The whole ceremony was simple and dignified. The onlookers were obviously content with the turn of events, but there was no exuberant enthusiasm. No flags were flown.6
The ceremony was of course as much a political and diplomatic event as a military one. Throughout, the British had been keen to avoid any impression of being conquerors, and in the official statements and proclamations great care had been taken to avoid the term ‘crusade’.
Even while efforts were made to play it down locally, the shadow of the Crusades fell heavily across this campaign at the time and ever since. Many commentators drew comparisons both in Palestine and back in Britain. The press jumped on the idea of Allenby succeeding where Richard the Lionheart had failed, and popular newspapers such as Punch had a field day with cartoons on that subject. This was in fact encouraged; Lloyd George had been very conscious of the symbolism of Jerusalem ever since ordering its capture back in the spring. In a year that had seen privations caused by an increasing submarine blockade at home, the withdrawal of Russia from the war, and a continuing litany of bloody failures in France and Belgium, seizing Jerusalem did not just offer a rare victory. To many it was confirmation that God was on their side in this war between the righteous Entente powers, who had entered the war to defend against German aggression, and (as they saw it) the barbarous alliance between the German ‘Huns’ and the Muslim Ottomans.
A question remains as to how much of this ‘spirit of the Crusader’, or ‘spirit of a pilgrim’, was felt by the average soldier. Certainly, religious references appear in the letters and diaries of many of the soldiers who fought in Palestine, usually relating to the stories of the places they were passing through. However, much of the crusading imagery doesn’t appear until the publication of memoirs and accounts of the campaign in the post-war period. There is a strong argument that it was done because by then it was expected by the public, who had been heavily subjected to such sentiments in the press at home.7 After all, those same letters and diaries also tend to dwell on the historical sites around them – the paths of pharaohs, Alexander the Great and even Napoleon. If this is to a lesser extent than allusions to biblical tales or the Crusades, it is mostly because there is so much more of the latter to see. However, no one claims that the frequent references to historical events means that the average soldier entered Palestine in the ‘spirit of an historian’. Over all, it is perhaps fairer to say that biblical stories in particular form such a strong element in soldiers’ letters because they create a familiar framework (for both the soldiers and their families) for their movements and experiences in an otherwise distant, strange and alien land. Or an even more pragmatic answer would be that without such interest, not only the letters home from the army in southern Palestine but also the lives of the soldiers, living as they did in a largely empty desert, would be rather dull.
And, clearly, not everyone felt a great surge of religious feeling. Gunner Thomas Edgerton of the 301st Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, was among the first soldiers to enter the city on the night of 9 December:
I am afraid not many of us felt like gallant Christian soldiers after wresting Jerusalem from the Infidel after thousands of years. The spirit of the Crusaders was conspicuous by its absence. It was dark when we went through, and teeming down with rain. The fighting had been bitter and many of our friends were no longer with us. What we could see was not very impressive. Narrow streets and the smell none too sweet. The progress that night was very slow and the rain was very cold.8
Edgerton was not alone in his feelings. The phrase ‘land of milk and honey’ appears frequently in letters and memoirs, and is almost always used ironically or sarcastically. The greenery of southern Israel as we see it today is the result of over half a century of careful land reclamation and impressive irrigation technology. In 1917, the harsh gravelly desert stretched all the way up to the foot of the Judean Mountains, interspersed only sparingly with small farms, orchards and settlements that attempted to scratch a living in the arid dust. While water, wildlife and people were more abundant than they had been in the Sinai Desert, this was still a parched and inhospitable land for most of the year. The exception was during the rainy season, over the winter months (roughly November to February). During this time, the land was susceptible to flash-floods, wadis became positively dangerous, and the coastal regions tended to turn into temporary marshland. Worse, especially for the troops now fighting in the high Judean Mountains, it became bitterly cold.
For men who were still equipped and acclimatised for desert warfare, December 1917 was a grim period. The fighting did not end with the fall of Jerusalem. Even as the supply situation became more acute, with convoys struggling to keep up with the army, especially on narrow and muddy mountain tracks, several small operations were mounted to push the Ottoman forces back further from Jerusalem. An Ottoman counter-attack towards the city followed in the last days of the month, although it was successfully stopped and thrown back, before both sides fell into exhausted inactivity. Meanwhile, on the coastal plain to the north-west, a final effort was made to push the Ottoman forces further north to secure the port of Jaffa as a new supply base for the British. Strategically speaking, this port was the real prize of the offensive. Although steeped in cultural and religious significance, Jerusalem had very little military importance; it was the shortening of the supply lines that was the most valuable achievement.
On 30 December 1917, the arguably most successful British offensive of the war to date finally ran out of steam and came to a halt, having advanced over 80km (50 miles) in two months, killing, wounding or capturing some 28,000 Ottoman troops, and capturing large numbers of guns and amounts of stores. In return, the army had suffered around 5,000 men killed and 18,000 wounded or missing, and tens of thousands of sick. After a very bad start, the 1917 campaign had ended spectacularly.
Notes
* At the time of writing, these keys reside in the Museum of the Royal West Kent Regiment in Maidstone. Presumably, the locks have been changed since 1917.
1 Dalbiac p. 166
2 Tamari & Nassar (eds) p. 103
3 Tamari & Nassar (eds) p. 199
4 Slater p. 110
5 For Robertson’s suggestion see: WO33/946/26, and for Allenby’s explanation see his letter to his wife of 14 December 1917 quoted in Hughes
6 Falls Vol. 2 p. 261
7 A fascinating discussion of this area can be found in Kitchen, ‘Khaki Crusaders’
8 Edgerton IWM 7818
1
TO THE BORDERS OF
PALESTINE, 1882–1916
AT THE OPENING of 1917, the British Army in Egypt was geographically more or less exactly where it had been at the start of the war: on the far eastern edge of the Sinai Desert, on the border between Egypt and Ottoman-held Palestine. On the outbreak of war in 1914 the British had withdrawn from the border, back to a defensive line based on the Suez Canal, and had spent most of 1916 regaining that lost ground. But if the army was now back in the same physical position, their material and political positions were radically different.
Britain had been sporadically involved in the internal affairs of Egypt for over a hundred years, protecting what was the quickest and most direct route between the home country and India. However, they did not take up permanent residence until the 1870s when Egypt, crippled by international debt, was declared bankrupt. The European Great Powers, including Britain, stepped in and took control of the country’s finances. Resentment over this grew in Egypt until a military-led revolt seized control of Egypt in 1881. An Anglo-French fleet assembled to restore control, but the French element subsequently pulled out at the last moment. It was left to Britain to effectively invade Egypt and, by the autumn of 1882, take control of the country.
It was not quite as clear cut as that, however. Although a British Agency, under a Consul-General, controlled all finances, and slowly British procedures and staff crept into most government departments, Egypt technically remained under the rule of the Khedive, an
d a part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, facing their own internal and external threats and wars over the next thirty years, paid little attention to the problem, although attempts were made to decrease Egypt’s boundaries (ones which the British led the way in deflecting, even to the extent of threatening war with Constantinople). Within Egypt opinion was divided about the British presence, and the effects that they had on public and private life at different levels of society.
In 1912 a new British Consul General was appointed, Field Marshal The Right Honourable The Viscount Kitchener, who had served extensively in the country in the 1880s and 1890s, leading campaigns to secure Egyptian control over the Sudan. Kitchener was on leave in England when the crisis of July 1914 broke. Although he attempted to return to Egypt, he was instead appointed Secretary of State for War, and authority in Egypt fell to his senior subordinate, Sir Milne Cheetham.
The outbreak of war in Europe led to two major and interconnected concerns about Egypt. Firstly, how would the Ottomans react, and secondly, how would the Egyptians?
It looked very likely that the Ottoman Empire would ally itself to Germany (and indeed the two had signed a secret treaty on 2 August 1914), and the possibility was that the Ottomans would take action to regain Egypt. This could take the form of a conventional attack, but the most feared option was the use of a religious uprising. The nominal head of the Ottoman Empire was also the Caliph, the symbolic head of Islam. Britain was deeply concerned that the Caliph would use his position to call for a jihad, a holy war, against them and the French. This could not only lead to uprisings in Egypt and the Sudan, but across numerous other African and Asian colonies, and, worst of all, perhaps even India. An equal possibility, although not as feared, would be that the nationalists in Egypt would take advantage of the international crisis to start their own rebellion, with or without outside support. These two fears meant that the Egyptians had to be handled very carefully.
After all Egypt, or at least the canal that ran through it, was a crucial strategic asset for the British and their French partners in the Entente Cordiale. Even in peacetime massive amounts of the raw materials that fed the British economy came through the Suez Canal. In wartime these imports would be absolutely vital, and would likely increase dramatically. While cargoes from the Far East could go via South Africa instead (as, indeed, many would from late 1916 due to the submarine threat in the Mediterranean) this would add time delays to each voyage. With shipping tonnage at a premium, the faster a ship could deliver a cargo and steam off to collect another, the better. And of course the cargoes were not just raw materials for the British war machine, but also men for her armies. Particularly in the early months of the war, the tens of thousands of trained troops despatched from India and the recalled British garrisons from around the world would prove crucial in stemming the German advance in France. Later, India, New Zealand and Australia would provide a steady stream of invaluable reinforcements for the Western Front.
Protecting the canal from local or outside threats was paramount, but there was little idea on how to do so. The Foreign Office had considered the issue as recently as 1913, and then effectively given up due to the complexities involved. An outright annexation of the country could spark the feared internal revolt, possibly spreading elsewhere, tying down valuable troops and threatening the canal. On the other hand, the status quo was also unacceptable. Officially, the Khedive controlled all matters to do with law and order, and also commerce. The British would not be able to legally do anything to round up spies or saboteurs, or stop the Egyptians trading with Britain’s enemies. Technically, although it was unlikely, they would not even be able to stop German or Ottoman shipping, even warships, using the canal. The final conclusion was that the ‘man on the spot’ would have to make a judgement call when the time came.
When that time did come, the ‘men on the spot’ were Sir Milne Cheetham and the Egyptian President of the Council of Ministers, Hussein Rushdi Pasha. Thankfully for them the Khedive, Abbas Hilmi, who was notoriously anti-British and lost few opportunities to cause them difficulties, was out of the country at the time and staying in Constantinople. Cheetham and Pasha were both able to keep a level head and calm control of the situation. Their final decision was to issue on 5 August 1914, the day after Britain declared war on Germany, a ‘document which committed Egypt virtually to a declaration of war against the [British] King’s enemies.’9 In it, several wartime measures were detailed, such as forbidding Egyptian citizens from trading with Britain’s enemies or giving them loans. These would realistically have only limited impact on the country while at the same time making it publically clear that they were supporting Britain.
There was a general lack of response to the document. Apart from the usual market fluctuations to be expected when a major war breaks out, there was little response in Egypt. The British held their breath, waiting for the nationalist or Islamic backlash, but it did not come. The Ottomans did not immediately attack, declare a jihad or indeed take any action at all, and it was not until three months later that the hiatus was broken. The Ottomans resisted German pressure to join the war for as long as possible, but finally had to relent. On 2 November 1914 Ottoman warships, crewed and commanded by German sailors, and acting under pressure from Germany, bombarded Russian military targets in the Black Sea, and brought the Ottoman Empire into the war.
In Egypt, the open state of war led to a declaration of Martial Law. The British military commander in the country, Lieutenant General Sir John Maxwell, took charge of all matters pertaining to the defence of Egypt. The immediate results of this included the abandoning of the Sinai Desert as being indefensible with the resources available, and the use of the Royal Navy to sweep German, Austrian and other enemy shipping out of the Suez Canal, in contravention of international law. Indeed, the Royal and French Navies began to impose their control on the whole of the eastern Mediterranean, snapping up enemy merchant vessels, and patrolling (including the innovative use of seaplanes) and raiding the Syrian and Palestinian coasts. On 18 December 1914 the de facto British control of Egypt was formalised by the declaration that the country was now a Protectorate. Again, internal Egyptian response was muted; even the declaration of jihad by the Caliph in November had failed to cause any mass stirrings. Despite this, the spectre of an Islamic uprising would remain a serious concern for the British authorities throughout the war.
The regular British Army contingent in Egypt was badly needed in France, so alternative arrangements were made. The Egyptian Army was not entirely trusted, and besides was largely tied up in garrisons in the Sudan, so outside assistance was needed. Several divisions of Indian troops passed through the Suez Canal in early September on their own way to France, and the 9th (Sihind) Brigade and 3rd Mountain Artillery Brigade were landed in Egypt to bolster the garrison. By the end of the month British troops began arriving in the form of East Lancashire Division (Territorial Forces), soon to be renumbered as the 42nd (East Lancs) Division. These were part-time soldiers, whose training was not good enough to allow them to face the Germans in Europe. Instead, they came to Egypt to complete their training while also guarding the canal. As they arrived, British regular units departed, leaving just one brigade of fully trained troops to guard the whole of Egypt.
In November more Indian troops arrived, although many were Imperial Service Troops; raised, trained and equipped by local Indian rulers, and below par compared to their regular Indian Army comrades. More reinforcements arrived in early December in the form of the volunteers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Although great in number and enthusiasm, their training had hardly begun before they had been put on the ships to Egypt. However, although almost all of the forces in Egypt needed significant amounts of training, there were now at least sufficient numbers to create an illusion of safety.
The illusion was tested in early February 1915, when the Ottoman forces in Palestine crossed the Sinai Desert and attacked the Suez Canal defences. Led by the military
governor of Greater Syria (the Ottoman province that included Palestine), Djemal Pasha, the Ottoman troops left the garrison town of Beersheba in mid January. Despite taking precautions, such as travelling by routes far inland, they were quickly spotted by British and French seaplanes launched from warships off-shore, and later by Royal Flying Corps aeroplanes operating from Egypt. The first wave of the attack, drawn mostly from the 25th (OT) Infantry Division, with cavalry, artillery and Arab cameliers in support, struck at several points along the canal on the night of 2/3 February. The main attacks fell around Tussum, at the southern end of Lake Timsah, while smaller diversionary attacks were made in the north and south.
The defences of the canal had been built mostly on the western bank, using the canal itself as a physical barrier. The wisdom of this had been questioned, but during this first attack the strategy paid off. Indian troops entrenched behind the canal were able to rake the Ottoman troops as they attempted to cross, while Entente warships on the canal provided heavy artillery support. Despite taking heavy casualties, the Ottomans persevered until the early afternoon of 3 February before Djemal Pasha called a retreat. His second wave, the 10th (OT) Infantry Division was still fresh and unused, but most of the Ottoman boats had been destroyed and the element of surprise was lost. Leaving small rearguard units behind, the Ottomans withdrew to Beersheba.
From Gaza to Jerusalem Page 2