Jean Bou - Australias Palestine Campaign 1916-1918

AUSTRALIAN ARMY CAMPAIGNS SERIES 7

AUSTRALIAS PALESTINE

CAMPAIGN

JEAN BOU

Copyright Army History Unit

Campbell Park Offices (CP2-5-166)

Canberra ACT 2600

AUSTRALIA

(02) 6266 4248

(02) 6266 4044 fax

Copyright 2010 Commonwealth of Australia

First published 2010

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,without written permission.

Author: Jean Bou, 1970

Title: Australias Palestine Campaign

ISBN: 978-0-9808100-0-4

Series: Australian Army Campaign Series; 7

Notes: Includes index. Bibliography

Subjects: World War, 1914-1918CampaignsPalestine.

World War, 1914-1918Participation, Australian.

AustraliaHistory, Military.

Dewey Number: 940.41294

Layout and design by Margaret McNally, Canberra, ACT

Printed by Big Sky Publishing, Sydney

Front Cover: AWM ART03647

Back Cover: AWM ART09557; AWM B02465; AWM ART12673; AWM ART02837

Title Page: AWM ART02811

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First thanks for this book must go to Glenn Wahlert, who oversees the Army History Units Campaign Series, who pulled the non-writing strings behind the scenes (and who somehow wields a whip at the same time). Roger Lee also deserves credit as the person who approached me to do the book, and committed the Army History Units resources to its production. I owe thanks also to Mark Wahlert for the maps, organisation charts and various digital images. Jeff Isaacs has contributed his original artwork, and the Defence Publishing Service has done the sterling work for the books cover. John Donovans editing has no doubt saved me from a good many serious errors, and Margaret McNallys work on the book design and typesetting has been invaluable. I would also like to thank John Coates for permission to reproduce maps from his An Atlas of Australias Wars and Anthony Staunton for permission to reproduce part of my Sabretache article, Sold or shot.

Abbreviations

SERIES INTRODUCTION

In 2004, the then Chief of Armys Strategic Advisory Group (CASAG), the Armys senior generals, established a scheme to promote the study and understanding of military history within the Army. The focus was the Armys future generation of leaders and, from this, the Campaign Series was created. The series is intended to complement the Armys other history publications which are major analytical works of high quality, academically rigorous and referenced.

The Campaign Series focuses on leadership, command, strategy, tactics, lessons and personal experiences of war. Each title within the series includes extensive visual sources of information maps, including specifically prepared maps in colour and 3D, specifically commissioned artwork, photographs and computer graphics.

Covering major campaigns and battles, as well as those less known, the Army History Unit and its Campaign Series provide a significant contribution to the history of the Australian Army and an excellent introduction to its campaigns and battles.

Roger Lee,
Army Historian

AUTHORS INTRODUCTION

Memories of Australias military involvement in the First World War are dominated principally by Gallipoli, and then by the Western Front. There is a strong general recognition that the light horse fought in the war, but beyond vague (and often self-congratulatory) conceptions of the charge at Beersheba, there is little recognition or understanding of the campaign in which most of Australias mounted men fought. This book aims to introduce readers to one of Australias major military endeavours outside the Western Front during the First World War the Palestine Campaign and its precursor battles in the Sinai.

Beginning in early 1916 Australian soldiers serving in the light horse, the Imperial Camel Corps (ICC), the Australian Flying Corps (AFC), and a myriad of supporting arms were part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF). This force first sought to secure the Suez Canal by driving the Ottoman Army out of the Sinai Peninsula and then, from early 1917, to remove that enemy from Palestine (territory that is largely modern Israel), and ultimately Syria, actions that also ended Ottoman control of Arabia and Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).

The cost that Australia incurred in that fighting was relatively light by the standards of the First World War. Total Australian casualties in the EEF were just over 4000, with 574 killed in action and another 288 dying of their wounds. Nearly 50,000 Australians were killed on the Western Front, and the death toll on Gallipoli was over 8000. If the losses in Palestine were relatively light, however, they were no less tragic.

The fighting in the Middle East is often portrayed as a stark alternative to that on the Western Front, and much is usually made of the apparent differences between the grinding carnage of trench deadlock and the open warfare, mobility, and low casualty counts in Palestine. This conception is, perhaps inevitably, a simplification. There is no doubt that the fighting in Palestine was more mobile and statistically less dangerous than that on the Western Front. However, the campaign included all the developments of modern war, with new weapons and techniques like gas, tanks, aircraft and massed indirect artillery fire all used.

The focus on cavalry operations also tends to under represent the modern all-arms nature of the campaign in which, if the cavalry garnered the attention, it was often airmen who found the enemy, infantry who did the hard fighting (incurring the heavy casualties), and artillery which ensured the battles were won. An examination of the Palestine Campaign provides an insight into the nature and conduct of war in the early twentieth century it was not all trenches and creeping barrages.

The aim of this book is to introduce its readers to the Australian contribution to the Palestine Campaign, and put that contribution into its context. In recent years, in some rather bad histories, there has emerged a (somewhat jingoistic) Australian notion that the light horse was the most important part of the EEF, and that its exploits brought the victory. In an extension of this idea, the charge at Beersheba is portrayed as the campaigns turning point. Though the Australian contribution was sizable and important, it was neither decisive nor war winning; it was a British imperial army acting in concert with its allies that achieved victory.

Any study of the history of this campaign must look beyond superficial treatments, and consider that at the wars end there were 36 horsed regiments in the Desert Mounted Corps, of which only 14 were Australian. This was the largest single contribution, but only just, there then being 13 Indian cavalry regiments on the corps order of battle (along with five British, three New Zealand and one French). The number of Australian horsemen who fought in the campaign was dwarfed by the numbers of British and Indian troops who served in the EEFs two infantry corps, and its artillery regiments, air squadrons, and transport and support services.