ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank many people for their help while researching and writing this book. On the home front, I’d particularly like to acknowledge my debt to Nina for her constant support, understanding, advice and patience, and to my parents for their support. A special thank you goes to Marnie for her help on SW duties.
More professionally, as always David Buttery has been a great help, and I’d especially like to thank him for his outstanding map-reading abilities, for riding shotgun for me and for allowing me the use of some of his photographs. My interest in this campaign was first sparked many years ago while working for the Museum of the Worcestershire Soldier (to which I recommend all readers as being well worth a visit), and I’d like to thank Colonel Stamford Cartwright MBE for his (and his regiment’s) many kindnesses and support then and since. My bibliography would have been considerably thinner without the help of Ian Rushforth, and the staff of the Prince Consort’s Library at Aldershot, and I owe them all my thanks. And, as ever, the staff at the Imperial War Museum have been very helpful.
I owe a great debt to Yakov Kasher for sharing his knowledge of Israel with me, and also to Dr Adam Ackerman on that score. Special thanks also go to Mohammed Odeh, the CWGC’s Head Gardener in Jerusalem for his assistance. Toda raba to them all.
For the production of this work, I’d like to thank all of the staff at The History Press, particularly Jo de Vries and Andrew Latimer. I’d also like to thank the Trustees of the QOWH for their permission to reproduce some of the illustrations, and Lee Barton for his technical assistance with scanning.
CONTENTS
Title
Acknowledgements
Note on Names, Quotes, Terminology and Foot/End Notes
Prologue: Jerusalem, 9 December 1917
1 To the Borders of Palestine, 1882–1916
2 First Battle of Gaza: Opening Moves
3 First Battle of Gaza: Disaster
4 Second Battle of Gaza
5 Ottoman Palestine
6 Egypt 1917
7 Arab Revolt
8 Trench Warfare
9 Allenby
10 Plans
11 Beersheba
12 Breakthrough
13 Pursuit
14 Into the Judean Mountains
15 Jerusalem
Epilogue
Glossary
Appendix A: Orders of Battle, 1st Battle of Gaza
Appendix B: Note on the structure and equipment of British and Imperial forces
Appendix C: Orders of Battle, 1/5th King’s Own Scottish Borderers’ raid on Sea Post, 11 June 1917
Appendix D: Note on the structure and equipment of Ottoman forces
Appendix E: Orders of Battle, 3rd Battle of Gaza
Select Bibliography
Plates
Copyright
NOTE ON NAMES, QUOTES, TERMINOLOGY AND
FOOT/END NOTES
This book principally concerns two empires, each of which contained numerous nationalities and ethnic groups. As a rule, I have kept to the terms ‘Ottoman’ and ‘British’ to refer to the political entities of the opposing forces. The forces of the British Empire and their allies in Egypt are generally referred to as ‘the British’, although they also included (among others) Australians, New Zealanders and Indians. Where particular nationalities were the majority of the forces involved, due credit has been given. The Ottoman Army mainly consisted of Turkish troops from Anatolia, although it also included Arab and Bedouin forces. Again, the term ‘Ottoman’ has been used as a cover-all, with particular sub-contingents credited where appropriate.
A certain amount of liberty has been taken with Arab or Ottoman names, be they places or people. For places, I have largely stuck to the names used at the time (e.g. Constantinople instead of Istanbul, Gaza for ‘Azza, and Jerusalem for Yerushalayim) or the most common spelling. Arabic names get recorded in an entertainingly varied number of ways in Western sources, but I have taken the most common and, except in direct quotes, gone with that. For the names of persons, given the difficulties of anglicising Arab or Ottoman words, I have used my own judgement on which is the most acceptable translation.
Generally, I have left all quotes alone, except, in a few places, clarifying the punctuation where it is unclear.
It should also be noted that some of the words used in quotes are very much ‘of their time’ when it comes to opinions regarding the locals in Egypt or Arabs. These have been left in as reflecting the honest views of those present, even if they are utterly unacceptable today.
I have used both foot notes and end notes. As a rule, foot notes (at the bottom of the page) give additional information that is directly relevant to the matter at hand, but would clog up the text too much, e.g. the units that constituted various columns or forces. Generally I only do this for temporary formations put together for a particular action or campaign, and for the composition of permanent formations I recommend that you consult the Orders of Battles in the Appendices. End notes are mostly references, citing where certain information came from or recommending where you can find out more.
PROLOGUE: JERUSALEM,
9 DECEMBER 1917
HUSSEIN BEY AL-HUSSEINI, Mayor of Jerusalem, was not having an easy morning.
In fact, it had been a difficult few years, as the outbreak of the Great War brought many changes to his city, and indeed his own temporary removal from office. Troops had flooded in from across the Ottoman Empire, along with the traders, camp-followers and prostitutes who inevitably arrived to provide for them. Over the ensuing three years more change had come. Political freedoms were suppressed and a culture of fear developed. Food shortages grew, partly due to the needs of the army who simply took what they needed from local farmers and merchants, and partly due to a devastating locust plague in 1915. The army’s insatiable need for wood – for building and as fuel for not only their troops but also their railways – exacerbated the problems as orchards and forests were chopped down with little thought for those who depended on them for food or a living. By late 1917 famine was a very real threat. Many starving women, their men away in the army (who barely paid enough for soldiers to supplement their own poor rations up to subsistence levels) or even killed in the fighting, were forced to turn to prostitution to make a living.
The civil population decreased, from around 85,000 to around 55,000. Muslim men were conscripted into the fighting forces, and Christians and Jews were pressed into labour battalions. Thousands more Jews had been evicted from the city, and even the country, by the Ottoman Governor of Greater Syria, Ahmed Djemal Pasha. Soon to be known as The Slaughterman, Djemal ruthlessly suppressed any opposition to the previously largely benign Ottoman Empire, commandeered Christian sites for military use, established a secret police, and hanged dissenters or those suspected of being spies. While the populace suffered, the upper classes (including Husseini) embarked on a hedonistic cycle. They, and their mistresses and other ladies of ill repute, were led by the playboy tyrant Djemal through seemingly endless drunken parties.
The more sober or religious elements of the population worried endlessly about the spiritual and moral well-being of the city, and the seeming breakdown in social order.
For the last few weeks, the situation had become increasingly tense. Starting on 31 October 1917 the British, on their third attempt, had finally broken through the Ottoman front lines in southern Palestine, strung between Gaza and Beersheba. By 24 November the British had reached Nabi Samwil, the mosque that marks the burial place of the Prophet Samuel and which is clearly visible from Jerusalem on the western horizon. An Ottoman counter-attack over the next week was repulsed, while the British paused to rest, bring up supplies and reorganise their line
s. When the offensive was restarted on 8 December it was quickly obvious that the Ottoman position in Jerusalem was untenable. The 53rd (Welsh) Division was attacking from the south and south-west, but the main threat came from the 60th (2/2nd London) Division in the west and the 74th (Yeomanry) Division (infantry, despite its name) to the north-west. Both of these latter divisions were positioned to sweep around the north of the city, and cut the Ottoman and German troops in Jerusalem off from the rest of their army. As the fighting again edged nearer the big question was whether, despite the obvious hopelessness of the situation, Jerusalem itself would be defended.
Djemal Pasha had moved his headquarters to Damascus during the summer. He left Jerusalem in the charge of Governor Izzat Bey, although principal military command lay with the German Colonel Franz von Papen, part of Field Marshal Erich von Falkenhayn’s Asiakorps. Falkenhayn had been relegated to commanding Germany’s contribution to the Palestine campaign after his failure to take the French city of Verdun, and seemed determined not to abandon this city without a fight. The prospect of the war entering the streets of Jerusalem, complete with modern artillery and house-to-house fighting, left Husseini and von Papen deeply concerned.
However, Falkenhayn had already withdrawn his headquarters to Nablus, where he was unable to closely supervise their actions, and they used this loose rein to the fullest extent. On the evening of 8 December, Ottoman and German troops began a steady withdrawal from the city, forming a new defensive line in the mountains to the north. Izzat Bey smashed his communications equipment in the Post Office building, and then borrowed two horses and a carriage from the American Colony and joined the retreat himself in the early hours of 9 December. He was among the last to leave the city itself, although small Ottoman forces remained to the east of the city on the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus until they were pushed off the next day.
The city was now open for an uncontested occupation by the advancing British, but the problem was how to let them know this before an attack was begun. Izzat Bey had left at 3 a.m., and Husseini and a small party of officials departed the city soon after, heading west. To mark their intentions, they carried a white flag made from a bed sheet borrowed from the ever-obliging American Colony. They intended to find the British advance troops and announce the surrender of the city. It was a simple plan that would prove bizarrely difficult to carry out.
Their first contact with the British Army occurred at around 5 a.m., in the form of Privates Albert Church and R.W. J. Andrews. These two men were cooks from the 2/20th Battalion of the London Regiment, out searching for fresh water, and if possible fresh eggs.
The two privates were offered the surrender of Jerusalem, the Holy City of the world’s three great religions, the seat of civilisations, the prize of the great empires for millennia, the dream of the Christian West and the hope of the dispersed Tribes of Israel, the future site of the Day of Judgement, and the principal (for propaganda purposes at least) object of the current campaign. These two men were offered the chance to succeed where even Richard the Lionheart had failed, 725 years before.
Becoming rather overwhelmed at the prospect, the two cooks made hasty tracks back towards their own lines, leaving the mayor and his party to continue their search.
Shortly before 8 a.m., the wandering Jerusalemites were halted at an outpost of the 2/19th London Regiment, by Sergeants Fred Hurcomb and James Sedgewick. Again, the British soldiers proved unwilling to do anything as major as accepting the surrender of an entire city, although they did agree to have their photographs taken with the mayor. They then pointed Husseini and his party towards the rear.
Next, just before 9 a.m., the now surely exasperated party encountered Majors W. Beck and F.R. Barry of the 60th Division artillery staff, out making a reconnaissance, who yet again refused the surrender but promised to inform their headquarters. Minutes after the two majors departed to do so, Lieutenant Colonel H. Bayley (commanding officer of the 303rd Brigade, Royal Field Artillery) appeared on the scene with some of his officers. He at last agreed to escort the mayor to higher authority. At the same time he despatched Major E.M.D.H. Cooke, with an orderly and an Arab policemen, to the city to take possession of the Post Office.
Bayley passed Husseini on to Brigadier General C.F. Watson, commander of 180th Brigade, at around 11 a.m. Watson sent word to army headquarters, and at noon Major General John Shea, commanding officer of 60th Division, arrived with authority from the commander of the British forces, General Sir Edmund Allenby, to accept the surrender.
On the fifth attempt, Husseini had finally managed to surrender his city.
The ‘liberation’ of the city was even less of a thunderclap than the surrender had been. In the city, Major Cooke had been greeted by ecstatic crowds, whom he forced his way through to find the Post Office, an important hub of communications in the city. While standing outside, a party of over fifty Ottoman troops marched past in good order, heading north to join their own forces and completely ignoring the British officer and his two companions. Others paid much more attention, and over the two hours he stood there ‘he suffered from the attentions, more especially of the female portion, of the thankful and rejoicing crowd’.1
One member of that crowd was an Orthodox Christian Arab, oud-player, sometime civil servant and (briefly) member of the Ottoman Navy named Wasif Jawhariyyeh. He would later turn against the British as a ‘curse on our dear country’, but for now he and his family and community celebrated the:
British occupation that freed the Arab people from the despotic Turks. We were all nurturing great hopes for a better future, particularly after what we had been through – the miseries of war, famine, disease, epidemics, and typhus that spread throughout the country, and we thank the Lord who saved all our young men from the damned military service.2
As for me (age twenty), I was dancing in the streets with my friends and raising toasts to Britain and the occupation … for the joy and ecstasy of victory that we felt had been extreme, and we had drunk excessively as we celebrated.3
In the late morning, General Watson and Colonel Bayley arrived to assess the situation, bringing reinforcements in the form of an artillery sergeant and six gunners. A short while afterwards, a mounted patrol from the 2nd County of London Yeomanry (Westminster Dragoons) nosed their way into the city from the south; they were scouting for the 53rd (Welsh) Division, which had just occupied Bethlehem, a few miles away. Next in the drip of units was an infantry company from the 2/17th London Regiment. There were now sufficient numbers to detail men also to guard the Jaffa Gate and some of the hospitals in the city.
At noon General Shea appeared to announce that the surrender had been accepted, to much rejoicing among the crowds who had gathered to watch the trickle of British units enter the city. This trickle now sped up a little, the 2/18th (London Irish) Battalion of the London Regiment marching in, followed by the 301st Brigade, Royal Field Artillery. Further guards could now be placed on the gates of the city and the important points within, including the various religious sites and shrines. Islamic sites were guarded by Christian troops for only as long as it took to bring Muslim Indian units up from the rest of the army. Dusk brought the more glamorous appearance of the 10th Regiment Australian Light Horse, arriving en masse with the emu-feather plumes in their hats tossing as they rode. They had been detached from their own division weeks ago and kept in the Judean Mountains close to the front just so as to be on hand and represent Australia on this day. Although the symbolism and impact of the moment was not lost on the Australians, so late in the day other matters all came to mind:
It seemed we had some difficulty in finding a place to stop for the night, but eventually the Turkish Cavalry barracks were taken over. We were still wet and cold, but were able to get a hot cup of tea with a tin of bully beef and biscuits.4
As the city of Jerusalem was secured within, so were the exterior threats pushed back. Having taken Bethlehem, the 53rd (Welsh) Division turned to the north. The 60th (2/2nd Lond
on) Division swept either side of the city, and its 181st Brigade pushed the Ottoman rearguard off the Mount of Olives and Mount Scopus. The 74th (Yeomanry) Division kept the pressure on to the north-east, keeping hard on the heels of the retreating Ottomans. Within a day or two, the front lines had passed safely into the mountains to the north, and out of artillery range of the city.
The grand entry into Jerusalem by General Allenby finally occurred on 11 December; although a somewhat grander event than the shambling surrender two days before, the entry was kept muted. In 1898 the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II, had entered Jerusalem dressed in a white uniform of his own devising, followed by Prussian Hussars carrying medieval-style banners and Ottoman lancers in full regalia. His full entourage – over 800 people not including his military escorts – and their supporting logistics for his tour of Palestine had needed the expertise of Thomas Cook’s travel company to organise them. So grand was the cavalcade that a section had to be knocked out of the city walls, just to the side of the Jaffa Gate, to let them in. The Kaiser had ridden in splendour and glory. By contrast, at the urging of General Sir William Robertson, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Allenby dismounted outside the Jaffa Gate and entered through the original gate on foot.5 In deliberate contrast to the colourful entourage of the Crusader-obsessed Wilhelm, Allenby wanted to be seen as coming in humility and as a liberator rather than a conqueror.
As he entered the city, Allenby was flanked by commanders of the small French and Italian contingents with his army and followed by some of his senior officers, the political representatives of his allies, and various staff officers, including a dishevelled Major T.E. Lawrence, freshly returned from Arabia and wearing a uniform made up of whatever items he could borrow. In the square just inside the gate, Allenby was met by a parade of troops drawn from the four home nations, together with Australia, New Zealand, India, France and Italy. Rounding the corner, Allenby and his staff mounted the steps to the gate of the Citadel, to be met by the civil and religious leaders of the city. Husseini formally handed over the keys to the city.* A proclamation was read out announcing British occupation of the city, the implementation of Martial Law, and a promise to protect the livelihoods of the inhabitants and the sanctity of all the holy sites. The same message was then read out in French, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Russian and Italian. This task completed, Allenby led his party back through the Jaffa Gate, leaving the city in the hands of Brigadier General William Borton, the new Military Governor, to assess the population’s immediate needs. According to the Official History:
From Gaza to Jerusalem Page 1
