WW1 Crossing the sinai and the Negev

I can't get away from WW1 in the Middle East this week.  Another blog about a soldier of the the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.

Infantry crossing the Sinai on the wire road

The veteran of hell-hole Gallipoli marches with his unit along the mesh wire road unrolling across the Sinai towards Ottoman territory.  

Building the railway at Al-Arish

Beneath a relentless sun,  he takes his turn  to guard the  Egyptian Labour force creating the  railway  that slowly chases the temporary road.  Rapidly drying sweat on his face proves a magnet for flies.

A Camel Convoy being loaded.

  He views with thirsty eyes a  thousand-strong convoy of camels plodding past,  bearing  water, food, equipment, iron rails and wooden sleepers to the camp he’d be heading for when night stopped work.

German aircraft over the Negev 1916

The sound of enemy aircraft has him dropping to ground, curling up, his heels digging into his backside, his head beneath his chest. The bombs still find him. His body lies fragmented,  inextricably mixed  with those of  Egyptian labourers.

Although his unrecognisable body may be buried in an unmarked common grave, this soldier  has  his name engraved in stone in his native village and is remembered in his regiment’s records.

The civilian Egyptian labourers, however,who literally paved the way for the Allies eventual victory,  remain  forgotten by all.

Inspired by Siobhan Logan's workshop, organised by Writing East Midlands,  

Soldiering with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force

GAZA 1917

The soldier above was just one of a vast army that brought about victory for the British Commonwealth against the Turkish Ottoman Empire  in WW1.  The soldier's name was Arthur Llewelyn Jones of the Royal Army Medical Corps; the army’s name the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. 

  

By the time of the third battle of Gaza, the Egyptian Expeditionary Force was over 35 000, strong encompassing  divisions from all over the commonwealth. This large  army's  name, however, carried little significance for the British public.  Even after they lost 7000 men in their second attempt to capture Gaza   the British press reported the battle as a minor skirmish.  

After that failed second attempt both sides dug in for the long, hot Palestinian summer, while they waited for reinforcements

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 Most people seem to know about trench warfare in France and Belgium but few have heard of the  Egyptian Expedition's trenches and dugouts. Their dugouts were cave-like holes in the sandstone side of the wadi Ghazzeh.  Their enemies, the Turks had dug themselves into  similar dugouts on the other side of the wadi.  

While over in in France British and German trenches were so close the occupants could throw stones at each other, in Palestine, even at the narrowest point of the wadi, at least 800 yards separated British from Turks.  As the wadi widened while meandering  inland the British cavalry on the eastern  flank were no less than ten miles from the enemy.  

The wadi Ghazzeh  not only marked the boundary between British and Turks  but also separated cultivated land from wilderness.  When Arthur stood on the cliff top above his dugout his eyes rested on  fertile fields and orchards surrounding the then beautiful city of Gaza but, on his side of the wadi there was only uncultivated wilderness.   This wilderness was not the sandy desert of the Sahara but undulating stony ground dotted with plants that could live through summer drought. True, there were sand dunes where land approached sea, but they were more an extension of the beach than desert. Camels plodded through this wilderness from the railhead now 14 miles to their rear, to bring food and ammunition.  Arthur Llewelyn Jones, along with the other foot soldiers, had also marched all the way from the Suez Canal across that wilderness on the wire road laid down for infantry use by the Royal Engineers. While marching he had  helped guard the native labourers working on the Sinai Military Railway that brought  rations from Egypt.

 Lack of water became the British  army's main problem that summer. When the soldiers had first dug in, a winter river  had flowed through the wadi.  It, however, rapidly dried up and the infantry  had to spend their days drilling wells in the wadi bed.  The water they found proved insufficient for the cavalry sections  so squads were given the task of guarding, against aerial attacks,  25 000 camels padding along  the wire road from the railhead each carrying two 15 gallon containers,  When the camels arrived at the wad, the cavalry emptied the water into natural indentations lined with tarpaulin.  

So the army sat out the summer, entertaining  themselves with night forays on the enemy until, at the beginning of November, they fought and won the decisive battle that opened the way to Jerusalem,  Damascus  Alleppo and the Armistice of Mudros.

Arthur Llewelyn Jones, however was not there to witness the victory.  He was killed on 7^th May 1917. A Turkish shell landed directly on his dugout.