DIFFICULTIES OF THE ATTACK
General Allenby's first problem was of vital consequence. He had to
pierce the Gaza line. Before his arrival there had been, as already
stated, two attempts which failed. A third failure, or even a
check, might have spelt disaster for us in the East. The Turks held
commanding positions, which they strengthened and fortified under the
direction of German engineers until their country, between the sea and
Beersheba, became a chain of land works of high military value, well
adapted for defence, and covering almost every line of approach.
The Turk at the Dardanelles had shown no loss of that quality of
doggedness in defence which characterised him in Plevna, and though we
know his commanders still cherished the hope of successfully attacking
us before we could attempt to crush his line, it was on his system of
defence that the enemy mainly relied to break the power of the British
force. On arriving in Egypt General Allenby was given an appreciation
of the situation written by Lieut.-General Sir Philip Chetwode, who
had commanded the Desert Column in various stages across the sands of
Sinai, was responsible for forcing the Turks to evacuate El Arish,
arranged the dash on Magdaba by General Sir Harry Chauvel's mounted
troops, and fought the brilliant little battle of Rafa. This
appreciation of the position was the work of a master military mind,
taking a broad comprehensive view of the whole military situation in
the East, Palestine's position in the world war, the strategical and
tactical problems to be faced, and, without making any exorbitant
demands for troops which would lessen the Allies' powers in other
theatres, set out the minimum necessities for the Palestine force.
General Allenby gave the fullest consideration to this document, and
after he had made as complete an examination of the front as any
Commander-in-Chief ever undertook--the General was in one or other
sector with his troops almost every day for four months--General
Chetwode's plan was adopted, and full credit was given to his
prescience in General Allenby's despatch covering the operations up to
the fall of Jerusalem.
It was General Chetwode's view at the time of writing his
appreciation, that both the British and Turkish Armies were
strategically on the defensive. The forces were nearly equal in
numbers, though we were slightly superior in artillery, but we had no
advantage sufficient to enable us to attack a well-entrenched enemy
who only offered us a flank on which we could not operate owing to
lack of water and the extreme difficulty of supply. General Chetwode
thought it was possible the enemy might make an offensive against
us--we have since learned he had such designs--but he gave weighty
reasons against the Turk embarking upon a campaign conducted with
a view to throwing us beyond the Egyptian frontier into the desert
again. If the enemy contemplated even minor operations in the Sinai
Desert he had not the means of undertaking them. We should be retiring
on positions we had prepared, for, during his advance across the
desert, General Chetwode had always taken the precaution of having his
force dug in against the unlikely event of a Turkish attack. Every
step we went back would make our supply easier, and there was no water
difficulty, the pipe line, then 130 miles long, which carried the
purified waters of the Nile to the amount of hundreds of thousands
of gallons daily, being always available for our troops. It would be
necessary for the Turks to repair the Beersheba-Auja railway. They
had lifted some of the rails for use north of Gaza, and a raid we had
carried out showed that we could stop this railway being put into a
state of preparedness for military traffic. An attack which aimed at
again threatening the Suez Canal was therefore ruled as outside the
range of possibilities.
On the other hand, now that the Russian collapse had relieved the Turk
of his anxieties in the Caucasus and permitted him to concentrate his
attention on the Mesopotamian and Palestine fronts, what hope had he
of resisting our attack when we should be in a position to launch it?
The enemy had a single narrow-gauge railway line connecting with the
Jaffa-Jerusalem railway at Junction Station about six miles south-east
of Ramleh. This line ran to Beersheba, and there was a spur line
running past Deir Sineid to Beit Hanun from which the Gaza position
was supplied. There was a shortage of rolling stock and, there being
no coal for the engines, whole olive orchards had been hacked down to
provide fuel. The Hebron road, which could keep Beersheba supplied if
the railway was cut, was in good order, but in other parts there were
no roads at all, except several miles of badly metalled track from
Junction Station to Julis. We could not keep many troops with such
ill-conditioned communications, but Turkish soldiers require far less
supplies than European troops, and the enemy had done such remarkable
things in surmounting supply difficulties that he was given credit for
being able to support between sixty and seventy battalions in the line
and reserve, with an artillery somewhat weaker than our own.
If we made another frontal attack at Gaza we should find ourselves up
against a desperately strong defensive system, but even supposing we
got through it we should come to another halt in a few miles, as
the enemy had selected, and in most cases had prepared, a number of
positions right up to the Jaffa-Jerusalem road, where he would be in
a land of comparative plenty, with his supply and transport troubles
very considerably reduced. No one could doubt that the Turks intended
to defend Jerusalem to the last, not only because of the moral effect
its capture would have on the peoples of the world, but because its
possession by us would threaten their enterprise in the Hedjaz, and
the enormous amount of work we afterwards found they had done on the
Judean hills proved that they were determined to do all in their
power to prevent our driving them from the Holy City. The enemy, too,
imagined that our progress could not exceed the rate at which our
standard gauge railway could be built. Water-borne supplies were
limited as to quantity, and during the winter the landing of supplies
on an open beach was hazardous. In the coastal belt there were no
roads, and the wide fringe of sand which has accumulated for centuries
and still encroaches on the Maritime Plain can only be crossed by
camels. Wells are few and yield but small volumes of water. With the
transport allotted to the force in the middle of 1917 it was not
possible to maintain more than one infantry division at a distance of
twenty to twenty-five miles beyond railhead, and this could only be
done by allotting to them all the camels and wheels of other divisions
and rendering these immobile. This was insufficient to keep the enemy
on the move after a tactical success, and he would have ample time to
reorganise.
General Chetwode held that careful preliminary arrangements, suitable
and elastic organisation of transport, the collection of material at
railhead, the training of platelaying gangs provided by the troops,
the utilisation of the earthwork of the enemy's line for our own
railway, luck as regards the weather and the fullest use of sea
transport, should enable us to give the enemy less breathing time than
appeared possible on paper. It was beyond hope, however, whatever
preparations were made, that we should be able to pursue at a speed
approaching that which the river made possible in Mesopotamia. General
Chetwode considered it would be fatal to attempt an offensive with
forces which might permit us to attack and occupy the enemy's Gaza
line but which would be insufficient to inflict upon him a really
severe blow, and to follow up that blow with sufficient troops. No
less than seven infantry divisions at full strength and three cavalry
divisions would be adequate for the purpose, and they would be
none too many. Further, if the Turks began to press severely in
Mesopotamia, or even to revive their campaign in the Hedjaz, a
premature offensive might be necessitated on our part in Palestine.
The suggestion made by General Chetwode for General Allenby's
consideration was that the enemy should be led to believe we intended
to attack him in front of Gaza, and that we should pin him down to
his defences in the centre, while the real attack should begin on
Beersheba and continue at Hareira and Sheria, and so force the enemy
by manoeuvre to abandon Gaza. That plan General Allenby adopted after
seeing all the ground, and the events of the last day of October and
the first week of November supported General Chetwode's predictions to
the letter. Indeed it would be hard to find a parallel in history for
such another complete and absolute justification of a plan drawn up
several months previously, and it is doubtful if, supposing the Turks
had succeeded in doing what their German advisers advocated, namely
forestalling our blow by a vigorous attack on our positions, there
would have been any material alteration in the working out of the
scheme. The staff work of General Headquarters and of the staffs of
the three corps proved wholly sound. Each department gave of its best,
and from the moment when Beersheba was taken in a day and we secured
its water supply, there was never a doubt that the enemy could be kept
on the move until we got into the rough rocky hills about Jerusalem.
And by that time, as events proved, his moral had had such a
tremendous shaking that he never again made the most of his many
opportunities.
The soundness of the plan can quite easily be made apparent to the
unmilitary eye. Yet the Turk was absolutely deceived as to General
Allenby's intentions. If it be conceded that to deceive the enemy is
one of the greatest accomplishments in the soldier's art, it must be
admitted that the battle of Gaza showed General Allenby's consummate
generalship, just as it was proved again, and perhaps to an even
greater extent, in the wonderful days of September 1918, in Northern
Palestine and Syria. A glance at the map of the Gaza-Beersheba line
and the country immediately behind it will show that if a successful
attack were delivered against Gaza the enemy could withdraw his whole
line to a second and supporting position where we should have to begin
afresh upon an almost similar operation. The Turk would still have his
water and would be slightly nearer his supplies.
Since the two unsuccessful attacks in March and April, Gaza had been
put into a powerful state of defence. The houses of the town are
mostly on a ridge, and enclosing the place is a mass of gardens fully
a mile deep, each surrounded by high cactus hedges affording complete
cover and quite impossible for infantry to penetrate. To reduce
Gaza would require a prolonged artillery bombardment with far more
batteries than General Allenby could ever expect to have at his
command, and it is certain that not only would the line in front of
the town have had to be taken, but also the whole of the western end
of the Turks' trench system for a length of at least 12,000 yards.
And, as has been said, with Gaza secured we should still have had to
face the enemy in a new line of positions about the wadi Hesi. Gaza
was the Turks' strongest point. To attack here would have meant a
long-drawn-out artillery duel, infantry would have had to advance over
open ground under complete observation, and, while making a frontal
attack, would have been exposed to enfilade fire from the 'Tank'
system of works to the south-east. It would have proved a costly
operation, its success could only have been partial in that it did not
follow that we should break the enemy's line, and it would not have
enabled us to contain the remainder of the Turkish force.
Nor would an attack on the centre have promised more favourably. Here
the enemy had all the best of the ground. At Atawineh, Sausage Ridge,
Hareira, and Teiaha there were defences supporting each other on high
ground overlooking an almost flat plain through which the wadi Ghuzze
runs. All the observation was in enemy possession, and to attack over
this ground would have been inviting disaster. There was little fear
that the Turks would attack us across this wide range of No Man's
Land, for we held secure control of the curiously shaped heaps of
broken earth about Shellal, and the conical hill at Fara gave an
uninterrupted view for several miles northward and eastward. The
position was very different about Beersheba. If we secured that place
with its water supply, and in this dry country the battle really
amounted to a fight for water, we should be attacking from high ground
and against positions which had not been prepared on so formidable
a scale as elsewhere, with the prospect of compelling the enemy to
abandon the remainder of the line for fear of being enveloped by
mounted troops moving behind his weakened left. That, in brief
outline, was the gist of General Chetwode's report, and with its full
acceptance began the preparations for the advance. These preparations
took several months to complete, and they were as thorough as the
energy of a capable staff could make them.