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times before stopping” and only then
after he’d suffered a broken thigh.
Another officer, Gervase Birkbeck,
who was hit through both arms
and the right thigh, insisted on
being left behind as the survivors of
his company withdrew. “It can’t be
helped,” he reportedly said. Neither
he nor Harry Jewson were seen alive
again.
Further back, Capt Eustace Cubitt
was scythed down by a burst of
machine gun fire that smashed his
right leg. Moments later, as his
wound was being bandaged up,
a shell burst close by and he was
fatally wounded. As he lay dying,
he whispered to his helper: “If ever
you get back safely, tell my mother
that I am perfectly happy and that
I have trusted in God.” He wasone of three brothers to be killed
while serving with the 5th and was
among more than 350 men from
the two battalions whose lives were
squandered in what the Norfolks’
historian called “this disastrous
attack”. All told, 54th Division’s
losses, which were the heaviest of the
entire British force, amounted to 44%
of the 6,444 men from the Egyptian
Expeditionary Force listed as killed,
wounded or missing.
It was a tragedy compounded by the
“criminal neglect”, as Tom Purdy saw
it, in failing to make adequate efforts
to recover many of the wounded who
were abandoned to die on that God-
forsaken battlefield.
Among the lucky ones who made
it out were Privates Mann, whoreturned with a shattered wrist, and
Beck, who endured the torture of a
night marooned in no-man’s-land
amid “the rising heat and sickening
stench” before rescuers reached him.
For days after, the bodies of the
Norfolks, carpeting the slopes of
Tank Redoubt “as if they had been
washed up on a shelving beach”,
were a haunting reminder of a fatally
flawed plan which, in Beck’s chilling
verdict, was “recklessly, tragically and
wastefully conceived”.
And what of the man who had
refused to cancel the attack that
was foredoomed to failure? When
Major-General Hare toured the
battlefield the day after the fighting
had ended, it was said that “tears
were streaming down his face”.RIGHT
& BELOW
For years
after the war,
April 19 was
commemorated
as Gaza Day in
Norwich with
a parade and
wreath-laying
ceremony at
the city’s war
memorial.RIGHT
The Gaza War
Cemetery, where
many of the men
who fell during
the Second Battle
are buried or
commemorated.