Days to Remember: The British Empire in the Great War

by John Buchan; Sir Henry John Newbolt

About 4 o'clock in the afternoon the weather changed. A strong south-westerly wind blew up; by 11 p.m. it increased to a gale of 35 miles an hour. This storm covered our movements from the enemy, but it nearly made retirement impossible. On some beaches the piers were washed away and no troops could be embarked. Nevertheless by 3.30 the last men were on board.

All night the Turks gave no sign, but when the transports had moved off the stores left behind were fired simultaneously by time fuses. Red lights instantly burned along the enemy lines, and a bombardment began which continued till sunrise. The Turks proclaimed that the retreat had been attended with desperate losses and great captures of guns. The claim was an absurd falsehood. We blew up and left behind the ruins of seventeen old worn-out pieces. Our total casualties at Helles amounted to one man wounded.

To avoid the disastrous consequences of a defeat is, as a military operation, usually more difficult than to win a victory. There is less chance of the high spirit of the attack, for such is the generosity of the human spirit that safety is less of an incentive to effort than the hope of victory. To embark so great an army secretly and without loss in mid-winter was an extraordinary achievement. It was made possible only by an almost miraculous series of favourable chances, and by the perfect organization and discipline of our men. We had failed at Gallipoli, but we had escaped the worst costs of failure. We had defeated the calculations of the enemy and upset every precedent.

Across the ribbon of the Dardanelles, on the green plain of Troy, the most famous war of the ancient world had been fought. The European shores had now become a no less classic ground of arms. If the banks of Scamander had seen men strive desperately with fate, so had the heights of Achi Baba and the loud beaches of Helles. Had the fashion continued of linking the gods with the strife of mankind, what strange myth might not have sprung from this rescue of the British troops in the teeth of winter gales and uncertain seas I It would have been rumoured, as of old at Troy, that Poseidon had done battle for his children.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE CAPTURE OF JERUSALEM.

At the outset of the war the conquest of Egypt was an important aim of the Turkish Government and their German masters. But early in 1915 the Turkish invasion was scattered on the banks of the Suez Canal, and hopes of an easy victory were shattered. Nevertheless, the defence of Egypt remained an anxious problem for Britain. That country was the base both for Gallipoli and for Mesopotamia, and moreover, as Moltke pointed out long before, was the key of Britain's Eastern possessions. It was soon realized that Egypt could not be properly defended on the Canal, but only on the Palestine frontier, beyond the Sinai Desert.

During 1915 and 1916 Turkey and Germany projected many schemes for an Egyptian invasion, and the British generals in Egypt were no less busy. If the war was to be carried into Palestine railways and water pipes must be laid across the desert. Slowly the British front crept eastward. The Turks were defeated in various desert battles, and in the spring of 1917 the British army crossed the frontier of Palestine.

The British purpose had somewhat changed. The offensive had been substituted for the defensive. So far as possible it was desired to do in Palestine what Sir Stanley Maude was doing in Mesopotamia—to pin down large Turkish forces, and so alarm Turkey about the safety of certain key points in her territory that she would demand aid from Germany and thus confuse the plans of the German General Staff.

The land from the Wadi el Arish—the ancient "River of Egypt"—to the Philistian Plain had for 2,600 years been a cockpit of war. Sometimes a conqueror from the north or the south met the enemy in Egypt or in Syria, but more often the decisive fight was fought in the gates. Up and down the strip of seaward levels marched the great armies of Egypt and Assyria, while the Jews looked fearfully down from their barren hills. In the Philistian Plain Sennacherib smote the Egyptian hosts in the days of King Hezekiah, only to see his army melt away under the stroke of the "angel of the Lord." At Rafa Esarhaddon defeated Pharaoh, and added Egypt and Ethiopia to his kingdoms. At Megiddo, or Armageddon, Josiah was vanquished by Pharaoh Necho, who in turn was routed by Nebuchadnezzar. At Ascalon, during the Crusades, Godfrey of Bouillon defeated the Egyptians, and 150 years later that town fell to the Mameluke Sultan after the battle of Gaza. In this gate of ancient feuds it now fell to Turkey's lot to speak with her enemies.