It had been a valiant attempt, especially given the chaotic state of Ottoman Army logistics. To bring a force of over 20,000 men across the Sinai Desert had been a creditable feat, and the British were loath to make any kind of pursuit. The Indian troops, bolstered by Egyptian artillery, had held the line well, but they were still the only fully combat ready troops in the country. The Australians, New Zealanders and British Territorials were making great progress in their training, but to commit them against unknown numbers in a desert environment would not have been wise. Equally, not enough pack-animals were available to carry the supplies needed for any sizable force to operate in the desert. Although the decision not to pursue the defeated Ottomans would be questioned by many, it was undoubtedly the correct one.
For the rest of 1915, British attention in the eastern Mediterranean was focused on the ill-fated campaign in the Dardanelles. Egypt was stripped of most of its British and ANZAC troops to fight in the campaign as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF). It also became the base of operations for the MEF, with supplies (including fresh water) being gathered in and despatched from Egypt, along with reinforcement troops. The country also mobilised a massive effort to supply medical care to the wounded and sick pouring out of Gallipoli, of whom the latter were the majority. Apart from army hospitals, state and private hospitals were fully or partly turned over for military use, while others were set up by well-meaning civilians or the Red Cross or Red Crescent Societies. By the end of 1915, there were 18,000 hospital beds being used by the army in Egypt, as well as 17,000 spaces in convalescent homes.
The operations of the MEF left the defences of the Suez Canal once again perilously thin. Thankfully, the campaign in the Dardanelles had a similarly draining effect on the Ottoman forces in the eastern Mediterranean, and no troops could be spared to take advantage of the British weakness on the Sinai front. It was another matter on the other, western border of Egypt, though. Ottoman and German agents encouraged an invasion of the Western Desert by the Senussi, a religious sect based in Libya. For a relatively small outlay in equipment, gold and instructors, the Ottomans and Germans provoked increasing hostility between the Senussi and the Anglo-Egyptian authorities, neither of whom were keen to fight each other. In November 1915 the actions of a German submarine forced the Senussi’s hand by passing over to them captured British sailors, and then bombarding the Egyptian Coast Guard station at Sollum. A Senussi invasion of the Western Desert along the Mediterranean coast followed.
The initial British response was to pull back into Egypt while suitable forces were gathered. Few troops could be spared from outside the country, while only a few small garrisons and depots remained in Egypt. A scratch force was thrown together, but fared badly in the first few engagements against the Senussi, who were born and bred desert fighters. Only in late December did the British manage to stop the Senussi advance, and it was not until mid February that they were able to begin recapturing lost ground. By then the campaign in the Dardanelles had been declared a lost cause, and the troops withdrawn to Egypt. The returning troops began to retrain and be re-equipped. They were designated the Imperial Strategic Reserve, and marked as being available for sending anywhere in the world where they may be needed. Some of them were immediately sent against the Senussi, fighting back along the coast to Sollum, and also beginning to evict Senussi garrisons from several of the oases far in land and deep inside the Western Desert. By the end of March 1916 the coastal campaign was over, although minor operations continued in conjunction with Italian forces in Libya. Further south, most of the oases were cleared by the end of 1916, although a large garrison remained at Siwa.
With the drain of the Gallipoli campaign removed, and the threat to the western half of the country dealt with, thoughts again turned to the Sinai Desert. In fact, General Maxwell had been making what preparations he could even while the fighting in the Dardanelles continued. He had updated much of the road and rail network in Egypt, significantly expanding both in the Canal Zone. Should the army wish to advance in any numbers into the Sinai, logistics would be a crucial consideration and the new infrastructure would be invaluable. Likewise a start, albeit a small one, was made in gathering camels as well as herders and Egyptian labourers to support the army. It was not until the spring of 1916 that any serious efforts could be made, though, and first a certain amount of work was needed to get the army’s house in order.
During the Dardanelles campaign, the organisation of the army in Egypt had become increasingly fractured and confused, with different organisations having responsibility for different areas of the country, or different functions regardless of area. The situation had reached the state where many senior officers were themselves unclear as to who they answered to, and an effort was made to simplify the command structure. The final upshot of the reorganisations was Maxwell’s replacement in March 1916 by Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray, former commander of the MEF, and now commander of the newly created Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF). Not that the army was in any fit state to go on any expeditions.
Although limited patrols and sweeps were made into the Sinai Desert, where an Ottoman force under the command of the German Colonel Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein was active in monitoring and probing the Suez Canal defences, large-scale manoeuvres were still out of the question. To rectify this, the railway network now began to be expanded into the Sinai, stretching out from Kantara towards the cluster of wells and oases at Katia. In April, Kress von Kressenstein led a large Ottoman force against the works at Katia, with the intention of then establishing positions that would directly threaten the Suez Canal. His force surprised the British garrison, and in a stiff fight the three yeomanry cavalry regiments of the 5th Mounted Brigade suffered heavy casualties before being forced to withdraw. The Ottomans had also received a bloody nose, though, and themselves withdrew to await reinforcements. Murray took advantage of the respite to push the railway out further, towards the wells at Romani, along with a pipeline to pump fresh water out to the army in the desert.
At Romani, the British dug in. The exact size of the EEF was still in flux, with its status as the Imperial Strategic Reserve seeing ten of the fourteen infantry divisions withdrawn from Gallipoli being sent elsewhere by June 1916. The four that remained were considered weak, although the army was at least strong in cavalry; principally (in numbers) the Australian Light Horse (ALH), with smaller numbers of British yeomanry units and New Zealand Mounted Rifles (NZMR). The actual troop numbers available was something of a moot point, however, as the available wells, supplemented by supplies brought up on the railway and by the fledgling water pipeline, could only maintain a force of two infantry divisions and the equivalent of two cavalry divisions by July 1916.
In July, the Ottomans began a second, larger attack across the Sinai Desert. They closed with the British forces at Romani in early August 1916. The British enjoyed a slight numerical advantage – about 14,000 men to the Ottomans’ 12,000 – although only one of the two British infantry divisions had as yet arrived. The 52nd (Lowland) Division had established well-dug-in positions east of Romani, while the 42nd Division was still moving up, and its first two brigades would only arrive as the battle raged. The British expected the Ottomans to swing to the south of their line, and the Australian and New Zealand (A&NZ) Mounted Division was deployed in that area to intercept and delay the enemy. As part of the plan, the Australians and New Zealanders were not allowed to prepare any defensive positions, so that the Ottomans would not be able to spot the trap they were walking in to. The A&NZ Mounted Division would then retreat slowly in front of the enemy, withdrawing to the north towards Romani. Once the Ottomans were adequately worn down, fresh cavalry and infantry units (from the 42nd Division) would strike their exposed flank and destroy them.
It was in many ways a risky plan, but it is also notable as being one of the few battles in history that has gone almost exactly according to plan. The Ottomans attacked straight into the Light Horse
positions south of Romani on the night of 3/4 August. The Australians performed magnificently in fighting overwhelming odds in the dark, while also conducting an orderly and controlled retreat. It was a close-run thing in many places, but the line held, and the following afternoon the counter-attack rolled up the Ottoman line and forced them into a general retreat. This time, a pursuit was mounted, although it met with mixed success. Unacclimatised to desert operations, several infantry brigades were forced to give up their marches after only a few miles, while Ottoman rearguard positions resisted with a stubborn fierceness. While several were overcome by cavalry attacks, more successfully held before retiring in good order in their own time. Still, by September the Ottomans were pinned back against the eastern side of the Sinai Desert.
There followed a short pause as the British caught up with themselves. The railway and pipeline continued to advance, and the units in the Sinai and on the Suez Canal were separated out from the EEF and redesignated as the Eastern Frontier Force, or more commonly simply Eastern Force (EF), under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Charles Dobell. The forces at the sharp end of the advance towards Palestine – the A&NZ Mounted Division, 5th Mounted Brigade, 42nd Division and 52nd Division – were formed into the Desert Column under Lieutenant General Sir Philip Chetwode.
In December the advance was resumed, clearing out the remaining Ottoman garrisons on the Egyptian side of the border. The town of El Arish, 3.2km (2 miles) inland and on the Wadi El Arish, was captured without resistance on 21 December 1916, giving the British access to water sources in the Wadi and an appropriate area to build a dock, to bring up supplies and men by sea. Two further strongholds had to be taken by force – El Magdhaba on 23 December 1916 and El Magruntein (just outside Rafah) on 9 January 1917. In both cases, strong cavalry forces marched to the sites overnight, surrounded them, and then attacked in the morning. In both cases, the fighting lasted all day and nearly ended in disaster.
While the cavalry were invaluable for operations in this kind of country – able to cover large distances quickly and attack without warning – they had two severe drawbacks that came into play in both attacks. Firstly, cavalry units were weak. By the First World War only the British cavalry still carried swords, and even they, like the Australians and New Zealanders, were actually trained to fight as mounted riflemen rather than cavalrymen. The principal doctrine was that the cavalry would ride into battle, and then dismount and fight on foot. Cavalry regiments were already half the size of the comparable infantry tactical unit, the battalion. On top of this, when they dismounted to fight one in four of the men would lead the horses of the other three to the rear, further weakening their fighting strength. This all meant that although cavalry could have a considerable effect, especially in speed and surprise, they were considerably weaker than infantry in a straight fire-fight. When it came to assaulting well-dug-in and well-prepared defensive positions like those at El Magdhaba and El Magruntein, at which the Ottomans excelled, they struggled to put sufficient firepower into a small enough area to overwhelm the defences.
The second disadvantage was water. Horses are thirsty creatures, and in both battles the need to water the horses within a set time limit was a paramount consideration. Most of the army’s horses were already in fairly fragile physical condition from months spent living in the desert with not enough water or fresh fodder. While they could operate for twenty-four or even thirty-six hours without water, this would leave them weak. Much longer than that, and the health problems could become both serious and permanent, and possibly even fatal. An increased sickness or death rate among the horses would greatly decrease the strength and effectiveness of the army’s main offensive and scouting arm, with serious repercussions for the continuation of the campaign.
In both of the attacks on the Egyptian border the senior commanders would be preoccupied by this concern. In both cases the commanders would call off the attack in the late afternoon, only to have their orders ignored and a last, desperate charge mounted by one of their subordinate units. In each case the final charges were successful, although it was close both times. The preoccupation with water for the horses would continue to be a major issue in the 1917 campaigns.
While the army was still operating largely in desert conditions, at least the general environment was improving slightly. The temperature had dropped at the end of December, and the cold spell lasted into February. Sergeant Garry Clunie of the Wellington Mounted Rifles wrote home that:
It seems quite strange to think that in this country where we have always growled about the heat that it should be so cold as it is now. Ever since Christmas it has blew and rained off and on in heavy showers and has been as cold as charity but even so it is far better this way than to have the heat and flies of summer.10
Of course, the temperature was purely relative, and seemed cold only to the men who had been in the Sinai over the summer. One officer in the 5th Highland Light Infantry later recorded how:
It is a curious commentary on the complaints on the cold that we have just voiced, that the men of a new draft reached el Arish, running with sweat and vowing they had never been so hot in their lives, in spite of being in shirt sleeves, while the rest of us wore our tunics, and were hardly even thirsty.11
Unlike the endless desert of the Sinai, here there was vegetation and (relatively) abundant animal life, and landmarks and sights to brighten ‘a life of dreary monotony on a dead land’.12 Although still thin and patchy, vegetation grew on the Palestine side of the border; grass, and even crops of barley, interspersed with fruit trees and cactus hedges. The change could be a sudden one, even dramatic. Corporal Victor Godrich of the Queen’s Own Worcestershire Hussars (Yeomanry) (QOWH) found that:
We all knew by our maps that we were crossing into the Holy Land, but we hardly expected such a transformation that shortly met our gaze. We had been trekking quietly along for some miles and climbed a high ridge. When we topped the ridge the view that met us took our breath away.
Down in the valley laid [sic.] a village of white houses surrounded by thousands of trees in bloom, beyond those miles of barley. Everyone was astounded.13
While hardly the ‘land of milk and honey’ promised in the Bible (and which promise many diarists and letter-writers alluded to with irony), it was still a salve to the spirits and the eye, although the lighter, soil-like sand in the coastal regions had certain drawbacks:
The effect of this change was immediate, and [even] the least poetical and imaginative among us felt a thrill of joy in the relief from the desolation of eternal sand … Unfortunately the dust storms were even worse here than among the heavier sand and the place swarmed with centipedes, scorpions and other undesirables. But we were not in the mood to be critical when we retired to rest beneath the stars, with the fresh smell of living flowers in our nostrils, or woke at dawn to hear little crested larks.14
There was also a return to having real human contact with settled villages. For some, this reminder of a world outside the small units which had been their isolated homes in the desert for months also served to boost morale. For them, it was ‘a real pleasure to see human beings living their ordinary lives, catching fish and watering crops in unmilitary and restful unconcern.’15 For others, the interaction with the local population was less pleasant. A few days after the army occupied Khan Yunis, Brigadier General Sir Guy Dawnay, Dobell’s Chief of Staff, visited the village to inspect the two important wells, and assess the level of damage done to them by the retreating Ottomans. He had mixed feelings about the village itself, admiring the remains of a fourteenth-century Caravansary (fortified resting stop for caravans, often mistaken in letters and journals for a Crusader castle), but being less than impressed with the main village:
Nearby [was] the shopping quarter of town; two or three narrow streets, only a few score yards long with open mudbrick ‘shops’, like small boxes lying open on their ends. The wares seemed to be mainly agricultural; vegetables, oranges (fine Jaffa ones), eggs, poultry,
lambs; and odds-and-ends shops (common to villages in all countries); and the local industries, such as the blacksmith. The streets were full of men; Syrians with faces like Christ; Arabs; Jews; mongrels who might have been part Greek, part Egyptian; black Nubians. A few shrouded women, faces concealed by their cloaks; and numbers of children. All very dirty, but showing no signs of want particularly. The whole place full of atrocious smells!16
Dawnay also visited the sites of the actions at El Magdhaba and El Magruntein, to inspect the Ottoman defences. At El Magruntein he found ‘a splendidly selected position on a small rise in a gently rolling, grassy plain; absolute “glacis” slopes all round – not a mouse could move up to attack it without being seen from ever so far.’ At El Magdhaba, the Ottoman ‘works around the place were the most cunningly sited I have ever seen. You can’t see them at all till you absolutely walk into them. Our artillery could never pick them up.’17 Unfortunately, neither he nor any of the other senior staff seem to have drawn any lasting conclusions from these examples of Ottoman excellence at building prepared defences, with serious consequences later outside Gaza.
Notes
9 Elgood p. 47
10 Clunie p. 112
11 5th HLI p. 129
12 5th HLI p. 126
13 Godrich p. 88
14 5th HLI p. 136
15 5th HLI p. 132
16 Dawnay IWM 10403 Letter to wife, 8 March 1917
17 Dawnay IWM 10403 Letter to wife, 10 March 1917
2
FIRST BATTLE OF GAZA: OPENING MOVES
WITH THE LAST Ottoman garrisons on the Egyptian side of the border captured, the question remained as to what the objectives of the 1917 campaigns would actually be. On the Palestine side of the border were now two large garrison towns – Gaza and Beersheba – and various small forces in between. Any advance into Palestine would need to go through or past these. Gaza stood on high ground 3.2km (2 miles) in from the sea about 32km (20 miles) north of the Egyptian border, and dominated the coastal route into Palestine. The word ‘Gaza’ means ‘fortress’, and this one had stood since biblical times. Every army that had passed between Egypt and Palestine for thousands of years – pharaohs, Alexander the Great, Saladin, even Napoleon – had all been forced to take the city in order to pass safely. To bypass it would mean cutting deep inland, away from the support afforded by the Royal Navy off the coast, and leaving a significant enemy garrison standing next to the army’s supply lines. Beersheba, which also harked back to biblical times as the site of the Wells of Abraham, stood about 40km (25 miles) to the south-east of Gaza. It had good rail connections heading north and south, and would give ready access to the interior of Palestine. Murray also expressed the hope that the seizure of Beersheba would allow direct attacks to be made against the Hedjaz railway, which ran down into Arabia where a rebellion was breaking out among the tribesmen. As well as encouraging the existing revolt, he also hoped that taking Beersheba would spark a new and similar uprising in Palestine.18 But getting there would be difficult. It meant a long trek across waterless desert, and would still leave the Gaza garrison to the British rear.
From Gaza to Jerusalem Page 3