THE Turkish army which had invaded Sinai in 1915 and had been slowly driven back to Gaza since then was usually commanded in the field by Colonel Kress von Kressenstein, but in overall command of the whole region and its armies was Jamal Pasha. He was governor of Syria, which included Palestine, and as such he was also commander of the armies in his province. He was one of the conspirators who had carried out the coup in 1908 which had seized power in the name of the Young Turks. An able man, but one whose ambition was suspect, he was still a conspirator at heart, with plenty of his own plans for the future. At times he and von Kressenstein were in conflict, both because of their differing priorities and differing loyalties.

Von Kressenstein, whose official position was as Jamal's Chief of Staff, was an able and intelligent officer. He had gained substantial experience on this front over the past year, and had inspired considerable respect among his opponents. He was, however, hampered by an inability always to get the Turks to do what he wanted, and, of course, his loyalties were divided between Germany and his army. He was somewhat bull-headed and tactless, despising everyone on his side and on the enemy’s; his ancestry was among the patrician class of Nuremberg, and his appearance was almost a caricature of the blockheaded, thick-necked, pale-eyed, monocled German officer. He and Jamal shared a mutual personal contempt; this did not help their joint enterprise.

The problem Jamal and von Kressenstein faced in defending Palestine was that they could not be certain what the British would do until they began to move. The obvious magnet was Gaza, but it was just possible that something different might be done. So at the beginning of 1917 Gaza was held by a small garrison of no more than two battalions of infantry and an Austrian mountain battery. The other obvious target for the British was Beersheba, a village with a substantial supply of water about 30 miles to the south-east of Gaza, all the more tempting because it was on the railway which the Turks were using to bring up supplies: this place was held by an infantry battalion and a cavalry regiment.