Chapter 5

‘But we have Gaza’

February to March 1917

The railhead from Kantara was now approaching El Arish, though it would require constant attention from labour gangs to clear drifting sand from the rails. As always, water was the most vital necessity, and three pumping plants at Kantara forced drinking water up the 12-inch pipeline towards El Arish. Concrete reservoirs had been constructed at Romani, Bir el Abd and Mazar, and another was under construction at El Arish.¹ Large-scale military operations were not possible once the fierce summer weather arrived around May, so a build-up of forces forward of El Arish quickly got under way.

General Murray now had four infantry divisions available for operations and a second mounted division was being formed. Now that they were out of the desert dunes of the Sinai, the infantry could be more easily employed and the slow camel supply trains could be replaced by more efficient wheeled transport. Unfortunately, Murray chose to remain in Cairo, and the lack of a dynamic commander-in-chief at the front would hinder the upcoming campaigns. The Anzac troops certainly had little respect for unseen generals.²

The remaining enemy outposts south of the Gaza–Beersheba line were soon captured. As soon as the soldiers of the small garrison at Nekhl saw the men of the 11th Light Horse approaching, they fled into the hills to the east. Bir el Hassana fell the following day. By early March, Murray was ready to attack Gaza, the Arabian Dehliz el Moulk or ‘threshold of the kingdom’. ‘Latest furph [rumour], a stunt to Gaza is coming off shortly,’ Stan Parkes wrote on 3 February 1917. ‘Infantry have been arriving here by the hundreds.’³

Gaza’s defences were strong. Some 15,000 Turkish troops were covering the Gaza–Beersheba line, with about 4000 in Gaza itself. These defenders were well dug in behind a maze of imposing cactus hedges, with steep sand dunes protecting the coastal flank. About 3 kilometres to the south of the Gaza–Beersheba line, the imposing Wadi Ghuzze, the ‘river of Gaza’, cut across the plain parallel to the Turkish front line. ‘This wadi is very rough and deep being a mile across in places, and is only fordable where roads cross,’ Jeff Holmes wrote.⁴

Egyptian labourers move the railhead forward. ‘They are very slow workers but the work goes on through sheer excess of numbers,’ Frank Hurley wrote. Harry Mattocks collection.

Major General Dobell would use two infantry divisions at Gaza, the 53rd Welsh and 54th East Anglian. He also had available the Anzac Mounted Division (comprising the 1st and 2nd Light Horse Brigades alongside the New Zealand Mounted Rifles and 22nd Yeomanry Brigades) and Major General Henry Hodgson’s newly formed Imperial Mounted Division (comprising the 3rd and 4th Light Horse Brigades alongside the 5th and 6th Yeomanry Brigades). The failure to keep the four Australian light horse brigades together as an Australian mounted division was typical of the approach of the British commanders to Australian units. The British were always happiest in both world wars to integrate Australian brigades, divisions and corps into higher British (or imperial) formations, be they divisions, corps or armies. Staff appointments to the new division followed the same disrespectful formula. Hodgson appointed seventeen British staff officers to his divisional headquarters but only two Australians, one a junior staff officer and the other the veterinary officer. The Imperial Camel Corps brigade, three-quarters Anzacs, had British staff officers exclusively. Such a narrow-minded policy led to, as Henry Gullett called it, ‘evil results’.⁵

A light horse camp in the Sinai, 29 January 1917. Arthur Reynolds collection.

Life in the desert continued to test the light horsemen. After a sandstorm hit on 11 March, Robert Farnes wrote of ‘a terrible night . . . the wind and sand is awful . . . all the bivvies [bivouacs] are blown away’.⁶ Michael Minahan also copped it. ‘Bivvie down again. Pouring rain. Wet to the bone,’ he wrote. ‘Bugger of a day. Blowing awful.’⁷ ‘The sand is showering on top of me like rain,’ Joe Burgess wrote, adding ‘it’s the limit’.⁸

On 16 March, Stan Parkes’s unit crossed the border and arrived at Khan Yunis, ‘a quaint little village of mud huts’. This was a different world, a ‘promised land’ as Parkes saw it, with ‘beautiful fertile plains which stretched out in front of us as far as you could see’.⁹ After the desolate wastes of the Sinai, Robert Farnes was also impressed: ‘A very large village surrounded by orchards, it doesn’t look a bad place from the outside.’ He was less impressed that ‘a large well with an engine and pump had been blown up by the Turks’.¹⁰

On 21 March there was a Desert Column race meeting at Rafa. Robert Farnes noted that ‘the Australians won five out of the six races they were allowed to start in’.¹¹ Tom Baker probably spoke for the majority, writing, ‘could not pick a winner but did not lose much’.¹² It was a chance for the men to enjoy a drink and a smoke away from the normal campaign rigours, although, as Bill Rose observed, ‘one doesn’t know the horrors of war until one has to smoke issue tobacco’.¹³

The daily water issue to the women of Khan Yunis, ‘where Delilah lived and was born’. William and Francis Woods collection.

In the lead-up to the attack on Gaza the Australian Flying Corps was busy. On 20 March, planes from No. 1 Squadron carried out a bombing raid on Junction Station, north of Gaza. Damaging the Turkish supply line to Gaza would play an important part in the upcoming battle. Aerial bombing was in its infancy at this stage of the war, and the bomb that Lieutenant Frank McNamara’s Martinsyde aircraft carried reflected that. The bomb was actually a modified 4.5-inch artillery shell and it detonated prematurely when released, wounding McNamara in the leg. As he turned back for his base at El Arish, however, McNamara spotted another plane in trouble, a B.E.2. As Fred Tomlins noted, ‘Our B.E.2 planes are too slow for fighting machines and are used for bomb dropping.’¹⁴

Captain David Rutherford had been forced to land his B.E.2 due to engine trouble. Though McNamara could see Rutherford’s plane below, he could also see enemy cavalry in the distance. Nonetheless, he turned his plane back and landed next to Rutherford’s B.E.2. The prognosis was not good. Though the B.E.2 was a two-seater, McNamara’s Martinsyde was only a single-seat aircraft, so Rutherford scrambled up onto the Martinsyde’s wing and McNamara began to take off. But the extra weight unbalanced the plane and with McNamara’s wound making effective rudder use difficult, the aircraft crashed during the take-off run. Fortunately, both men were all right, but the Martinsyde was no longer flyable, so the two airmen set it alight to prevent its capture and headed back to the B.E.2.

A Royal Flying Corps B.E.2, the same type of aircraft flown by Frank McNamara during the action for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross. Roy Millar collection. Courtesy of Paul Batman.

Some Turkish cavalrymen had now appeared, and while Rutherford worked on the B.E.2 engine, McNamara fired his revolver at the approaching horsemen. Overhead, some of the other planes of the squadron circled over the downed planes and were able to help keep the cavalry at bay with their machine guns. Meanwhile, Rutherford had managed to get the engine started and after both men climbed aboard, the wounded McNamara piloted the aircraft back to El Arish. For his bravery, Frank McNamara was awarded the Victoria Cross, the only such award made to an Australian during the desert campaigns.

The headquarters of the Desert Column and the Eastern Force were grouped together at Deir el Belah, which was on the edge of the coastal sand dunes some 10 kilometres beyond Khan Yunis and 16 kilometres south-west of Gaza. From here the 3rd Brigade moved out to reconnoitre the Gaza defences on 25 March. The long El Sire ridge, running north–south about 1100 metres east of Gaza, was the key terrain, and its crowning knoll of Ali Muntar was the critical point. ‘It is believed that Gaza is not strongly held,’ the operation orders stated, ‘and it is therefore intended to push the attack with great vigour.’¹⁵ ‘We have to get Gaza tomorrow and by all accounts we are going to have a tough problem,’ Joe Burgess wrote. ‘There is a chance of us being sandwiched as we go the other side of Gaza and hoe into reinforcements while the infantry tear into Gaza.’ Burgess’s final comment was prescient—‘I hope they get it quick or we’ll be up a tree,’ he wrote.¹⁶

Map 3: First battle of Gaza

The Allied forces would have to be well directed and would have to fight well to win this battle. Chetwode sent the 53rd Division against Gaza from the south-east while directing Chauvel’s mounted division to move around the town to the north-east and then north as far as the coast. Hodgson’s mounted division and the Camel Brigade would take up a blocking position east of Gaza to stymie any Turkish reinforcements. The 54th Division was in reserve behind the 53rd.¹⁷

The signaller’s tools—a heliograph, a telescope and sunlight. Wilfred Baker collection.

Chauvel’s division crossed the Wadi Ghuzze in the early morning darkness of 26 March while the infantry and artillery moved up to the start line. ‘Infantry and artillery passed through Khan Yunus all night,’ Harry Bostock wrote.¹⁸ A heavy morning fog covered any Allied movements from the Turkish observers until it began to lift at 8 a.m.¹⁹ ‘About daylight a heavy fog came up, and by the time it had lifted, we had a great screen for our movements,’ Jeff Holmes wrote.²⁰ The fog also hindered the light horsemen, making it difficult to keep the columns on the right track. ‘About 4 am a thick blanket of fog screened everything and progress was very slow,’ Gordon Macrae wrote. ‘Several times the column almost got away from us.’²¹ By the time Stan Parkes moved off with the 3rd Light Horse Field Ambulance at 5 a.m. ‘a dense fog obscured everything’.²²

The troopers of the 7th Light Horse got in close enough to charge an enemy aerodrome, where two German aircraft just managed to get into the air before the horsemen arrived. ‘If it hadn’t have been for a couple of camel men who fired their rifles we could have got them on the ground,’ Robert Farnes wrote.²³ The troopers galloped on, crossing the Gaza–Beersheba road, cutting the phone wires as they went. A Turkish general, the commander of the Turkish 53rd Division, who was on his way to take over the defence of Gaza, was captured along with three of his staff officers. The general offered a smoke from his gold cigarette case to his captors, one of whom produced a half-smoked example in return.²⁴ The general was ‘very upset at being taken prisoner, more so because the fellows laughed at him,’ Farnes wrote.²⁵ As Gordon Macrae described it, the light horsemen ‘pushed right in behind Gaza cutting off all communication and capturing more prisoners. The whole fight seemed more like a big parade ground movement.’²⁶ Jeff Holmes noted that ‘to surround Jacko we had travelled fully 15 mile’.²⁷ ‘We made a wide semi-circle,’ was how Joe Burgess put it.²⁸ Robert Farnes wrote, ‘we were not allowed to push on into Gaza’, but the light horsemen ‘gave the Turks a very warm time as they were coming out and we annihilated about a company of them’.²⁹ With Gaza now sealed off, it was up to the infantry to capture it.

Major General Alister Dallas should have had his 53rd Division troops across the Wadi Ghuzze by dawn. After marching up from Khan Yunis, the 158th Brigade had left Deir el Belah at 1 a.m. but the guide lost his way and the brigade only reached Wadi Ghuzze just before dawn at 4.30 a.m. It was not until 5.45 a.m. that the lead battalion, the 1/5th Royal Welsh Fusiliers, reached the start line for the attack, only to be held up by the fog. When the fog began to lift at 7.45 a.m., two enemy aeroplanes took off from Gaza and warning bugles sounded out from the Turkish lines. The two-hour delay in the main attack was costly. Despite Chetwode’s orders to get the attack going, Dallas now brought further delays upon his troops by insisting they wait until his artillery spotters could see their targets. This cost the British troops any chance of surprise or utilising the fog cover, and they would pay dearly. By 12 p.m. the infantry reached the cactus garden about 700 metres from Ali Muntar, where they came under heavy fire both from Ali Muntar and from Green Hill on the left flank.³⁰ A battalion was sent to attack Green Hill in support of the main assault on Ali Muntar. ‘It was a great sight; but they had a large number of casualties,’ Robert Farnes wrote.³¹

At midday the infantry attack finally got underway when two brigades, the 158th and 160th, began their advance. With more than 3 kilometres of open ground to cover against forewarned defenders in strong and dominant positions, it was a considerable challenge. At a range of about 1 kilometre, the rifle and machine-gun fire cracked out across the open plain and the infantry in their long textbook lines were mown down. The Turkish artillery added to the slaughter and the attack stalled about 500 metres short of Ali Muntar. After the 159th Brigade moved up at 2 p.m. some of the lower-level British officers began to show the sense their seniors sorely lacked and advanced their men in rushes. A small party of infantry managed to get into the Turkish defences among the cactus hedges and the position was consolidated by 6.10 p.m. By now the guns had been brought up to within 1500 metres of Ali Muntar, and their well-directed fire helped break down the defences. ‘The whole battle was like a medieval affair,’ Lieutenant Colonel Fred Wollaston wrote.³²

Further back, Joe Bolger lay in the shade of his camel and watched the assault. ‘I can see the shrapnel shells fired by the Turks a few miles away,’ he wrote. ‘They are firing into the Scotties infantry, they are putting it in fairly thick too.’³³ The infantry had no shade from the frightful heat. Joe Burgess watched the battle from north of the town. ‘The little Tommies went at it bravely,’ he wrote, ‘and for hours fought in perfectly open country . . . it looked and sounded very dinkum.’³⁴

A Turkish machine-gun section keeps a low profile on a barren plain typical of many on the Sinai and Palestine battlefields. Clarence Reid collection. Courtesy of Lyndall Caldwell.

The infantry that had reached the maze of cactus hedges below Ali Muntar found further progress difficult. ‘All the orchards in villages have a hedge of prickly pear which would take a good deal of negotiating and it is in these orchards behind prickly pear the Turks have their positions in Gaza,’ Fred Tomlins wrote. ‘I’d rather face barbed wire.’³⁵ With flanking fire from Green Hill cutting into the infantry ranks, Dallas threw the 161st Brigade against the position and, despite heavy casualties, both Green Hill and Ali Muntar were finally taken. Although time was running out, the sun sinking closer to the sea, Dallas’s men were spent and could not exploit their success.

Cactus hedgerows near Gaza. ‘Masses of small fields enclosed with great wide cactus hedges which made fine cover,’ Henry Gullett wrote. Arthur Hitchcock collection.

By midafternoon, Chetwode was desperate to take Gaza, and with no sight of enemy reinforcements, he ordered the two mounted divisions, with Chauvel in command, to close on Gaza to support the infantry attack if and when it came. At 2 p.m. Chauvel was ordered to use the Anzac Mounted Division against Gaza while the Imperial Mounted Division acted as the screening force. After some complex manoeuvres to reposition these screening forces, Chauvel began the mounted attack on Gaza at 4 p.m.³⁶

At the end of the line, Captain John Cain’s 2nd Brigade machine guns had to cut gaps in the cactus hedges for the troopers to get through. ‘The whole place is full of prickly pear hedges along the roads and streets and the Turks were concealed behind them,’ Robert Farnes wrote. ‘Our fellows drove them out and gave them a very rough time. The Turks went right back into the town.’³⁷ Lieutenant Fred Waite’s 5th Light Horse troop ‘kept to their horses, jumped the hedges and got amongst them still mounted’. Waite fired his revolver from the saddle until thrice wounded.³⁸ Major Arch Bolingbroke led two other troops from the 5th Light Horse into the cactus on foot, the men hacking their way through with bayonets. ‘Our men were sniping as at rabbits at Turks running in and out of hedges.’³⁹ Granville Ryrie used the same analogy: ‘Some of our fellows were shooting off their horses like shooting rabbits, they said they could see them better from up there, they charged the Turks with the bayonet and killed a great many.’⁴⁰

As night fell, troopers from the 7th Light Horse dashed into the outskirts of Gaza. The New Zealanders came in from the east before dismounting and entering the town. Gordon Macrae watched from a hill behind Gaza as the New Zealanders ‘galloped across an open grass plain and dismounted and charged with bayonets. It was a great sight.’⁴¹ Michael Minahan wrote of how Chaytor’s New Zealanders and Ryrie’s 2nd Brigade ‘went into the Turks with fixed bayonets about 4 pm and advanced about two miles capturing 360 prisoners and 2 guns. Our casualties very light.’⁴² By 5 p.m. the New Zealand brigade had ‘effected lodgement in the outer houses of Gaza’.⁴³

At 6 p.m. General Dobell, despite Chauvel’s protests, ordered a withdrawal. ‘But we have Gaza!’ Chauvel told Dobell. ‘Yes; but the Turkish reinforcements are all over you,’ Dobell replied down the phone line.⁴⁴ Aware that some 10,000 enemy reinforcements were on the way to Gaza, Chetwode, who had the final say, agreed to the withdrawal. With about half his mounted forces diverted to Gaza from the screening force, Chetwode believed there was a serious threat of a Turkish counterattack. What he didn’t realise was that resistance in Gaza had crumbled and the town was there for the taking.

Gaza. Walter Smyth collection.

When Ryrie and Chaytor, whose brigades had cracked open the back door to Gaza, received the withdrawal order they were dumbfounded. The troops were simply disgusted. Ryrie’s brigade had had only one man killed and five wounded, Chaytor’s only two killed and 29 wounded. General Dallas, who had initially mishandled the operation only to be saved by the drive of his Welshmen, was equally astonished at the order. The sacrifice of his brave infantrymen had been for naught. It was said that when the Turkish commander Tala Bey was told of the withdrawal he ‘laughed for a long time’.⁴⁵ Whether true or not, the story spread throughout the ranks, whose faith in their higher commanders plummeted. Turkish morale moved in the other direction and many more Allied troops would die before Gaza was secured. The often misused phrase ‘lions led by donkeys’ was never more appropriate than in this case. ‘Just as it was getting dark we got orders to withdraw,’ Robert Farnes wrote. ‘Nobody cared whether they got out or not, another two hours and [we’d] have had Gaza . . . it was 2300 before we got away from Gaza, everybody very wild and a fair number wounded.’⁴⁶ ‘We had to retire as the Tommies had heaved in the towel, it was a crook feeling,’ Joe Burgess wrote. ‘If they had only known that we were imshying the Turks would have had us on toast.’⁴⁷

To Brigadier General H.A. Vernon, the 158th Brigade commander, the withdrawal ‘appeared to be out of the question’, but the retirement of the infantry from the hard-won heights commenced at midnight. Later it was ascertained that advanced parties from Vernon’s brigade had pushed on into Gaza and made contact with some of the Anzac mounted troops before retiring at dawn.⁴⁸ Colonel J.W. Wintringham was in command of the 18th Machine Gun Squadron, attached to the 22nd Yeomanry Brigade. ‘We had them completely surrounded,’ he wrote. ‘The New Zealanders were in the streets . . . it seemed almost unbelievable to be told to pack up and retire.’ Some of the Turks were trying to break out. ‘They started coming through a native cemetery and our MGs were laying them out neatly among the tombstones,’ Wintringham wrote. ‘We would only have to turn our guns north if a relieving force came.’⁴⁹

Generals Granville Ryrie, seated, and Charles Cox, standing alongside. John Gorrell collection.

For the light horse regiments north of Gaza, getting out of the town was a nightmare. The troopers of the 7th Light Horse were about 6 kilometres from their horses when they got the order. ‘It was a very terrible ride back,’ Robert Farnes wrote. ‘We got to the Wadi Ghuzze about daylight . . . it was almost impossible to keep awake.’⁵⁰ Tom Baker simply wrote, ‘Left for Belah midnight and rode all night.’⁵¹ ‘Remained out all night . . . very tired, no sleep, hungry, horses hungry and thirsty,’ Stan Parkes wrote. ‘General opinion, if a division of “Scotties” had attacked with the Australians, Gaza would have fallen.’⁵² Joe Burgess came back with the 6th Light Horse, the troopers finally reaching Deir el Belah ‘with empty stomachs, empty haversacks and empty water bottles’.⁵³

The light horsemen were into their third night without sleep and ‘all ranks were almost comatose from exhaustion’ during the withdrawal.⁵⁴ ‘Our eyes were like burnt holes in a blanket,’ Granville Ryrie wrote.⁵⁵ Michael Minahan added, ‘8000 Turk reinforcements attacking our rear, 3rd Brigade holding them until we clear out.’⁵⁶ Royston’s brigade was indeed holding them. The 9th Light Horse stayed out to the east of Gaza until 3 a.m. and saw Turkish troops moving up that night. Gordon Macrae noted that ‘the 3rd Brigade gave them a warm time and stopped them from reaching Gaza till next morning’.⁵⁷ ‘Enemy on all sides except one small outlet which we used,’ Harry Bostock wrote. ‘Retired under rifle and gun fire at the double.’⁵⁸ Robert Fell, who was with the 10th Light Horse, was ‘almost surrounded and captured’ but ‘got back safely thanks to Gen Royston’s leadership.’ Ron Ross, who was with the 12th Light Horse, wrote, ‘The Brig takes us off at a gallop to engage Turkish reinforcements coming from the east. About 4 am move right out of it with artillery following us up with rifle fire half in front of us . . . We were lucky to get out of it so light.’⁵⁹ A detachment of armoured cars helped cover the withdrawal of Royston’s brigade.

Dobell and Chetwode obviously conferred for their later reports, both mentioning the need to withdraw to water the horses. But Chauvel, who had been made aware from a Turkish deserter that all but three of the wells in Gaza had been destroyed, had certainly not brought it up as an issue at the time.⁶⁰ He was simply aghast at the order. As Jeff Holmes had observed, there was ample water in and around Gaza: ‘Along the flat where we stopped that day, we found several water holes and feed was in abundance for our horses.’⁶¹ The official historian, Henry Gullett, could find no message to the Desert Column or Eastern Force recording a particular concern about the Turkish reinforcements, though there were general reports. Tom Baker, who was a signaller with 3th Brigade headquarters, had noted, for example, ‘3000 Turks reported to be on the east’.⁶²

General Murray tried to cover up the disaster by telling the War Office his troops had advanced from Rafa to Wadi Ghuzze to cover the extension of the railway line, using the excuse that ‘The fog and waterless nature of the country just sav[ed] the enemy from complete disaster.’⁶³ Jeff Holmes saw through the fog: ‘At one time we had them surrounded, and the Turks completely cut off, and then to let them and the reinforcements get away there must have been a big bloomer and someone will have to suffer.’⁶⁴ Stan Parkes knew that ‘a great opportunity has been lost and the Turks are in great strength now . . . it is quite evident there has been a lot of bungling . . . everybody is disgusted with the display’. He said what all the Anzac troopers knew—it was ‘a big blunder from start to finish thanks to the Tommies in charge’.⁶⁵

Watering horses in the Wadi Ghuzze. Each of the five pumps shown here provided water to a separate trough. Walter Smyth collection.

Bruce Lester, one of the Mudgee boys with the 6th Light Horse, outside the ‘Palestine home’ he shared with Ralph Kellett. Ralph Kellett collection.