Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Defeats
- 2 The Turks
- 3 The New Army
- 4 The Arabs
- 5 The French
- 6 The Plan
- 7 Preparations
- 8 Preliminaries
- 9 The Infantry Battle
- 10 The Cavalry Battle
- 11 The East, Haifa, Samakh
- 12 Damascus and Beirut
- 13 Aleppo and Haritan
- 14 The Occupied Territories
- 15 Problems with the Army
- 16 Rebellion in Egypt
- 17 France and Syria
- Conclusion
- Maps
- Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- List of maps
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Defeats
- 2 The Turks
- 3 The New Army
- 4 The Arabs
- 5 The French
- 6 The Plan
- 7 Preparations
- 8 Preliminaries
- 9 The Infantry Battle
- 10 The Cavalry Battle
- 11 The East, Haifa, Samakh
- 12 Damascus and Beirut
- 13 Aleppo and Haritan
- 14 The Occupied Territories
- 15 Problems with the Army
- 16 Rebellion in Egypt
- 17 France and Syria
- Conclusion
- Maps
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
IN December 1917, as soon as Allenby had reported the capture of Jerusalem and thereby the completion of the main task assigned to him by the Prime Minister, he was asked what he would now do to exploit his success. He was then asked to think in terms of first conquering the rest of Palestine, and then of campaigning as far north as Aleppo. He stated in reply to the first enquiry that he felt it ‘essential’ to advance ‘step-by-step’, and then pointed out in a later letter, after Aleppo as a target was restated by Robertson, that such a campaign would require large reinforcements. Along with the need to send away many of his experienced troops to France, a process which began in March, this effectively meant that any serious ambition for the conquest of all of Syria dropped out of the discussions for the time being. It did not necessarily drop out of Allenby's mind, however; a seed had been planted, if it had not already been there.
For Palestine, Allenby suggested in a letter of 20 December that he might, six months later, be able ‘to place force of my present strength north of Nazareth–Haifa line’. This he later defined as ‘only sufficiently far north to afford adequate protection to a lateral road and railway. Say a base from Tiberias to just north of Acre and with right flank refused and covered by the Jordan against possible incursion from Deraa’.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Battle for Syria, 1918–1920 , pp. 73 - 84Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013