Jerusalem Saga
The fourth Saga
The fourth Saga
Thomas Mac Dillon, a lieutenant of the New Zealand and Australian Corps, ANZAC, was actually a pacifist. As Thomas and his brothers walked through their Queensland town, they passed an Australian Imperial Force (AIF) recruiting office.
The officer asked them if they wouldn't like to go and fight in Palestine.
"Palestine, you said? The war is in Europe," Thomas told him.
But the recruiting officer told him that the ANZAC Light Cavalry was recruiting riders for the British campaign in Palestine.
When he told this story to his father, who was the parish priest, he was impressed and saw the liberation of Jerusalem from the Turks as a mission from God.
The next day, his younger brother was absent. Knowing that his father would disapprove, he left before dawn to enlist.
Thomas went to an AIF colonel he knew from church and told him that his brother had enlisted as a minor and that perhaps he could help him return home.
The colonel said that since he had probably lied about his age, he could be prosecuted, so they came to an agreement.
Thomas would go instead of his brother.
The army often chose officers based on their education or social standing, so he was made an officer and left for Egypt two weeks later.
The stalemate on the European Western Front forced the resignation of British Prime Minister H. Asquith, who had led a wartime Liberal coalition that included the Conservatives and the Labour Party. He was succeeded by Lloyd George, who would also be the last Liberal to hold office, and gave the green light to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF), commanded by Lieutenant General Archibald Murray, to invade Palestine, occupied by the German-allied Ottomans.
In June 1917, Murray was replaced by General Edmund Allenby with a simple instruction from Lloyd George: "to ensure the capture of Jerusalem before Christmas".
The road to Jerusalem passed through Gaza, which was heavily fortified and had already resisted two British attempts to take it.
To capture Gaza, the gateway to Palestine from Egypt, in the third battle, Allenby used an innovative deception operation that would make the German commanders of the Ottoman army believe that the attack on Beersheba was merely a decoy for the Ottomans to reinforce their defenses at Beersheba and leave Gaza, the real target of the attack, with few defenses.
Allenby's real intention was to take Beersheba first and then destroy the Turkish army in Gaza, and to do that he needed the Turks not to reinforce the Beersheba defenses and to attack them from where they least expected it, the inhospitable Negev desert.
Thomas was involved in this deception by the head of British intelligence, the adventurer Richard Meinertzhagen, who was to become his mentor.
To take Beersheba, Anzac's troops had to ride for three days without water and in the dust of the khamsin, the hot, dry desert wind so strong they could not see over their horses' heads, to attack the Turkish defenses from the southeast, the most difficult part of the Negev desert to reach.
The capture of Beersheba was the only thing that would guarantee that they would be able to drink after three days, but there were serious delays in other positions and the attack could not begin before 5:00 pm.
They had only one hour to take Beersheba before nightfall.
Although they had no spears or swords, they were ordered to make a dramatic charge against the Turkish trenches, but jump over them and continue the assault to take Beersheba.
The Brigade Commander, General Grant, called the commanders of the Anzac regiments together and said, "Gentlemen, you are fighting for water. There is not a drop between this side of Beersheba and Esani. Use your bayonets as swords. I wish you the best of luck”.
The assault on Beersheba by the Anzac Light Cavalry Brigade will be an iconic and dramatic event.
As the attack began, the Turkish commander asked the German commander in Gaza for reinforcements. He replied, "It's just a decoy to weaken the defenses in Gaza, they won't attack you."
Thomas knew that failure to take Beersheba in the next hour would mean the failure of Allenby's entire offensive in Palestine.