ALLENBY’S MILITARY MEDICINE Life and Death in World War I Palestine eran dolev.indd 1 4/19/2007 10:35:13 eran dolev.indd 2 1/24/2007 12:55:44 ALLENBY’S MILITARY MEDICINE Life and Death in World War I Palestine ERAN DOLEV eran dolev.indd 3 4/19/2007 10:35:37 Published in 2007 by I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com In the United States of America and Canada distributed by Palgrave Macmillan a division of St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10010 Copyright © 2007 Eran Dolev The right of Eran Dolev to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. International Library of Colonial History 6 ISBN: 978 1 84511 290 5 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Printed and bound by Thomson Press India Limited From camera-ready copy edited and supplied by the author Contents Foreword by Major General Louis Lillywhite vii Preface xi Acknowledgements xiii Prologue 1 Chapter 1: Military Medicine during the Great War 5 Chapter 2: The Desert Campaigns: From the Suez Canal to the Gates of Gaza, 1915–1917 17 Chapter 3: General Allenby: The Man and his Attitude towards Military Medicine 41 Chapter 4: The Third Battle of Gaza: Victory at Last 56 eran dolev.indd 5 4/19/2007 10:35:52 vi ALLENBY’S MILITARY MEDICINE Chapter 5: e Long Way to Jerusalem 80 Chapter 6: Raids across the Jordan 106 Chapter 7: A Different Battle: e Anti-Malaria Campaign, Summer 1918 129 Chapter 8: e Battle of Megiddo: e Last Offensive 140 Chapter 9: e Last Phase: e Riders and the Apocalypse 161 Epilogue 177 Notes 181 Index 199 Appendix 204 eran dolev.indd 6 4/25/2007 10:25:04 FOREWORD by Major General Louis Lillywhite MBE MSc MB BCh MFOM his book is truly the result of a major piece of research, worthy of publication for the references alone. Although it has a medical theme, the story it tells has a much wider appeal. A glance at the TChapter headings indicates its relevance to those with a specific interest in General Allenby, and in military or medical history as well as to those with an interest in why things are as they are in the Middle East. However, the choice of anecdotes, the clarity of the descriptions, and the examination of the various participants also make it a book worthy of the attention of the casual reader. Eran Dolev guides the reader through the story in a manner that will hold the attention both of those without prior knowledge of the events described and those whose subject areas it covers. In an illustrious and distinguished military career, the author has had two of the qualities that are so important in Medical Commanders, the ability to see issues from the perspective of the overall Military commander and the ability to balance the medical requirement with the realities of a military campaign. A Medical Commander has during the planning of an operation to on the one hand to fight to obtain the necessary resources and having obtained them to ensure that they are at the right place at the right time. However, the Medical Commander also has to take care that his demand for resources and priority is such that it does not compromise the outcome of a particular battle or campaign, for to do so may result in casualties being eran dolev.indd 7 1/24/2007 12:55:45 viii ALLENBY’S MILITARY MEDICINE well cared for but the battle being lost, the military medical equivalent of “the operations was successful but the patient died”. Nowhere do medical commanders face this dilemma more than in campaigns involving significant advances. This book contains many examples of where this dilemma occurred and Eran Dolev has managed to bring these dilemmas to life. Eran Dolev asks, I think rhetorically, in the final paragraph of the book whether the lessons are relevant to future wars. To those Commanders responsible for planning some of the campaigns of the late 20th and early 21st Century, the challenges faced, the issues arising, the arguments advanced, are all familiar. Indeed, the debate described in the book on the appropriateness or otherwise of forward surgical teams has continued unabated since their first use by the Australians under Allenby in 1917. The proponent and detractors of the argument on forward surgery in 1917 could almost have been present in person during the first and second Gulf Wars when the very same issue was debated with the very same emotion! Allenby’s campaign depended critically on logistic operations. Logistics is critical to success in most operations but is more so in desert operations when all that an Army needs for its survival has to be taken with it. Weaved in amongst the medical logistic challenges are described the approach to wider logistic planning and the achievements, such as building railway lines and pipelines behind the advancing Army, would bring credit on any modern day General. But planning is one thing and execution is another. It seems that Allenby was blessed by subordinate commanders who for the most part could understand their orders, were prepared to find ways to implement them, could respond appropriately when things went wrong and were able to improvise when faced with the unexpected. Again, many of the problems, such as blocked evacuation routes or medical units not where they were expected to be, would be recognised by modern day practitioners, even the unexpected (which to those with an interest in military history would not perhaps have been unexpected). In this category are the medical problems faced by Allenby’s forces as they occupied civilian areas or came across demoralised or abandoned enemy inured that were faced, for example, by British Forces after the battle for Basra in the Second Gulf War. Allenby’s campaign was fought at a time when we were not as in control of infectious diseases as we are now, and thus some of the challenges that he faced are not as familiar to us. There are however similarities. The argument over whether any preventive medicine should be taken to minimise malaria eran dolev.indd 8 1/24/2007 12:55:45 FOREWORD ix has merely been replaced by arguments over which medication should be taken and it might be that the problems faced at the end of the campaign as a result of the influenza pandemic of that time are soon to be faced by today’s Commanders. Campaigns are of course rarely isolated affairs and are usually part of wider geopolitical events and the campaign in Palestine was no different. At its commencement the campaign was very much a backwater, overshadowed by the battles in Europe and by the defeat in the Dardenelles and with an enemy who seemed to be content with simply maintaining the Status quo. We gain an insight from the book at how a combination of initial success by a local commander prepared to take the initiative and local politics interacted to raise the global profile of the Theatre of operations, in turn leading to additional national resources being put into the campaign. In so doing the campaign led directly to the British mandate in Palestine which in due course led to the current political boundaries in that part of the Middle East. As one reaches the end of the book, one is prompted to ask oneself the question “If Allenby had not triumphed, and had not completely defeated the Turkish Armies and taken Jerusalem, would there today be an Israeli State?” Eran Dolev has dissected a campaign whose success depended in large part on the medical contribution, and which arguably led in due course to the existence of Israel. The book is set in an area of historic and contemporary interest, addresses medical issues that remain relevant today, describes an outstanding leader winning a major victory, and brings it all alive with carefully selected anecdotes. This then is a book worth reading. eran dolev.indd 9 1/24/2007 12:55:45 eran dolev.indd 10 1/24/2007 12:55:45 Preface was born in the city of Tel Aviv, Israel, then Palestine under the British Mandate. One of the main streets of my home town was Allenby Street. As a child I often wondered who was this foreigner after whom the street Ihad been named. The more I learned about the period of the Great War in the Middle East and the man himself, the more I became fascinated by the subject in general and with Allenby in particular. Already as a youngster I could visit various places which had been important battlefields during the Palestine campaigns. I now jump forward to the Six Days War in June 1967. The mission of our Airborne brigade was to participate in the capture of the town of Gaza and continue into the Sinai Desert. I served as the medical officer of the brigade and had to plan the medical treatment and evacuation of our expected casualties and later to execute the plan on the actual battlefield.