THE GREAT WAR|MIDDLE EAST CAMPAIGN
T
he news was every bit as bad
as Major Tom Purdy feared.
Only worse. From the peace of
a military hospital on the muggy
shores of the Mediterranean, it was
hard to make sense of the disaster
that had overwhelmed his comrades
in arms.
A little under two years had
passed since his battalion had been
decimated during its bloody baptism
of fire on the Gallipoli peninsula.
Now, it appeared, history had
repeated itself. In only its second
major operation of the war, the
rebuilt, rejuvenated unit had been
slaughtered once more in an
ill-starred
assault on the
heavily fortified Turkish positions
barring the way to Gaza and
Ottoman-held Palestine.
The first time – by some minor
miracle – Major Purdy had escaped
wounded from the debacle that left
hundreds from his battalion dead,
injured or missing. This time, he
had been spared by a bout of illness
that had laid him low just eight days
before an action about which he had
already voiced his gravest misgivings.
Yet, grateful though he was
for what seemed another Divine
intervention, he found little comfortin his extraordinary good fortune.
As he listened forlornly to the pitiful
tales of the wounded brought from
the battlefield into Alexandria’s
Ras-el-Tin hospital, all he could
think of was the wretched fate of the
many friends and men he had served
alongside.
The details were still sketchy, but
it was painfully clear that the second
attempt to capture Gaza – launched
on April 19, 1917 – was a disaster.
Writing in his diary four days
later, Purdy scribbled: “120 men of
the Battalion are reported killed,
250-odd men wounded... and 318
men missing. In otherBELOW
Gaza was the
ancient gateway
to Palestine and
an important
bastion on
the road to
Jerusalem. Its
eventual capture
came about after
a third successful
attack in
November 1917.X
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