What followed was a confused fight by small units spread over a large area, with both sides considering themselves outnumbered and in a desperate situation. At around 1,500 strong, it was the Ottoman cavalry who were greatly outnumbered in total, but as the British cavalry was so far spread out, locally the Ottomans could enjoy superiority. Rafael de Nogales, a Venezuelan mercenary and adventurer on the staff of the Ottoman division, presented their side of the affair in dramatic tones:
A mounted aide de camp emerged from a cloud of dust, dashed down in our direction, reined in, saluted and handed Colonel Essad Bey the order to advance. It was tantamount to a sentence of execution, and we all knew it. I glanced swiftly over the faces of those officers; and the look on their bronzed countenances of unmoved control, of utter fearlessness, remains for me one of the most cherished memories of my four years beneath the Crescent.112
In fact, although the 1st and 2nd ALH Brigades fell back, covered by the 22nd Mounted Brigade and their own machine-guns sections, which Nogales characterised as ‘heroic’ and who ‘protected his [i.e. the enemy’s] retreat with remarkable boldness and sangfroid’,113 no great gains were made and the counter-attack petered out.114
While the battle had raged, General Murray had been keeping an eye on affairs from Khan Yunis. Even from this detached position, it was clear by 4 p.m. that no further gains could be made that day, while at the same time word was reaching him from Cairo that Ottoman wireless chatter was indicating a large-scale counter-attack that night or the following morning.115 In fact, by the time that this latter information reached Murray, Kress von Kressenstein had already abandoned the idea, but this did not become known until later. In the meantime, Murray ordered Dobell to cease all operations and dig in. All ground taken that day was to be held ‘without fail’, and, with fresh stocks of ammunition brought up overnight, the attack would resume in the morning.116 In practical terms this was impossible, and at dusk the few pieces of the Ottoman lines still in the British hands, except Samson Ridge and Sheikh Ajiln in 53rd (Welsh) Division’s area, were abandoned. During the night Dobell reported to Murray that, in consultation with Chetwode and his divisional commanders, he was of the belief that any further attacks would be futile. Murray had no choice but to postpone the renewal of the offensive for twenty-four hours, then another, and then altogether.117
In truth, the Eastern Force was in no fit state to fight any further, even if 74th (Yeomanry) Division was committed to the firing line. Some 6,444 men had been killed, wounded or were missing. Of the latter – 1,576 men – the Ottomans would only report 272 as prisoners, bringing the total of British killed to around 1,800. The 54th (East Anglian) Division had borne the brunt (2,870), followed by 52nd (Lowland) Division (1,874). By maintaining a relatively sensible stance on Samson Ridge, 53rd (Welsh) Division’s casualties were limited to nearly 600 men. The Imperial Mounted Division lost 547, the A&NZ Mounted Division just over 100, and the Imperial Camel Corps Brigade suffered 345 casualties. Ottoman casualties came to just over 2,000, of whom 400 were killed.118
The principal reasons for the failure have already been highlighted. Insufficient artillery was a major factor, and symptomatic of the generally rushed and under-resourced nature of the battle. Inexperience in such warfare was also a contributing factor, from the commanding generals underestimating the task ahead, to smaller details such as failure to use the tanks or calculate the use of gas shells properly. In the short term, though, it would be Dobell who paid for the failure.
On 21 April, Sir Charles Dobell was relieved of command of the Eastern Force, and ordered home to the UK; this despite his warnings before the battle that his forces were too weak and the enemy’s positions too strong.119 He was replaced by Lieutenant General Sir Philip Chetwode, who was himself replaced as commander of the Desert Column by Major General Sir Harry Chauvel, who thus became the first Australian to command a corps-sized formation in the British Army. It was left to Chetwode and Chauvel to consolidate the line, rebuild their forces, and make the best they could out of the small gains achieved. Murray, meanwhile, returned to his headquarters in the Savoy Hotel, Cairo.
Notes
* A ‘tel’ is a tall mound created by villages being built on top of each other over the course of thousands of years. Usually fairly small in circumference, they can be very high and steep.
** Better known at the time as a Warwickshire County cricketer.
* Female tanks were armed with four machine guns; male tanks had two machine guns and two 6-pounder guns.
75 Text reproduced in MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 322
76 TNA CAB23/40/5
77 TNA CAB23/2/28; Text of signals reproduced in MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 322
78 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 328
79 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 335
80 Murray’s Despatch of 28 June 1917, paragraph 9
81 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 329, and Eastern Force Order No. 40 on pp. 421–4
82 Dawnay IWM 10403 Eastern Force General Instructions – Artillery, 9 April 1917, in folder ‘Palestine 1917’
83 Chetwode IWM 10414 Letter to Dawnay 6 February 1917
84 Dawnay IWM 10403 Eastern Force General Instructions 12 April 1917, in folder ‘Palestine 1917’
85 Dawnay IWM 10403 Eastern Force General Instructions 14 April 1917, in folder ‘Palestine 1917’
86 Gröschel & Ladek, ‘Wings over Sinai and Palestine’
87 TNA CAB24/9/78
88 Hooton pp. 129, 131 & 140
89 Jones Vol. 5 pp. 209–216; Gröschel & Ladek, ‘Wings over Sinai and Palestine’
90 Sheffy, ‘Chemical Warfare and the Palestine Campaign, 1916–1918’
91 Fuller Chapter 11
92 Dawnay IWM 10403 Special Instructions – Tanks, in folder ‘Palestine 1917’
93 Dawnay IWM 10403 Eastern Force Instructions 4 & 10 April 1917, in folder ‘Palestine 1917’
94 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 349
95 Nogales Four Years p. 277
96 5th HLI pp. 146–7
97 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 333; Fuller p. 100
98 ‘C’ p. 96
99 Sheffy British Military Intelligence pp. 232–3
100 Gröschel & Ladek ‘Wings over Sinai and Palestine’
101 Wavell p. 88
102 Sheffy ‘Chemical Warfare and the Palestine Campaign, 1916–1918’
103 Bailey IWM 85/4/1
104 Minshall IWM 2792
105 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 pp. 336–7
106 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 343; Fuller p. 101; Dudley Ward 53rd Division pp. 106–8
107 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 pp. 340-341; Gillon pp. 265–6
108 Wollaston IWM 12702
109 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 p. 338
110 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 pp. 340–1
111 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 pp. 344–5
112 Nogales Four Years p. 281
113 Nogales Four Years p. 282
114 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 pp. 345–6
115 Sheffy British Military Intelligence pp. 233–4
116 Murray’s Despatch of 28 June 1917, paragraph 11
117 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 pp. 347–8
118 MacMunn & Falls Vol. 1 pp. 348 & 350; Dudley Ward 53rd Division p. 108
119 TNA CAB45/78/D Dawnay to Director, Historical Section, 4 December 1924
5
OTTOMAN PALESTINE
THROUGH THE SECOND half of the nineteenth century, a growing Zionist movement had agitated for a formal return of the Jews to Palestine, or better yet Palestine to the Jews. By no means all of the international Jewish community supported such a move; indeed, their own internal differences and divisions are as confusing and as contradictory as those of the governments they lobbied. To take Britain as the most relevant example, leaders such as Theodor Herzl and Dr Chaim Weizmann had spent decades lobbying influential politicians or Jewish figures for the Zionist cause, even while Jewish pillars of the establishment such as the Rothschilds were broadly against it. Opinion
was divided before 1914, but the political machinations became a positive quagmire after war was declared. The question now had repercussions on the war with the Ottoman Empire, on the alliances with Russia and France (and less so, later, Italy and America), and on the growing relationships with the Arab nationalists, all of which groups were themselves divided. The Prime Minister, the War Office, the Foreign Office, the Treasury and innumerable newspaper editors, financiers, and lobbying groups all had their own views, and many would show a disturbing willingness to communicate with the outside interested parties on their own initiative with no coordination inside their own organisations. Policy was decided from a heady mix of idealism, conservatism, and perhaps most of all pragmatism. The only question on which all of these groups in Britain agreed was, that whoever did rule Palestine after the war, it must not be the French.
But the French would get Syria. They had stated their interest in the country very early in the war, which was why the Syrian and Palestine coasts came under the operational control of the French Navy. This was confirmed in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which had been negotiated between Britain and France over the winter of 1915–16, and formalised in May 1916. Around the same period, a series of agreements were made with Sharif Husein bin Ali, the Emir of Mecca, as part of the campaign to spark a revolt in Arabia. This guaranteed British support for an independent Arab state, although in suitably vague geographical terms to allow Britain leeway later to redefine the parameters of their backing. In November 1917 the Balfour Declaration was added to the mix. This stated, in its entirety, that:
His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.
For the Zionists it fell short of promising a new Jewish nation, and for the Arabs it went too far in assuring Jewish immigration into their lands. It also left unstated but implied that the British intended the rulers of the post-war Palestine to be themselves. The country was too important as a buffer zone to defend the Suez Canal and as a route to the oil fields of the Middle East, apart from any less practical sentimental, religious or cultural attractions, to leave to anyone else’s control.*
But what manner of a country was it that so many people were vying to rule? For one thing, it was not a country, only a vaguely defined area within the Ottoman province of Greater Syria. Palestine in 1917 was a largely empty country, certainly in comparison to the same area today. Estimates as to the population vary, partly due to the lack of any systematic censuses, and partly because Palestine was part of the larger Syrian governmental area. The best estimates say that perhaps 640,000–650,000 Arabs lived in Palestine, with around 90,000 Jews.120 About 75,000 of the Jews were fairly recent immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe and Russia, where violently anti-Jewish attitudes prevailed.121 Some of these immigrants had joined existing communities, but others had established their own. Zionist groups across Europe and America funded new settlements and kibbutzim; in 1909 one of them, the Jewish National Fund, had purchased a parcel of land from the Ottomans at Tel Aviv. By the outbreak of war, some 200 houses stood on the site, with a population of around 2,000 immigrants.122
Then, as indeed now, the question of immigration and settlement was a contentious and emotive issue. Many Arabs were worried about the levels of Jewish immigration, although that did not stop some of them from selling land to newcomers. However, this was just one of several questions over the future of the country that were being debated in the coffee shops and drawing rooms of Palestine. Since the rise to power in the Constantinople of the ‘Young Turks’ a few years before the war, with their pro-Turkish policies, dissatisfaction had increased in the region. The Arabs were feeling increasingly neglected as a political voice, although a majority retained a basic loyalty to the Ottoman Empire. One option was to attempt to negotiate for greater devolved powers while staying within the Ottoman Empire, but there were also strong nationalist elements looking at potentially joining an independent Syria, or even an independent Egypt.123
Political activism and debate was quickly driven underground by the arrival of Djemal Pasha as the new governor of Syria and commander of the 4th (OT) Army. He entered Jerusalem on 18 December 1914 and established his headquarters in the Augusta Victoria Hospital, which had been built on Mount Scopus on the orders of Kaiser Wilhelm II as a hospice for German pilgrims just before the war. From here, in his own words, he maintained a ‘strong rule’, but a fair one. In his memoirs he records that:
The policy I desired to see pursued in Syria was a policy of clemency and tolerance. I left no stone unturned to create unity of views and sentiments in all the Arab countries.124
Elsewhere, he is recorded as having stated his policies to be: ‘for Palestine, deportation; for Syria, terrorisation; for the Hedjaz, the army.’125 His actions seem to bear the latter statement out rather than the former, and would earn him the nickname of ‘The Slaughterman’.126 The war would definitely bring some benefits to Palestine and Jerusalem, including the widespread expansion and improvement of infrastructure such as roads, railways, water supplies, electricity, telephones and the telegraph. It would bring modernisation and Westernisation in those areas, and others too, such as the broader adoption of Western timekeeping over the traditional Arab and Ottoman methods.* Of less directly military interest, it also led to a greater demand for news and books, with the number and circulation of newspapers increasing.127
However, these improvements came at a heavy cost. Djemal Pasha immediately began to crack down on revolutionaries and dissidents, real or imagined, who he believed to be plotting with the Entente Powers or simply for their own ends. On 30 March 1915, two soldiers were hanged at the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, ostensibly for spying for the British, although simple desertion was a more likely cause.128 In August 1915 a wave of arrests spread across Syria, with those apprehended being put before military tribunals. Eleven Arab leaders, including politicians and the Mufti of Gaza, were sentenced to death, although some of the sentences were commuted in deference to the age or status of the accused. Around 60 others were condemned to death in absentia, including newspaper and journal editors in Egypt.129 Those who were not commuted where publically hanged in Beirut. More hangings followed in May 1916, in Beirut and Damascus.130
Not all punishments were so harsh, but they were bad enough. The Ottomans had stopped all Jewish immigration into Palestine on the outbreak of the war. At the same time they began exiling Jewish leaders or activists. David Ben Gurion, a Russian immigrant who had studied law in Constantinople, had begun to raise a Jewish unit for the Ottoman Army, but was exiled to Egypt when it became known that he was a Zionist. He later joined the British Army and served in Palestine in 1918, going on to become crucial to the founding of the state of Israel, as well as the first Prime Minister. The general Jewish population also suffered. Some 18,000 Jews were expelled or fled during the war, of whom 12,000 were sent by ship from Jaffa to Alexandria.131 At Passover, 1917, all Jews were expelled from Jerusalem and Jaffa, while Djemal ordered the expulsion of Christians and destruction of Christian sites in Jerusalem as the British Army approached in November and December 1917. The Jewish population of Jerusalem alone dropped by 20,000 throughout the war, although curiously the numbers of another persecuted race, the Armenians, doubled during the same period as refugees from further north sought new lives.132
Although it is perhaps the best documented, Jerusalem was not the only town to suffer. In the late summer of 1917, Rafael de Nogales rode from Beersheba to Jerusalem, and found:
During this trip, which took me also to Ramleh, Jaffa and several other points, I could judge of the ruin caused by deportations, epidemics and looting. Jaffa, for instance, was a dead city, practically eva
cuated save for a few German families and the civil authorities, who had remained under pretext of guarding the town and who were sacking it right and left in complete accord with their master, Djemal Pasha.133
Before 1909 Christians and Jews had been exempt from conscription into the Ottoman armed forces, paying higher taxes instead. Even after that, the draft had been imposed lightly on non-Muslims, but in 1914 that changed and young men of all religions and creeds were called up to serve. In the spring of 1915 the policy was again reversed. Christians and Jews were not to be trusted in front-line units and were put instead into unarmed labour battalions, expected to perform menial tasks. Alexander Aaronsohn, a Palestinian Jew of Rumanian descent, had been a reluctant conscript but had felt some small pride in the performance of his co-religionists and the Christians, compared to the poor showing made by their Arab comrades. Being moved to a labour battalion ended that:
The final blow came one morning when all the Jewish and Christian soldiers of our regiment were called out and told that henceforth they were to serve in the taboor amlieh, or working corps … We were disarmed; our uniforms were taken away, and we became hard-driven ‘gangsters.’ I shall never forget the humiliation of that day when we, who, after all, were the best-disciplined troops of the lot, were first herded to our work of pushing wheelbarrows and handling spades, by grinning Arabs, rifle on shoulder.
From Gaza to Jerusalem Page 9