British offensive in Palestine begins

On 24 March 1917 Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Dobell’s Eastern Force received its operation orders for the attack on Gaza and resumed its advance north-east along the Mediterranean coast. The Welsh 53rd Division moved from Rafah to Khan Yunis, and the 54th Division from Sheikh Zuweid to Rafah. This was the first step of the British offensive in Ottoman Palestine. Earlier, on 9 January at Rafah, the mounted troops of the Desert Column had merely crossed the frontier for a single day to destroy a Turkish post, and had returned to Sinai. Now the troops of General Archibald Murray, in command of all the forces in Egypt, were going into Palestine with the intention of staying there for good.

Railway and water

The pace of the advance, as throughout the time in Sinai, was set by the railway, built from the Suez Canal close behind the troops, and by the water pipeline. At the end of February the Desert Column occupied Khan Yunis, abandoned by the Turks; on 1 March the railway reached Sheikh Zuweid, and on 21 March a station was opened at Rafah, from where the track was already running on towards Khan Yunis. Water on the spot was better than in the desert: at Khan Yunis a well was found which, once a pump had been installed, yielded it almost without limit. Wheeled transport, however, was still lacking. There were as yet no roads for motor vehicles, so the infantry was given horse-drawn transport and the mounted divisions camels. According to the British official history (George MacMunn and Cyril Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine, vol. I), the army could fight at most about 20 miles from railhead.

The Turks, too, had fallen back. At the beginning of March Royal Flying Corps airmen reported that they were abandoning the strongly fortified position at Shellal, which Murray had been about to attack. The commander of the Turkish forces on this front, the Bavarian Friedrich Kress von Kressenstein, would have preferred to defend it, but did not have enough men to hold Shellal and cover Gaza at the same time. His troops took up a line Gaza – Tel el Sheria – Beersheba. The Gaza garrison was separated from the main body, which stood a dozen or more kilometres east and south-east of the town, and the British concluded that the situation resembled the one at Rafah. Murray wrote in his despatch that there were clear signs that the enemy intended to abandon the whole line without a fight, and this had to be prevented.

The plan

Dobell proposed that Gaza be taken on the march by Lieutenant-General Philip Chetwode’s Desert Column: two mounted divisions and the 53rd Infantry Division. Murray approved the plan on 19 March and set it three objectives: to seize the line of the Wadi Ghazze, a broad, dry watercourse halfway between Deir al-Balah and Gaza, to cover the further construction of the railway; to prevent the enemy from slipping away without a fight; and finally to capture Gaza and its garrison by a swift blow. The troops approached slowly and in stages, mainly by night, so as not to betray the concentration to German airmen. On 20 March Dobell moved his headquarters to Rafah, and on 21 March a mounted brigade pushed forward to Khan Yunis, where the groves concealed it. According to Murray’s despatch, on 23 March the mounted troops had already approached the very outskirts of Gaza.

The British, however, had weaknesses. Their air arm was losing its superiority: on 20 March Murray reported to London that new German aircraft, clearly better than his best machines, were appearing almost daily, and asked for at least four modern fighters to be sent. Artillery and ammunition were also lacking, because all the best went to France. Kress, warned by his airmen that the attack would be directed at Gaza, reinforced the town’s garrison and brought up reinforcements.

On the evening of 25 March the Desert Column received its orders, and the divisional and brigade commanders inspected the crossings over the Wadi Ghazze under the cover of New Zealand and Australian patrols. By midnight the mounted troops and the 53rd Division stood at Deir al-Balah, the 54th Division at In Seirat and the 52nd Division at Khan Yunis. The attack was planned for dawn on 26 March. Murray arrived by train at El Arish on the evening of 25 March, where he set up an advanced headquarters in a railway carriage.