Indian Expeditionary Force "F" in Egypt

On 16 November 1914 a convoy carrying the 29th Indian Brigade of Brigadier-General Vaughan Cox reached Suez, at the southern entrance to the Suez Canal. It was the first part of Indian Expeditionary Force “F”, which at the beginning of November had sailed from India for Egypt. The brigade consisted of four battalions: the 14th Sikhs, the 69th and 89th Punjabis and the 1st Battalion of the 6th Gurkha Rifles.

On the way Cox’s soldiers had already seen their first fighting. A few days earlier the convoy had made a detour at the entrance to the Red Sea, and the brigade had destroyed the Turkish fort at Sheikh Said opposite the British island of Perim. Now the battalions were coming ashore at Suez and awaiting their assignment to the defence of the canal. After only five days the 14th Sikhs were taken by rail to Port Said, and on 2 December they reached Kantara, in the northern part of the canal. This sector of the defence later fell to the whole 29th Brigade.

The corps’ other two brigades, the 28th under General George Younghusband and the 30th under General Charles Melliss, arrived in Egypt over the following weeks, until the beginning of December. They were made up of Punjabi, Sikh, Baluchi and Gurkha battalions, in the 28th Brigade mainly from the Frontier Force regiments, which in peacetime guarded India’s North-West Frontier.

For General John Maxwell, commanding the British troops in Egypt, the arrival of the Indian troops was very important. Since the declaration of martial law at the beginning of November the British had been expecting a Turkish attack across the Sinai desert, and there were few regular troops to defend a canal more than 160 kilometres long. The Indian brigades became the backbone of this defence. On 24 December 1914 they were formed into the 10th Indian Division, and at the beginning of February 1915 it was they who repulsed the Turkish attack on the canal.