Third Battle of Gaza

Background

The Sinai and Palestine campaign had stalled in front of Gaza. Two British attacks on the town, in March and April 1917, had failed, and through the summer both armies dug in along a line that ran from Gaza on the coast inland to Beersheba. By autumn the Ottoman position was a modern fortified line, with trenches and redoubts at Gaza and a chain of field works running east past Hareira and Sheria towards Beersheba.

After the second failure the War Cabinet decided to reinforce the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and try again. General Sir Edmund Allenby arrived in Egypt on 27 June to replace Sir Archibald Murray, and reorganised the force into two infantry corps and a mounted corps. On the other side the German general Erich von Falkenhayn came out to command the new Yildirim Army Group, and fresh divisions came south to the Palestine front.

Allenby adopted a plan already worked out by his staff: rather than batter at Gaza a third time, swing round the open eastern flank, take Beersheba, then roll up the line from the east towards Hareira, Sheria and the coast. The obstacle was water. The open flank was short of water, and one historian judges water 'the determining factor' in the plan. Old wells at Asluj and elsewhere were restored, railway and water pipe were pushed forward as late as possible, and everything depended on taking the wells of Beersheba intact on the first day. The attack had to come before the winter rains.

The armies

Allenby had about 76,000 to 100,000 men, depending on what is counted. Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Chetwode's XX Corps (10th, 53rd, 60th and 74th Divisions) and Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel's Desert Mounted Corps (the Anzac, Australian and Yeomanry Mounted Divisions) formed the striking wing against Beersheba. Lieutenant-General Sir Edward Bulfin's XXI Corps (52nd, 54th and 75th Divisions) faced Gaza, with heavy artillery, a few tanks and Royal Navy monitors offshore. The British outnumbered the Ottomans roughly two to one in infantry and eight to one in cavalry.

Falkenhayn's Yildirim Army Group held the line with nine infantry divisions and one cavalry division, about 33,000 rifles and 260 guns by the later British estimate. Kress von Kressenstein's Eighth Army held the western half: XXII Corps under Refet Bey in Gaza, XX Corps under Ali Fuad Bey around Sheria, and two divisions in reserve. Fevzi Pasha's Seventh Army held the east, including Beersheba, though Erickson argues that Fevzi played little active part early on and the front stayed under Kress's control. Beersheba itself was held by İsmet Bey's III Corps, chiefly two regiments of the 27th Division, about three-quarters of whose men were Arabs; estimates of the garrison run from about 1,000 to under 5,000 rifles. Gaza's defenders had 116 guns.

The battle

Deception and approach (late October). XXI Corps began bombarding Gaza on 27 October and the navy joined on the 29th, while camps opposite Gaza were left standing and lit at night. On the night of 30–31 October some 40,000 men marched over 40 km through the dark to their positions round Beersheba.

Beersheba (31 October). The British guns opened at 05:55. The 60th (London) Division's 181st Brigade took Hill 1070 at about 08:20, and at 12:15 four brigades of the 60th and 74th Divisions went in against the south-western defences, overrunning the trench line on the western side by 13:30. To the east the Anzac Mounted Division fought all day for Tel el Saba, which the Auckland Mounted Rifles finally took at about 15:00. The town and its wells were still in Ottoman hands, sunset was near, and Chauvel's horses had gone a long time without water. Chauvel ordered Brigadier-General William Grant's 4th Light Horse Brigade to take the town before dark. At 16:30 the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments moved off some four miles out, first at a walk, then at the trot and finally the gallop, holding their bayonets as swords. The trenches in front had no wire. The 4th Regiment dismounted at the trenches and fought on foot; about 150 men of the 12th rode straight through into the town. The brigade took between 700 and 1,148 prisoners and ten field guns for 31 or 35 killed. İsmet had already ordered the retreat at 16:00, and his engineers had orders to destroy the water supply; some wells were wrecked, but enough were taken to keep the attack going.

Tel el Khuweilfe (1–6 November). From 1 November the 53rd (Welsh) Division and the mounted troops pushed north into the Judean foothills towards Tel el Khuweilfe. The fighting there was stubborn and inconclusive, and water was so short that some horses went 30 to 48 hours without a drink. But it drew in the Ottoman 19th Division, a cavalry division and much of the 16th and 27th, none of which reached Sheria.

Gaza (night of 1–2 November). XXI Corps attacked the south-western defences of Gaza to pin the garrison. At 23:00 on 1 November the 1/7th Scottish Rifles took Umbrella Hill; from 03:00 on the 2nd the 52nd and 54th Divisions, with tanks, went for El Arish Redoubt and the coastal works towards Sheikh Hasan, which fell with 182 prisoners. Some attacks lost direction in the dark. An Ottoman counter-attack that afternoon was broken by artillery and monitor fire. Gaza was not taken, but two regiments of the Ottoman 7th Division were drawn from Hareira and Sheria to the coast.

Hareira and Sheria (6–7 November). At 04:00 on 6 November the 74th Division attacked east of the railway without a preliminary bombardment and had three works by 06:00. In the afternoon the 60th Division took the Kauwukah system (13:35–14:00) and the 10th (Irish) the Rushdi system by 14:30, for about 1,300 casualties. The 60th reached Sheria station at 17:50, as the Ottomans blew up a large ammunition dump. Tel esh Sheria fell around 06:00 on 7 November and the Hareira redoubt within a few hours; a mounted attack by the 4th Light Horse Brigade at Sheria failed.

Gaza falls (7 November). XXI Corps patrols found Gaza empty around midnight on 6–7 November. The 52nd Division and the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade passed through the deserted town towards Beit Hanun and the Wadi el Hesi, and by evening both Ottoman armies were in retreat.

Aftermath

The pursuit ran on until 9 November but did not cut off the retreat. On 8 November about 200 Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry charged an Ottoman rearguard at Huj and took eleven field guns, but rearguards like it bought the Eighth Army time to escape. It fell back some 20 miles, while the Seventh Army barely gave ground. About 10,000 prisoners and 100 guns had been taken since the advance began. XX Corps alone lost almost 5,500 men and XXI Corps about 2,700 at Gaza; no complete British total appears in my sources. Jerusalem fell on 9 December, and by then, according to the official history, the Ottoman armies had lost some 25,000 men since 31 October.

In Australia the charge at Beersheba became a national legend, often called one of the last successful cavalry charges. A famous photograph of it is probably a later re-enactment staged for the official photographer.

The 'haversack ruse' is still argued over. In the story, a British officer dropped a bloodstained haversack near Beersheba in October with false papers suggesting the main blow would fall at Gaza. Richard Meinertzhagen claimed in his diaries to have devised and carried it out. Brian Garfield's 2007 study argues he did neither, crediting Lieutenant-Colonel J. D. Belgrave with the idea and Arthur Neate with the ride. Whether it worked is also disputed: some accounts say it kept reinforcements from Beersheba, but Kress reportedly thought the papers a plant, and the Ottoman dispositions did not change.

Wargaming it

Third Gaza is three or four different games. Beersheba on 31 October makes a fine single-day scenario at brigade or regiment level: a deliberate infantry attack against wired trenches, a mounted fight for Tel el Saba, and a clock running down to sunset. The British player must take the town before dark or lose the horses to thirst, and the Ottoman player must decide when to give up and blow the wells. The charge itself suits a skirmish or regimental game, with the open eastern trenches and the choice between galloping through and dismounting.

At operational scale, with divisions or brigades as units and a turn per day, water becomes the real resource. Every mounted formation needs a source within reach, and Beersheba's yield caps what the British can do next. The Ottoman player has to choose where to send reserves: to Gaza, to Khuweilfe or to Sheria. Deception can be modelled with hidden deployment and dummy camps opposite Gaza, without the scenario needing to settle the haversack controversy.

The Gaza night attacks, with tanks, monitors and redoubts on the dunes, make a self-contained battalion-level trench fight. What ifs: the wells are destroyed before the charge; Kress switches reserves to Sheria instead of the coast; the Desert Mounted Corps gets round Huj in time to cut off the Eighth Army.

Maps and pictures

Pictures from the time

Photographs by the armies' photographers and the press, and drawings made at the time: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.