With the British Army in The Holy Land | Page 9

carried out against Khan Yunus. The column, arriving at dawn, found the position strongly held, and, after manoeuvring the enemy out of his front line of defence and capturing prisoners, withdrew without difficulty. Continuous pressure maintained by our troops in this neighbourhood, however, induced the enemy to withdraw the garrison of Khan Yunus, which place was entered by our cavalry without opposition on the 28th February. The enemy also evacuated without firing a shot the position which he had prepared near Weli Sheikh Nuran.
Our troops had crossed the desert with success attending them at every stage. And now at last they had set foot in the Promised Land. Many of them must have felt, what a soldier was afterwards heard to express, "This may be the land of promise; it's certainly not the land of fulfilment." History repeats itself. As the Israelites had much trial and suffering to endure after reaching this stage of their journey from Egypt, before they were permitted to "go in and possess the land," so had our lads many a fierce and bloody battle to fight before they, too, might set foot within the Holy City.
A few words as to personnel may not be out of place before we leave the subject of this Desert campaign. Throughout this time the Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force was General Sir Archibald Murray, G.C.M.G., K.C.B. A reorganization of the force took place in October, 1917, in consequence of which General Murray moved his headquarters back from Ismailia to Cairo. At the same time, the new headquarters of the Eastern Force came into existence at Ismailia under the command of Lieut.-General Sir Charles Dobell, K.C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., under whose direction thus came more immediately the operations in the eastern desert.
Amongst the troops employed were the Australians and New Zealanders and several regiments of English Yeomanry, and, included among the infantry, were the 52nd (Lowland), the 53rd (Welsh and Home Counties), the 54th (East Anglian) and the 74th (Dismounted Yeomanry) Divisions.
This review of the advance across the desert has of necessity been superficial. Strictly speaking, the Desert campaign is outside the scope of this book. But a summarized history of the advance forms a necessary introduction to our subject. Here, on the threshold of Palestine, we must leave this army for a short space, while we review some other operations, and while we take a glance at the nature of the country in which this army was about to operate.
CHAPTER III
MESOPOTAMIA, THE CAUCASUS, AND THE HEJAZ
Having taken a hurried glance at the campaign in Sinai, which directly led up to that in Palestine, we will take a yet more hurried glance at three other campaigns in Asiatic Turkey which had their bearing, direct or indirect, upon the Palestine operations.
Most important among these was the expedition to Mesopotamia. In 1914, when Turkey came into the war against us, a British Indian Brigade was landed at the mouth of the Shatt-el-Arab, the common estuary by which the Tigris and the Euphrates reach the Persian Gulf. The objects of this expedition were to secure the oil-fields of Persia in which Britain was largely interested; to neutralize German ascendancy, which was rapidly developing in this part of the world through her interests in the Baghdad Railway; and to embarrass Turkey by attacking her at a point where facilities of manoeuvre and supply seemed to hold out a reasonable promise of success.
Throughout 1915 this expedition met with uninterrupted success. The British Indian forces engaged were increased in number and strength, and, in spite of appalling conditions of climate, and notwithstanding more than one narrow escape from disaster, the British flag was pushed further and further forward into this flat alluvial country. In the autumn of 1915, we held all the country up to Nasiriyeh on the Euphrates and to Kut el Amara on the Tigris. Then that ill-fated decision was arrived at which sent General Townshend, with the inadequate force at his command, up the Tigris to capture Baghdad. This force went heroically forward, and, just short of that city, defeated the Turks at the battle of Ctesiphon. But General Townshend's casualties were heavy, and his available reinforcements were neither sufficiently numerous nor at hand. The pick of the Turkish army released by our withdrawal from Gallipoli, had poured down to reinforce the enemy, and General Townshend had no alternative but to beat a hasty retreat. Accordingly, he fell back to Kut el Amara. Partly from inability to get his war-worn forces further away, and partly from a disinclination to abandon this important tactical point to the enemy, he consolidated here and prepared to withstand a siege. The history of that siege will live as one of the noblest in the annals of the British army. But the stars in their courses fought against