Tanks in Palestine
The Second and Third Battles of Gaza, April and November 1917
“Gaza yet stands, but all her sons are fallen,
All in a moment overwhelmed and fallen.”
Samson Agonistes.
The Tanks that had fought in the Battle of the Somme, in the autumn of 1916, had proved successful enough for the authorities to consider that a test ought to be made of their capabilities in some other theatre of war.
Accordingly a small—a very small—detachment of Tanks was sent to “assist our troops in the Sinai Peninsula.”
Unfortunately only eight Tanks were ultimately sent, and further,[51]“through an unfortunate error, old experimental machines were sent out instead of new ones as intended.”
The experiment was thus upon so extremely miniature a scale that it cannot be said to have proved anything save what was already clear, that is, the general proposition that with a few mechanical modifications Tanks are perfectly suitable to desert warfare.
The Tanks were, of course, too few to exert any influence upon the fortunes of war in Palestine, and the two actions in which they fought amid palms and cactuses and lay up in groves of fig trees, form a curious, rather than an important, little incident in their history.
The field on which they fought was like the plain of Flanders, one of those ominous lands which seem predestined for ever to witness the strife of men.