson.

Official World War I historian for the Desert Campaign, Henry Gullett, later reported the incident: ‘They were angry and bitter beyond sound reasoning. All day the New Zealanders quietly organised for their work in Surafend and early in the night marched out many hundreds strong and surrounded the village’. Gullett also claimed some Australian Light Horsemen got involved, saying, ‘In close support and in full sympathy were large bodies of Australians. Entering the village the New Zealanders grimly passed out all the women and children and then, armed chiefly with heavy sticks fell upon the men and at the same time fired their houses. Many Arabs were killed, few escaped without injury; the village was demolished. The flames from the wretched houses lit up the countryside, and Allenby and his staff could not fail to see the conflagration and hear the shouts of the troops and cries of their victims. The Anzacs having finished with Surafend, raided and burned the neighbouring nomad camp, and then retreated quietly back to their lines’.

Although they were aware of Lowry’s murder, the Light Horse commanding officers were angered by this undisciplined killing spree, and they conducted an internal inquiry into the massacre. This established little, however, because the Light Horsemen were all sworn to secrecy, so none of the hundreds who took part were punished. Their commander-in-chief, Allenby, however, called the Anzac Mounted Division to attention and denounced them from his horse.

Proud Australians maintained traditional Light Horse regiments right up until World War II, hoping to be called upon to repeat the feats of the Desert Column in World War I, but the mechanisation of warfare meant they were never called upon; so Australians kept the tradition alive through ceremonial parades and horse-riding events.

Allenby had said earlier: ‘The Australian Lighthorseman combines with a splendid physique, a restless activity of mind. This mental quality renders him somewhat impatient of rigid and formal discipline, but it confers upon him the gift of adaptability, and this is the secret of much of his success mounted or on foot. In this dual role … The Australian Lighthorseman has proved himself equal to the best. He has earned the gratitude of the Empire and the admiration of the world’.

But now Warrant Officer Nick Curtin, a Tasmanian, of the 3rd Regiment, reported Allenby saying: ‘Since I have been with you you have done some wonderful things. You overran the Turks in Beersheba and you did this, and you also took so many thousand prisoners, and you did that. That was good but ah, you put the blotch on yourself when you killed some innocent Arabs. I thank you for what you have done … but I hate you for what you did to the Arabs. I thought a lot of you once, but I think it of you no more’. And with that condemnation of some of the men (mainly New Zealanders) who had helped him drive the Turks out of Palestine, dismantle the Ottoman Empire, and liberate Palestine, Allenby turned his horse’s head and galloped off.

As many of the wonderful Walers came from Tamworth, the local council, people of Tamworth, and local ABC radio broadcaster David Evans created this lifelike statue to honour the memory of those great Light Horsemen and their mounts.

But that condemnation was nothing compared to the final orders from commanding officers of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. For the troopers were told they would have to leave their beloved horses behind when they sailed back to Australia.

The men had been looking forward to sailing back home with their mounts and putting them out to graze back on the properties from where they came. They had dreamt and talked often around the desert campfires of the good times they and their beloved Walers could enjoy back home. Now they had to deal with the gut-wrenching order to leave them behind.

The order was clear-cut — ‘The horses stay behind’. The commanding officers claimed that it was impractical to take tens of thousands of army horses back to Australia; there were not enough transport ships and there was not enough room on the ships to create horse stalls, and anyway, the quarantine regulations would stop the horses being admitted to Australia.

By the end of the war, the Light Horsemen had formed such an intense bond with their horses — who had carried them for years, galloped into battle, stood patiently by if they were wounded, and provided unconditional companionship — that they had become mates.

The order from on high demanded all Walers were to be classified either A, B, C or D, according to their condition and age. All C and D horses were to be shot. They were first to have their shoes removed and their manes and tails cut off (iron and horse hair were saleable). Worse, the horses were to be skinned after being shot. Seven pounds of salt was allowed for the salting of each hide, to be sold as leather.

Horrible as these orders seemed, many men thought that it would be better to shoot their horse than leave it to be cruelly treated by the local Arabs. Some tried to have their Walers included in the C and D group for shooting. Others asked permission to take their horse for a last ride and returned carrying saddle and bridle, with the explanation: ‘He put his foot in a hole and I had to shoot him’.

Hundreds of the Walers that had charged Beersheba or endured the Sinai or carried their ‘Billjim’ on the last great advance into Damascus were taken to olive groves outside Tripoli and tethered in picket lines. They were then given a last nosebag of fodder and shot. Many troopers found it touching that, to the very last, their horses trusted their uniformed figures and their rifles, and that gunfire held no fear for them.

Eventually, late in 1919, the last of the Light Horsemen arrived back in Australia. The regiments broke up and all men returned to homes, families, farms, and jobs to try and resume their lives. The Light Horse of the 1st AIF may have only existed for five years, but in time, it generated a reputation that a century later was romanticised more than any other Australian military force of World War I.

Yet back then it was a bittersweet return to Australia. Major Oliver Hogue of the 14th Regiment, who wrote under the name Trooper Bluegum, summed up the feelings of many Light Horsemen in his poem, ‘The Horses Stay Behind’:

In days to come we’ll wander west and cross the range again;

We’ll hear the bush birds singing in the green trees after rain

We’ll canter through the Mitchell grass and breast the bracing wind

But we’ll have other horses. Our chargers stay behind.

Around the fire at night we’ll yarn about old Sinai;

We’ll fight our battles o’er again as the days go by

There’ll be old mates to greet us. The bush girls will be kind.

Still our thoughts will often wander to the horses left behind.

I don’t think I could stand the thought of my old fancy hack

Just crawling around old Cairo with a Gyppo on his back.

Perhaps some English tourist out in Palestine may find

My broken-hearted Waler with a wooden plough behind.

I think I’d better shoot him and tell a little lie: –

‘He floundered in a wombat hole and then lay down to die’

May be I’ll get court-martialled; but I’m damned if I’m inclined

To go back to Australia and leave my horse behind.