THE MIDDLE EAST FRONT
THE SINAI-PALESTINE CAMPAIGN
CONFLICT IN THE JORDAN VALLEY AND THE BATTLE OF MEGIDDO: SEPT 1918
THE CAPTURE OF DAMASCUS AND ALEPPO: OCTOBER 1918
THE ARMISTICE OF MUDROS: 30th OCTOBER 1918
As we have seen, in 1917, under the command of General Allenby, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, won the Third Battle of Gaza in October, seized the port of Jaffa in November, and entered Jerusalem in early December. It was a remarkable achievement given the constant opposition of the Ottoman Turks (with German support), and the demanding climate and terrain in which the campaign was fought. Much of 1918, however, saw something of a lull in the overall fighting, with the zone of combat much more confined.
Followingxthe capture of the Holy City, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force then advanced a further 16 miles to the north-east and within three days had seized the ancient town of Jericho. At this point, however, (21st February) the campaign faltered. Given the Allies’ deep concern over Germany’s plans for a major Spring offensive on the Western Front – aimed to secure a decisive victory before the Americans began arriving in large numbers – Allenby was obliged to send 60,000 men to the Western Front. He had no problem with that. He recognised that whilst his “little show” had been successful, it was insignificant compared with the events taking place in Europe. He did receive some additional troops, mainly from India, but it was not untl September that his force was back to full strength. As a result, over the intervening six months, action was confined to a series of somewhat minor battles, mainly in and around the Jordan Hills. A noteworthy victory for the Expeditionary Force at this time was the defeat of an Ottoman/German force at the Battles of Abu Tellul in the Mussallebeh Salient.
CONFLICT INxTHE JORDAN VALLEY
However, it was also during this period that the British, faced with strong and determined resistance from the Ottomans, suffered two major setbacks, their worst taste of defeat since the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917. It was in March that Allenby came up with a plan aimed, firstly, at seizing the town of Es Salt on the edge of the Judean Hills (see map below). This would block Ottoman access to the southern area of the Jordan valley and, at the same time, link up with the Arab Northern Army then operating in that area. Then, from there, a raid would be made upon Amman in order to destroy the Hejaz railway, cutting its link with Haifa in the north. Known as Shea’s Force, after the commander of the 60th Division, the plan was seen as practical, but when it was launched early on the 21st March it was seriously hampered by extremely heavy rainfall and thick mud underfoot. The force managed to cross the Jordan and seize the town of Es Salt within four days, but the raid on Amman, deeper into the Moab Mountains, was met with strong Turkish opposition and, despite four days of repeated attacks by ANZAC infantry and cameleers, the city could not be taken. On the 30th March, with ammunition and food supplies running low, the force pulled back from Amman, abandoned Es Salt, and returned to a bridgehead at Ghoraniyeh, set up earlier on the east bank of the Jordan. Casualties amounted to 1,348, and greater losses were to come. A second attack, confined, this time, to the seizure of Es Salt, was launched on the 30th April. The Australian Light Horse m
anaged to take the town, but such was the opposition mounted by the Ottoman forces, plus the lack of support from local Arab tribes, that they were forced to withdraw and retreat across the Jordan. Casualties were estimated to be 1,600.
By the beginning of September, however, the Expeditionary Force was back to full strength, numbering around 75,000, and including 12,000 cavalry. Men were drafted in from Mesopotamia and the Western Front, and new units had arrived from India and South Africa. In addition the Arab Northern Army, 5,000 strong and under the command of Emir Faisal - a very valuable support east of the River Jordan – had been supplied with armoured cars, more weapons, and an allowance of around £200,000 a month. Now having the military means, Allenby prepared for an advance on Damascus, capturing en route (as he actually did) Tiberius and Haifa. At the same time the Arab army would attack the railway at Deraa (see map). As in the battle for Gaza at the beginning of his campaign (October 1917), Allenby used deception – and very effectively so – to fool the enemy. He planned a full-scale attack along the coastal plain, but gave all the appearance of preparing for an attack in the Jordan valley, east of the river. He sent out reconnaissance parties and aircraft over this area, and went so far as to march troops up to the River Jordan during the day and then return them to base at night, under cover of darkness. This and other ruses proved highly successful. When the attack was launched on the 19th, the Ottomans, with a total number of around 41,000, were tak
en completely by surprise. The Ottoman line, running from north of Jaffa to the northern end of the Dead Sea, was pierced by a massed infantry assault, enabling the cavalry to sweep along the rear of this line for some thirty miles, attacking their enemy from behind and preventing the sending of reinforcements. As Ottoman troops pulled back in disorder, British and Australian aircraft bombed and machine-gunned the retreating columns. In the meantime, other units, advancing northward, defeated the Ottoman forces at Nablus (in the Judean Hills), and overran their defences at Semakh on the Sea of Galilee.
THExBATTLE OF MEGIDDO
But the defining encounter occurred at the so-called Battle of Megiddo (see pic and map above), south-east of Haifa on the Plain of Sharon. This proved to be the last Allied offensive of the Sinai-Palestine Campaign. Here, over the 19th to the 25th September, three Ottoman armies, seriously depleted in strength by desertion and sickness, were overwhelmed and virtually put to flight. Over 75,000 prisoners were taken, and vast areas of territory were captured. Given the prominent part played by aircraft on the battlefield, one historian likened the tactics adopted at Megiddo to the German Blitzkrieg of 1939. It was clear by now that the Ottoman Empire’s hold on the Middle East was at an end. Indeed, its very future was at stake.
Acknowledgements
Map: historyof the greatwar.com Battle of Megiddo: pinterest,se Colourized History by Austrian photographer Frank Hurly Lancers: warfarehistorynetwork.com Entry of Damascus: history of the greatwar.com Lawrence: historynet.com Map: nzhistory.govt. General Allenby: prints-online.com by French artist Lucien Hector Jonas, David Cohen Fine Art/Mary Evans Picture Library.
WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1
Incidentally, the Battle of Megiddo is known by the Turks as Nablus Hezimeti (the “Rout of Nablus”), or Nablus Yarmasi (the “Breakthrough at Nablus”). Doubtless because of its ferocity and finality, the word Megiddo (like Armageddon), is often regarded as synonymous with “the end of the world”. .…..
…… The Englishxauthor and poet, Thomas Hardy, wrote a poem about the Battle of Megiddo, under the title Jezreel, the name of the valley in which the battle was fought.
The capture of Nazareth and Haifa followed, and then two separate Allied columns quickly crossed into Syria and advanced on Damascus (see map below). One was a force of Australian and Indian cavalry approaching from Galilee, and the other was a contingent of Indian Cavalry and Arab fighters, led by the British guerrilla fighter Lieutenant Colonel (by then) T.E. Lawrence, marching north along the Hejaz Railway. Members of the Australian Light Horse entered the city on 1st October 1918, arriving just a few hours ahead of the Arab Northern Army.
This was a great disappointment to Lawrence. As a close friend and confidant of Prince Faisal, he was now turning his mind to the future of the Arab people and their right, as he saw it, to an independent Arab state. Having heard of the terms of the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement (disclosed by the Russian government in November), he had hoped that by reaching Damascus first, the Arabs could claim right of conquest, thereby trumping the deal made between Britain and France. After a short time in Damascus, during which he set up a provisional Arab government under Faisal, he hurried to London in order to muster support for the Arab cause. But, as we shall see, this provisional government proved too weak to survive, both militarily and economically. The Arabian peninsula was not only a vital land route to the Indian sub-continent, but also an ever growing source of oil. No colonial power could afford to give up possession of such a “Promised Land”, however resentful the Arabs might be. Accompanied by Prince Faisal, Lawrence attended both the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the Cairo Conference of 1922, but neither was prepared to accept the establishment of an Arab State. To Lawrence this was a betrayal and a source of regret for the rest of his life. In hisxpersonal account of his service in the Arab Revolt, published in 1926 under the title The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, he wrote: When the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took over victory to re-make it in the likeness of th
e former world they knew. Youth could win ... but it was pitiably weak against age. The Sykes-Picot Agreement of May 1916, drawn up in the commercial and military interests of the two colonial powers, France and Britain, was not to be thwarted.
ThexFrench took Beirut on the 7th October, and Aleppo, the third largest city in the Ottoman Empire, fell to Allied forces on the 26th October, bringing an end to the original Sinai-Palestine campaign and, indeed, all the campaigns within the Middle East Front. At that point the British occuped the territory that was to become Iraq, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Four days later, following the surrender of Bulgaria – which made possible a direct invasion of the Turkish heartland of Anatolia – the Ottoman government signed the Armistice of Mudros. The Allies occupied Constantinople on the 1st of November. In this area of fighting, the British and Empire forces suffered close on 51,500 battle casualties, killed, wounded or captured. Of this number, Indian casualties made up around 20 per cent. The total Ottoman loses are unknown, but they were certainly much larger than those of the Allies.
GeneralxEdmund Allenby joined the army in 1881, and during the Boer War of 1899-1902 gained a reputation as a resourceful cavalry commander. As a result, he was appointed lnspector General of Cavalry in 1909 with the rank of major-general. At the start of the war he commanded Britain’s Cavalry Division, and was commended for his leadership in the opening battles on the Western Front, but he found difficulty in coming to terms with the increasing dependence on trench warfare, and was given command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) in June 1917. It was a wise appointment. In the Sinai-Palestine Campaign, where there was the opportunity for a war of movement, his energetic approach lifted the morale of the troops; encouraged irregular warfare; and, following the invasion of Palestine (as we have seen), gave substantial support to the Arab Revolt in Arabia, recognising in particular the important part played by T.E. Lawrence in that venture. He gained personal fame for the tactics of deception he showed in his capture of Gaza in October 1917; his sensitive occupation of Jerusalem in the December; and for his coordinated attack – particularly in the use of airpower – in his outstanding victory at the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918. He was made a field marshall the following year, and appointed high Commissioner for Egypt and Sudan until 1925. He died in 1936 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was somewhat brusque in manner – he was known as “the Bull” within the army! – but his accomplishments in the field, and his overall tactics, anticipating as they did the “lightening warfare” of the future, made him one of the most successful of British generals.
Incidentally, Allenby was particularly diplomatic in his occupation of Jerusalem. He insisted on entering the city on foot (arguing that only Christ had the right to make a mounted entrance); forbade the flying of any Allied flags; and assured the inhabitants that he came not as a conqueror, but as a protector of the various faiths practised within a truly Holy City. ……
…… He married Adelaide Mabel Chapman in 1897. Their only child, Lt Horace Michael Hynman Allenby, was killed in July 1917 whilst serving in Flanders with the Royal Horse Artillery.
THE ARMISTICE OF MUDROS: 30th October 1918
As noted above, the Battle of Megiddo virtually marked the end of the Sinai-Palestine Campaign. For the Ottomans there was no way back. At the end of October, with the Allies closing in on Constantinople, they recognised their position and agreed to the Armistice of Mudros (signed at the port of Mudros on the Aegean island of Lemnos). By it, the Ottomans surrendered their remaining garrisons in Hejaz, Yemen, Syria, Mesopotamia, Tripolitania and Cyrenaica. The Allies were to occupy the Straits of the Dardanelles and Bosporus, and, in a case of disorder, claimed the right to occupy the six Armenian provinces. In the meantime, the Ottoman army was to be demobilized, and all strategic points, such as railways and ports, were to be available for Allied use.
The Armistice of Mudros brought an end to the seven campaigns triggered off when, in October 1914, the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War as an ally of the Central Powers: The Caucasus, Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, Persia, Suez-Sinai, Sinai-Palestine and the Arab Revolt. The Ottomans only won one of these major campaigns (Gallipoli), but this “sick man of Europe” – with German assistance – proved a tough opponent, and these “desert sideshows”, served to deny the Allies valuable troops and equipment where they were most needed – in the deadly war of attrition being waged in Europe. Nor was the Armistice of Mudros the final word. The peace settlement lay some way ahead. As we shall see, the Treaty of Sèvres was opened in early 1919 and completed in August 1920, but so harsh were its territorial demands that the new Republic of Turkey reneged on the treaty and, in protest, pitched a war against Armenia and the Allied powers who were attempting to seize land in Anatolia – particularly the Greeks, French and Italians. It was a drastic and extremely bold action to take but, in fact, it was to serve their cause.
To go back to the Dateline, click HERE