Start of the British advance on El Arish

The British official chronology of the war records under 15 November 1916 the start of the British advance across Sinai towards El Arish, which was occupied on 21 December. Nothing happened that day, however, that could be called the start of an advance: none of the sources we have been able to consult links 15 November with a particular battle or departure. The British official history of operations in Egypt (MacMunn and Falls, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine) states plainly that in September, October and November there were no operations of any great importance, and the Australian official history (Gullett) adds that from mid-October to the end of December there was no fighting at all on this front. The date of 15 November is thus a nominal start of the last stage of the advance towards the Palestinian border, which began with no departure and no battle. General Sir Archibald Murray’s troops moved forward from Romani in stages, at the pace at which sappers and labourers laid track and pipe in front of them.

Railway, pipes and wire netting

After the Turks had been repulsed at Romani in August 1916, the British War Committee set Murray a new objective: El Arish, a small coastal town in an oasis, about 145 kilometres from Kantara on the Suez Canal. No one, however, expected the troops to get there before winter. In a waterless desert every step forward depended on the railway and on the pipeline carrying Nile water. On 24 September the first ship from America, with 5,000 tons of 12-inch pipes, that is, about 30 centimetres in diameter, arrived at Kantara under a separate naval escort. Laying went quickly, since the railway was already carrying the pipes, but there were no expansion joints, so when water was let into the sun-heated pipes they began to leak badly. According to the official history, by 17 November the pipeline was already filling the prepared reservoirs at Romani. From then on trains no longer had to carry water from the canal, but only distributed it in tank wagons from Romani to the railhead, which on that same day lay about 13 kilometres beyond Salmana, 87 kilometres from Kantara.

A road also grew up alongside the track. A metalled road across the loose dunes could not be built, but it turned out that three or four strips of wire netting laid on the sand and pegged down were enough. Cavalry were not allowed to ride on it, because hooves cut the wire, but infantry and Ford cars moved along it much faster. Behind the columns sprang up trenches, wire entanglements, hutted camps, reservoirs, airfields and wireless stations. Murray wrote in his dispatch that in this way the desert had been “conquered and made habitable”. According to the official history, the forces under his command at this time numbered about 150,000 British soldiers, 6,000 Indian soldiers and 13,000 Egyptian labourers.

Murray’s plans

On 21 October Murray set out his intentions to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The staff in London prescribed a defensive strategy for him for the time being and concentrated its whole attention on the Western Front. Murray believed, however, that he should at least prevent the Turks from withdrawing troops from Syria and Palestine to other fronts. Although instead of the five infantry divisions he had asked for he had four, and incomplete ones at that, he wanted to push on to El Arish and make it a base for operations against the Turks in southern Syria. He reckoned that he faced two Ottoman divisions in Palestine and Sinai, about 16,000 rifles in all. On 12 November he telegraphed that after taking El Arish he intended to harass the enemy in Syria with his mobile forces, in order to draw on himself Turkish troops that would otherwise go to other fronts. At the same time he had to give up men. On 16 November the 8th Mounted Brigade sailed for Salonika, and five yeomanry regiments, without horses since their return from Gallipoli, were re-formed into two infantry battalions and likewise sent to the Salonika front.

On the ground there was calm, but not idleness. The Australian and New Zealand cavalry that had decided the Battle of Romani patrolled the desert and tried to bring under control the Bedouin, among whom the Turks had distributed a good many rifles. According to the official history this succeeded only in part, because the desert nomads were as watchful as beasts of prey and their smoke signals worked more efficiently than the telegraph. In the first half of November a small column under Brigadier-General P. G. Palin dispersed an enemy detachment that had established itself in the Jebel Bishr hills, about 50 kilometres south-east of Suez. In the air the fighting was fiercer. On 11 November Australian and British airmen bombed the airfield and station at Beersheba, and two days later a German aircraft dropped bombs on Cairo in retaliation.

Towards the Palestinian border

The Turks did not defend the road to El Arish. They had abandoned their advanced post at Bir el Mazar as early as September, after a raid by Australian cavalry. On 25 November it was occupied by the Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division, and by 1 December the track already reached beyond Mazar, about 100 kilometres from Kantara. On 7 December Lieutenant-General Sir Philip Chetwode took command of the newly formed Desert Column, which was to make the final leap. Murray’s troops occupied El Arish without a fight on 21 December, and in the following weeks they destroyed the Turkish rearguards at Magdhaba and Rafah, on the very border of Palestine. Sinai, for two years the base of the Turkish expeditions against the Suez Canal, passed into British hands, and the Sinai and Palestine campaign moved onto Palestinian soil.