Nuri Said, Jaffer Pasha’s brother-in-law, played an equally brilliant part in the war. He was Emir Feisal’s chief of staff and remained in this position when Feisal became king in Damascus and later in Bagdad. Like Jaffer he had attended the Turkish Staff College. In the Balkan War he was an aviator. Afterward he acted as secretary of the Arab officers’ secret society which plotted to overthrow the Turks. He is reckless and loves a hot fight. In fact, the hotter the action the cooler was Nuri Said. He was one of the few Arab townsmen whom the Bedouins admired and respected.
All had gone well with the preliminary plans for Allenby’s drive in Palestine. But until twenty-four hours before the attack was launched, on the nineteenth, the commander-in-chief himself was not certain whether he was going to succeed or not. If the Turks and Germans had discovered his real plan and had not been deceived into thinking that both the British and Arabian forces were concentrating on Amman with the intention of attempting to push north up the Jordan Valley and if the enemy had withdrawn its right wing only about half-way across Palestine from the Mediterranean coast and the River Auja to the hills of Samaria, which would merely have been a retirement of ten miles along the entire front, the Turks could have played safe, Allenby’s whole blow would have been wasted, and Lawrence’s brilliant operations around Deraa would have been all in vain. Lawrence did not even have sufficient supplies to last his column for two extra days, so that failure would have been nothing short of a catastrophe for him. Of course, neither Allenby nor Lawrence would have suffered heavy losses, but on the other hand they would not have rung the curtain down in Arabia and Palestine so soon. The entire World War might have dragged on for several months longer, and an additional hundred thousand lives or more might have been sacrificed on the Western Front. But there were no ifs; the enemy walked into the prepared trap like lambs to the slaughter.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE DOWNFALL OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE
On the whole, this last joint operation of the British and Arabian forces was one of the most marvelous pieces of staff planning in all military annals. It was a game of chess played by experts on an international board. Never before was there a similar campaign. It was a complete reversal of all Marshal Foch’s principles. Allenby and Lawrence went back to the Napoleonic wars, to the battles of the eighteenth century, when generals won by manœuver and strategy instead of by tactics (the term “tactics” referring to the science of handling men under fire). In this, the most brilliant and spectacular military operation in the world’s history, Allenby and Lawrence lost only four hundred and fifty men, although they completely annihilated the Turkish army, captured over one hundred thousand Turks, advanced more than three hundred miles in less than a month, and broke the backbone of the Turkish Empire. Part of the credit should go to Brigadier-General Bartholomew. Allenby is colossal; he needs a needle-sharp man to complete him. He had such an officer and strategist in General Bartholomew.
Allenby’s complete plan, which involved the destruction of all the Turkish effectives with one sweeping blow, was known only to four people; the commander-in-chief himself, his chief of Staff, (Major-General Boles), General Bartholomew, and Colonel Lawrence. Not even Emir Feisal or King Hussein knew what was going to happen.
At five o’clock on the morning of September 18, 1917, General Bartholomew came to his office at headquarters in Ramleh and anxiously said to the staff officer on duty: “Has there been any change?”
“No, the Turks are still there,” replied the latter.
“Good!” said Bartholomew. “We will take at least thirty thousand prisoners before this show is over.” He did not dream that the Allied forces would capture three times thirty thousand Turks.
The deception of the enemy had been perfect in every detail. When Allenby’s forces entered Nazareth, which had been the German and Turkish Palestine headquarters, they found papers indicating that the German High Command had been certain the attack would take place in the Jordan Valley. Field-Marshal von Sanders had been taken in down to the last point.