Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby

Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, (23 April 1861 – 14 May 1936) was a senior British Army officer and imperial governor. He fought in the Second Boer War and in the First World War, in which he led the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the conquest of Palestine.

The British succeeded in capturing Beersheba, Jaffa, and Jerusalem from October to December 1917. His forces occupied the Jordan Valley during the summer of 1918, then went on to capture northern Palestine and defeat the Ottoman Yildirim Army Group's Eighth Army at the Battle of Megiddo, forcing the Fourth and Seventh Army to retreat towards Damascus. Subsequently, the EEF Pursuit by Desert Mounted Corps captured Damascus and advanced into northern Syria.

During this pursuit, he commanded T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), whose campaign with Faisal's Arab Sherifial Forces assisted the EEF's capture of Ottoman territory and fought the Battle of Aleppo, five days before the Armistice of Mudros ended the campaign on 30 October 1918. He continued to serve in the region as High Commissioner in Egypt from 1919 until 1925.

Early life

Allenby was born on 23 April 1861, the son of Hynman Allenby and Catherine Anne Allenby (née Cane) and was educated at Haileybury College. His father owned in Norfolk and Felixstowe House, at Felixstowe, then a fishing village. This was a summer home until the family settled there permanently after Hynman Allenby's death in 1878.

Allenby had no great desire to be a soldier, and tried to enter the Indian Civil Service but failed the entry exam.

He sat the exam for the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1880 and was commissioned as a subaltern, with the rank of lieutenant, in the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons on 10 May 1882. He joined his regiment in South Africa later that year, taking part in the Bechuanaland Expedition of 1884–85. After serving at the cavalry depot in Canterbury, he was promoted to captain on 10 January 1888 and then returned to South Africa.

thumb|left|Officers, many of whom later became generals, at the Staff College, Camberley, 1897. Sat in the second row, on the extreme left, is Captain Allenby.

Allenby returned to Britain in 1890 and he sat – and failed – the entry exam for the Staff College at Camberley. Not deterred, he sat the exam again the next year and passed. Captain Douglas Haig of the 7th Hussars also entered the college at the same time, thus beginning a rivalry between the two that ran until the First World War. Allenby was more popular with fellow officers, even being made Master of the Draghounds in preference to Haig who was the better rider; Allenby had already developed a passion for polo. Their contemporary James Edward Edmonds later claimed that the staff at the Staff College thought Allenby dull and stupid but were impressed by a speech that he gave to the Farmers' Dinner, which had in fact been written for him by Edmonds and another.

He was promoted to major on 19 May 1897 and was posted to the 3rd Cavalry Brigade, then serving in Ireland, as the brigade major in March 1898.

Second Boer War

Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in October 1899, Allenby returned to his regiment, and the Inniskillings embarked at Queenstown and landed at Cape Town, Cape Colony, later that year. He took part in the actions at Colesberg on 11 January 1900, Klip Drift on 15 February 1900 and Dronfield Ridge on 16 February 1900, and was mentioned in dispatches by the commander-in-chief, Lord Roberts on 31 March 1900.

Allenby was appointed to command the squadron of New South Wales Lancers, who were camped beside the Australian Light Horse outside Bloemfontein. Both men and horses suffered from the continuous rain and men with cases of enteric fever were taken away every day. Allenby soon established himself as a strict disciplinarian, according to A. B. Paterson even imposing a curfew on the officers' mess.

Allenby participated in the actions at Zand River on 10 May 1900, Kalkheuval Pass on 3 June 1900, Barberton on 12 September 1900 and Tevreden on 16 October 1900 when the Boer General Jan Smuts was defeated. He was promoted to local lieutenant-colonel on 1 January 1901, and to local colonel on 29 April 1901. In a despatch dated 23 June 1902, Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief during the latter part of the war, described him as "a popular and capable Cavalry Brigadier". For his services during the war, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the South Africa honours list published on 26 June 1902, and he received the actual decoration from King Edward VII during an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 24 October 1902.

In between wars

thumb|right|British and French officers at French manoeuvres, 1914. Major General Allenby is sat in the front row on the extreme left, with Lieutenant General [[James Grierson (British Army officer)|Sir James Grierson to his left.]]

Allenby returned to Britain in 1902 and became commanding officer of the 5th Royal Irish Lancers in Colchester with the substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel on 2 August 1902, and the brevet rank of colonel from 22 August 1902. On 19 October 1905 he was promoted to the substantive rank of colonel and to the temporary rank of brigadier general when he assumed command of the 4th Cavalry Brigade. He was promoted to the rank of major-general on 10 September 1909 and was appointed inspector of cavalry on 25 April 1910 due to his extensive cavalry experience. He was nicknamed "The Bull" due to an increasing tendency for sudden bellowing outbursts of explosive rage directed at his subordinates, combined with his powerful physical frame. Allenby stood with a barrel chest and his very bad temper made "The Bull" a figure who inspired much consternation among those who had to work under him.

First World War

During the First World War, Allenby initially served on the Western Front. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) was sent to France, under the command of Field Marshal Sir John French. It consisted of four infantry divisions (the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th, with the 4th and 6th being held in Britain) and one cavalry division, the latter commanded by Allenby. The cavalry division first saw action in semi-chaotic circumstances covering the retreat after the Battle of Mons opposing the German Army's invasion of France. One of Allenby's subordinates claimed at the time: "He cannot explain verbally, with any lucidity at all, what his plans are". When a headquarters officer asked why Brigadier-General Hubert Gough's cavalry brigade was miles from where it was supposed to be, he received the reply: "He told me he was getting as far away from the Bull as possible. It was a most scandalous affair, and he was in an almost open rebellion against Allenby at the time". The division distinguished itself under Allenby's direction in the subsequent fighting, with minimal resources at its disposal, at the First Battle of Ypres.

Western Front

Allenby was promoted to temporary lieutenant general on 10 October 1914. As the BEF was expanded in size to two armies, he was rewarded by being made commander of the Cavalry Corps. On 6 May 1915, Allenby voluntarily left the Cavalry Arm to take up command of V Corps which was engaged at that moment in severe fighting at the Second Battle of Ypres. Commanding a corps seemed to make Allenby's bad temper even worse where anything from a split infinitive in a staff paper to discovering a corpse in the field without the tin helmet that Allenby ordered his men to wear sent Allenby off into a rage.

In October 1915, Allenby was promoted to the temporary rank of general to lead the Third Army of the BEF, being made lieutenant general (substantive rank) on 1 January 1916 "for distinguished service in the Field". In the mid-summer of 1916, he was the army commander in support of the launch of the Battle of the Somme, with responsibility for the abortive assault by Third Army troops on the trench fortress of the Gommecourt salient, which failed with severe casualties to the units under his command in the operation. By this time in 1916, Archibald Wavell, who was one of Allenby's staff officers and supporters, wrote that Allenby's temper seemed to "confirm the legend that 'the Bull' was merely a bad-tempered, obstinate hot-head, a 'thud-and-blunder' general". However, despite Allenby's rages and obsession with applying the rules in a way that often seemed petty, Allenby's staff officers found an intellectually curious general who was interested in finding new ways of breaking the stalemate. J. F. C. Fuller called Allenby "a man I grew to like and respect", a man who always asked his staff if they had any new ideas about how to win the war.</blockquote>

Many of Allenby's officers believed that he was incapable of any emotion except rage, but he was in fact a loving father and husband who was intensely concerned about his only child, Michael, who was serving at the front. Allenby rejected the normal week-long bombardment of the German trenches before making an assault, instead planning on a 48-hour bombardment before the assault went ahead. As the Zero Hour for the offensive at 5:30 am on 9 April 1917 approached, Allenby was thus unusually worried as he knew his entire career was in the balance. In a letter to his wife on 10 April 1917, Allenby wrote:

There were weeks of heavy fighting during the Third Army's offensive at the Battle of Arras in the spring of the 1917, where an initial breakthrough had deteriorated into trench-fighting positional warfare—once more with heavy casualties to the Third Army's units involved. Allenby lost the confidence of the BEF's commander, Haig. He was promoted to substantive full general on 3 June 1917, "for distinguished service in the Field", but he was replaced at the head of the Third Army by Lieutenant-General Sir Julian Byng on 9 June 1917 and returned to England.

Egypt and Palestine

thumb|Drawing of Allenby from journal "The War"

British change of grand strategy

The British War cabinet was divided in debate in May 1917 over the allocation of British resources between the Western Front and other fronts, with Allied victory over Germany far from certain. George Curzon and Maurice Hankey recommended that Britain seize ground in the Middle East. David Lloyd George also wanted more effort on other fronts. Previously, leaders had been concerned that taking over Palestine would divide it and leave it for other countries to take, but repeated losses to the Turkish Army and the stalled Western Front changed their minds.

Lloyd George wanted a commander "of the dashing type" to replace Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray in command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF). Jan Smuts refused the command (late May) unless promised resources for a decisive victory. Afterwards, Allenby kept his grief to himself and his wife, and instead threw himself into his work with icy determination, working very long hours without a break. The logistics of getting water to the soldiers and through the desert is thought to be the biggest challenge and accomplishment Allenby made in the Middle East campaign. Allenby also saw the importance of good medical treatment and insisted that proper medical facilities be created to treat all of the diseases common to the Middle East like ophthalmia and typhoid fever.

Due to his having seemingly fulfilled the prophecy which held that the Turks would leave Palestine "only when a prophet of God brought the Nile to Palestine," Arabs dubbed Allenby "Allah an-nabi, a prophet of God." Allenby moved the EEF's GHQ from the Egyptian capital city to Rafah, nearer to the front lines at Gaza, and re-organized the disparate forces of the EEF into a three primary corps order of battle: XX, XXI, and the Desert Mounted Corps. He also approved the use of Arabic irregular forces which were operating at that time to the Turkish Army's open left flank in the Arabian interior, under the direction of a young British Army intelligence officer named T. E. Lawrence. He sanctioned £200,000 a month for Lawrence to facilitate his work amongst the tribes involved.

In early October 1917, Robertson asked Allenby to state his extra troop requirements to advance from the Gaza–Beersheba line (30 miles wide) to the Jaffa–Jerusalem line (50 miles wide), urging him to take no chances in estimating the threat of a German-reinforced threat. Allenby's estimate was that he would need 13 extra divisions (an impossible demand even if Haig's forces went on the defensive on the Western Front) and that he might face 18 Turkish and 2 German divisions. Yet, in private letters, Allenby and Robertson agreed that sufficient British Empire troops were already in place to take and hold Jerusalem.

Having reorganised his regular forces, Allenby won the Third Battle of Gaza (31 October – 7 November 1917) by surprising the defenders with an attack at Beersheba. The first step in capturing Beersheba was to send out false radio messages prompting the Turkish forces to think Britain was going to attack Gaza. After that, an intelligence officer, by the name of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, rode right up to the Turkish line, barely evading capture. In the fray, he dropped a bloodstained bag, smeared with horse blood, with fake military plans in it. The plans falsely described how the British force was on its way to capture Gaza. Instead, they went through with the capture of Beersheba. Allenby reported

alt=A Memorial to General Allenby in Beer Sheva.|thumb|A Memorial to General Allenby in Beer Sheva.

His force captured the water supply there, and was able to push onward through the desert.

The capture of Jerusalem

Allenby's official proclamation of martial law following the fall of Jerusalem on 9 December 1917 read as follows: