THE GREAT WARTHE GREAT WAR||MIDDLE EAST CAMPAIGN MIDDLE EAST CAMPAIGN
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Force – having successfully thwarted
Turkish ambitions involving the Suez
Canal – stood seemingly idle.
The time had come, or so the prime
minister plainly felt, for the army of
General Sir Archibald Murray to play
a more active role. As the Chief of the
Imperial General Staff, Sir William
Robertson, told Murray in December
1916: “The Prime Minister is very
anxious, naturally, for some success
to enliven the winter gloom which
has settled upon England, and he
looks to you to get it for him.” There
was vague talk of a campaign in
Palestine and, observed Robertson,
“hope of a triumphant entry into
Jerusalem”, but first a way had to
be found of breaking through Gaza,
gateway to the fabled Holy Land.
By March 1917, following a
prodigious logistical effort, that vague
talk had become a reality. An imperial
army, twice the size of an enemy force
composed mainly of Turks, supported
by Austro-Hungarian artillery units
and German advisors, stood at the end
of a vast supply train stretching across
the Sinai desert.
Included among them were the 4th
and 5th Battalions of the Norfolk
Regiment, representing half of the
infantry complement of the 163rd
Brigade of the 54th (Territorial)
Division, commanded by Major-
General Steuart Hare.
Spirits were high, particularly
among those who had experienced the
misery of Gallipoli and the boredom
of prolonged spells of training amid
scorching temperatures in desert
camps which, in the words of one
officer, consisted of “nothing but
sand! Sand! Sand!”.Some Useful Job
The mood was typified by Sydney
Page, a 44-year-old captain in
the 4th Norfolks. During the
intense, close-quarter struggle at
Gallipoli, he had suffered a nervous
breakdown that resulted in lengthy
convalescence in the UK. But,
his health restored and having
contrived to wangle his way back
to his old unit, he was filled with
renewed optimism after exchanging
“twelve months easy time in Egypt”
for “some more useful job”.As he journeyed from what he
called ‘Desert land’ to ‘Sunny land’,
the tone of his letters home grew
ever more ebullient. “On and on
we came,” he wrote, “until we
outstripped the railway... came
past the pipeline – carrying our
own water on camels – got in front
of the advanced troops who had
been driving Johnny Turk back
and entered ‘the Holy Land’, the
foremost of the British troops.”
His excitement was almost
tangible. He wrote to his sister:
“You can never fully appreciate the
joy it was to us after months and
months of desert life to gaze on
green fields, to see the growing corn
and other cultivation, to hear the
rustle of the leaves, to have flowers
in all varieties around us...” Each
mile carried them closer to the
ragged line of fortified hills barring
their way to Gaza, a city whoseLEFT
Norfolk
territorials
crammed aboard
one of the train
transports that
carried them part
way across the
Sinai, en route
for Palestine in
early 1917.LEFT
Men of the 4th
and 5th Norfolks
in camp in Egypt
shortly before the
advance towards
‘the Holy Land’.
The battalions,
originally
territorial units,
had been largely
rebuilt and
rejuvenated
following heavy
losses at Gallipoli
in 1915.LEFT
Canvas awnings
provide shelter
from the
scorching sun
for an East
Anglian Field
Ambulance unit.