THE British army in Egypt came under attack as soon as the war with Turkey began in 1914. A Turkish army invaded Egypt, hoping that the Egyptians would respond to a call for jihad, but they did not. The Turks were stopped at the obstacle of the Suez Canal, which, not for the last time, acted as a defensive moat, keeping the invader out of Egypt proper. For a time, attention centred on the Allied attack on Gallipoli, but by late 1915 this was clearly a failure; attention shifted back to Egypt and Palestine. The Gallipoli troops were evacuated to Egypt where they recovered and were reinforced, above all, by regiments from Australia and New Zealand and became part of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. The Force then attacked the Turks by the Canal. It took two years to clear the Sinai Peninsula of the enemy, and another eight months to break into Palestine through the Turkish defence lines at Gaza and Beersheba.

Once these Turkish defences in southern Palestine had, at the third attempt, been broken through in October 1917, the invasion of Palestine could begin. By December the subsequent pursuit had taken the British forces as far as the conquest of Jerusalem and the crossing of the Auja River north of Jaffa; at that point weariness, logistical problems, and the Palestinian winter halted further progress.

The two opposing armies had undergone the usual shake-up which happens to peacetime forces when they find themselves fighting rather than parading and occupying.