Capture of Aleppo

On the morning of 26 October 1918 Aleppo, the largest city of northern Syria, with about 150,000 inhabitants before the war, passed into Allied hands. It was taken by the Arab soldiers of Emir Faisal, who broke into the city at night and drove the Turks out after street fighting. At about 10 a.m. the commander of the British 5th Cavalry Division, Major-General Henry Macandrew, drove into Aleppo with armoured cars and was given an enthusiastic welcome. It was the last great city taken in a campaign that had begun almost four years earlier on the Suez Canal. On the same day, near the village of Haritan north of the city, the Turks under Mustafa Kemal halted the British pursuit.

The race north

Allenby had not originally intended to go so far. As late as September he had rejected London’s idea of sending a cavalry raid to Aleppo and preferred to advance in stages. But when his troops occupied Homs without a fight, airmen reported that Hama was clear and that the Turks were hastily evacuating Aleppo, and on 18 October he ordered the 5th Cavalry Division to get there by 26 October. Two days later, when it turned out that the 4th Division, weakened by malaria, could not support it, he cancelled the order and told it to halt at Hama. Macandrew, however, believed that the Turks could not seriously threaten him, and telegraphed back that he was already on the march and intended to go straight for Aleppo. Allenby, who wanted the same, gave his consent. At the head went a column of 24 armoured cars and light patrol cars, the strongest yet fielded on that front, behind it the Indian 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade, and the rest of the division a day’s march behind. The right flank was covered by the Arabs of Sharif Nasir and Nuri al-Said, who advanced along the railway.

On 23 October the armoured cars came upon a fortified position a few kilometres south of Aleppo, held, according to British estimates, by 2,000–3,000 men. Macandrew sent an officer with a white flag, Captain R. H. M. McIntyre, into the city with a demand for surrender. The Turks received him courteously, but the answer from Mustafa Kemal’s chief of staff was short: “The commander of the Turkish garrison of Aleppo does not find it necessary to reply to your letter.”

A night in the streets of Aleppo

On 25 October the 15th Brigade arrived, and Macandrew planned an attack from three sides for the next day: the armoured cars from the south, the Arabs from the east, while the cavalry was to go round the city from the west and cut the road to Alexandretta (İskenderun). The Arabs did not wait. In the afternoon Nuri al-Said attacked the Turkish position south of the city and was repulsed, but in the evening about 1,500 Bedouin broke into Aleppo from the east, supported by sympathisers in the city. Street fighting went on all night, and according to Preston, the historian of the Desert Mounted Corps, the Arabs lost about 60 killed. According to Liman von Sanders’s account the Arabs were driven out, but the Turks withdrew during the night anyway, not only from the city but also from the position south of it. In the morning Aleppo was in Arab hands.

The action at Haritan

At 7 a.m. on 26 October the 15th Brigade, consisting of only two regiments of lancers from the Indian princely states, Jodhpur and Mysore, without artillery, went out onto the road to Alexandretta. It received word that a column of about a thousand men with two guns had left Aleppo heading north, and its commander, Brigadier-General Cyril Harbord, decided to attack. At about 11 a.m. the advanced guard came under fire on a ridge above Haritan, about 13 kilometres north-west of Aleppo. The Mysore Lancers charged a rocky hillock on the Turkish flank, speared about 50 defenders and took 20 prisoners. It then became clear that there were far more Turks than had been thought, at least 3,000, with guns and numerous machine guns. The charge of the Jodhpur Lancers broke down under fire, and their leader, Lieutenant-Colonel H. N. Holden, was killed, the same man who a month earlier had led them into Haifa. The armoured cars sent from Aleppo turned back under fire with their tyres shot through.

The Turks did not exploit their advantage and began to dig in, and during the night, when the British 14th Cavalry Brigade arrived, they withdrew further north. Harbord’s brigade lost about 80 men according to Falls, and 63 according to Preston. According to one of the Arab officers fighting on the Turkish side, the defence was directed by Mustafa Kemal in person. Haritan was the last engagement of the Palestine campaign.

The end of the road

The Turks halted a dozen or so kilometres north of Aleppo, on a line which Kemal manned with four divisions, partly rebuilt from stragglers. Macandrew, faced with an enemy at least six times as numerous according to Falls, did not dare to attack it and waited for the Australian Mounted Division, which left Damascus on 27 October. It did not arrive in time. Five days later, at noon on 31 October, the Armistice of Mudros came into force and the fighting in the Middle East ended. According to Preston, the 5th Cavalry Division covered about 900 kilometres in 38 days and took more than 11,000 prisoners.