The Recovery of Palastine & T. E. Lawrnece

THIS BOOK OFFERS an excellent concise history of the British campaign, including many Australian and New Zealand troops, to take Jerusalem from the Turks and Germans during World War I. The fact that it was published in 2017, one hundred years after the conquest, makes it particularly timely. The campaign began in Egypt, moved through the Sinai desert, and included the conquest of Gaza after several failures under General Murray, the predecessor of the successful General Allenby, and a tough slog through the Judaean hills. In Gaza and the subsequent British conquest of Huj, the Turks lost 10,000 prisoners and 100 heavy guns. While most of the Turkish army escaped, there were a great number of desertions. Only 15,000 Turkish troops took up a line of defense below Jerusalem on 10 November 1917. On November 21, the British succeeded in taking Nebi Samwil, which overlooked the Turkish defenses, and despite several Turkish counterattacks, they held their position. On December 8, the British attacked the city. Although they were hampered by a heavy rainfall the night before, the British resumed their attack and the Turks retreated from the city. The next day the mayor of Jerusalem gave the keys to General Shea. The British held a triumphal parade with General Allenby, living up to Lloyd George's desire to deliver this highly symbolic conquest to the British people as a way of uplifting their sagging morale, which had been damaged by the Russian Revolution and allied defeats in Caporetto and Cambrai around the same time.

Weintraub tells this story in only 140 pages, but despite its concision, his book contains many fascinating details, ranging from the insects plaguing the British and Australian troops in the Sinai desert, the troops' inadequate food rations, and their lack of cover from German planes in the open desert. He also details the mud and rain and freezing weather hampering the British as they approached Jerusalem, and the sad state of the population of Jerusalem when under siege, including women prostituting themselves for minimal amounts of money so they and their families could eat. And the Jews just barely avoided being expelled from the city by the Turks when German commander Erich von Falkenhayn refused to do that. It is clear that this was not an easy campaign for the British, nor could it be since Jerusalem is situated in very hilly territory and has been difficult to conquer in every war from biblical times to the present.

While the entire campaign itself was full of difficulty there was also brilliance, particularly in the use of deception, at which the British have always been very good. Weintraub explains the attack on Turkish and German-held Gaza in all of its complexity, including the brilliant tactics of Allenby's intelligence chief, Richard Meinertzhagen, who rode (three different times) into Turkish lines near Gaza. When the Turks shot at him, he deliberately dropped a false set of plans in previously blood-stained saddlebags. (As Weintraub points out, Meinertzhagen's account of this deception has been challenged, but it is detailed in Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom and so appears to be credible.) As a result, the Turks and Germans shifted their line, which ran from Beersheba (now in Israel, called Beersheva in Hebrew), thirty miles to the east, toward Gaza. When Allenby's Australian cavalry broke through at Beersheva in one of the last great cavalry charges in military history, they enabled a British attack from both the east and the south of Gaza and ultimate victory there, opening the way toward Jerusalem. But World War I Commonwealth military cemeteries in Beersheva and Gaza show that the attack was not without its cost, and Beersheva also has a memorial to Allenby. Having taught at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva, I know that remnants of the Australian cavalry charge there still turn up in the back yards of people living in Omer, a...