Turks capture Lahej

On the evening of 4 July 1915 Ottoman troops from Yemen broke into Lahej, the capital of a sultanate lying some thirty kilometres north of Aden. It was defended by a small British and Indian force that had reached it at the last moment. After a night of confused fighting the British withdrew towards Aden, losing guns, supplies and water. The gravest casualty was Britain’s loyal ally, the Sultan of Lahej, Ali ibn Ahmad al-Abdali, who was mortally wounded in the darkness.

An expedition in the heat

In the second half of June, shortly after the Turkish attack on Perim, an Ottoman division from Yemen set out for Lahej. It was commanded by Ali Said Pasha, who as early as the winter had led raids on the borderlands of the protectorate. The Sultan asked the British for help. The commander of the Aden garrison, General D. L. B. Shaw, decided to forestall the Turks. On 3 July the so-called Aden Movable Column set out from Aden under Lieutenant-Colonel H. E. A. Pearson: according to the British official history about a thousand rifles, mainly from a territorial battalion from the Welsh county of Brecknock, with small Indian detachments, ten machine guns and ten guns. The Aden Troop, a squadron of Indian cavalry, had already been sent to Lahej earlier.

The column was badly prepared. Some of the Welshmen had arrived from Britain only the day before and were not used to the climate. On the very first day, on the march to the oasis of Sheikh Othman, a few kilometres beyond Aden, several died of the heat and many collapsed from exhaustion. As time was pressing, local motor cars were requisitioned and a handful of infantry was sent in them to Lahej. Only nine or ten cars got through; the rest stuck in the sand. On 4 July at three in the morning the main force set out from Sheikh Othman on the further march of over twenty kilometres. By about seven in the morning the heat had become unbearable. The guns sank into the sand and men collapsed on the road. According to the official history less than half the column reached Lahej.

Night in Lahej

The Turks were meanwhile approaching from the west. The British advanced guard, about 250 men with a battery of light guns, delayed their march, and they entered the town only after dark. Confused fighting, including hand-to-hand combat, went on all night. The Arab camel drivers carrying all the supplies, water and ammunition fled at the first shots, taking the animals and their loads with them. In the darkness Sultan Ali was shot. According to accounts based on British documents he was hit by mistake by one of the soldiers who had come to his aid. He died in Aden on 13 July.

The Turkish strength is hard to determine exactly. According to the testimony of a captured Turkish major it was five weak battalions of about 350 men each, a squadron of mounted infantry and ten mountain guns, plus about four hundred Arabs. Other British wartime accounts spoke of several thousand soldiers, twenty guns and thousands of tribal Arab warriors.

Retreat to Aden

On the morning of 5 July Shaw, who stood with the main force a few kilometres from the town, learnt that he had lost his supplies, his water and two guns, and that the men were collapsing from the heat. He judged that if the column were destroyed, Aden itself, with its port, telegraph cables and coal depots, would be within the Turks’ reach. He ordered a withdrawal. The Turks did not pursue the British, but the march without water was even worse than the march out. According to various accounts between a dozen and about twenty soldiers died of the heat, most of them from the Brecknock battalion. Because the troops were badly shaken, on 7 July Sheikh Othman was also abandoned, although it held the wells from which Aden drew its water. The Turks occupied the oasis and came right up to the outskirts of the town.

The defeat at Lahej was a blow to British prestige in southern Arabia. As early as 13 July General George Younghusband’s 28th Indian Brigade sailed from Egypt for Aden, and on 21 July it retook Sheikh Othman. The British, however, made no attempt to recover Lahej. The Turks held it until the end of the war, and Ali Said Pasha laid down his arms only after the armistice of 1918.