The First Palestine Campaign.

Something may be added now about General Murray’s work in the East.  He commanded in Egypt from January, 1916, to May, 1917.  During that time he dealt with the Gallipoli forces, disorganized and with most of their supplies gone.  He had to reorganize them into a fighting force again and to send them West.  He had to organize and plan the campaign against the Senussi, to be responsible for the internal condition of Egypt, and to defend Egypt from the Turks, then relieved of the Gallipoli operations.  The Turkish attack was beaten off and four thousand prisoners taken, the defences of Egypt were pushed forward through the Sinai desert, water-lines carried up and wire ways laid, and all the vast preparations made by which it became possible to take Palestine.  His two assaults on Gaza failed, but he held the ground he had taken, including the Wadi Ghuzze, which would have been a big natural defence of Palestine.

He was fighting with three divisions very far short of their full strength and several battalions of dismounted yeomanry, four big guns, and thirty aeroplanes, all of old-fashioned type.  His pipe-line was within distance from which it seemed possible to “snap” the Turks at Gaza, but fog delayed the start, and the manoeuvre took too long, and the cavalry fell back from want of water.  The snap was so near a success that they picked up a wireless from the Germans in Gaza to their base saying “Good-bye,” as they were going into captivity.  That was the main point of the story.

According to General Murray’s friends what happened in Palestine was what has happened so often in our history.  A general is given a job to do with insufficient forces, and urged on despite his appeals for a sufficient force.  He fails.  Another commander is appointed, and the new man naturally can exact his own conditions, begins the task with an adequate force, and succeeds.  All this, of course, does not take away a single leaf from Sir Edmund Allenby’s brilliant bays or suggest that General Murray could have done so well.  All that is suggested is that he did not get the same chance.

APPENDIX II

THE INFANTRY AT MINDEN

The six Infantry Regiments engaged at Minden, on August 1, 1759, were: 

12th Foot—­Suffolk Regiment. 20th Foot—­Lancashire Fusiliers. 23rd Foot—­Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 25th Foot—­King’s Own Scottish Borderers. 37th Foot—­Hampshire Regiment. 51st Foot—­King’s Own (Yorkshire Light Infantry).

Tradition tells that in the course of the operations at Minden, the 20th were passing through flower gardens and, while doing so, the men plucked some of the roses and wore them in their coats.  This story was the origin of the “Minden Rose” which is worn annually, on August 1, by all ranks of the Lancashire Fusiliers.

APPENDIX III