SYRIA AND EGYPT

After the declaration of war against Turkey, the allied war vessels were concentrated in the Levant and Red Sea to watch the coasts of southern Asia Minor, Syria, and Turkish Arabia. On the Syrian coast there was only one point where a naval force could effectively attack communications between Constantinople and the Turkish forces. This was the little town of Alexandretta, and the shore north to Payaz, a small village. The Turks, if they wished to reenforce their Syrian army must move their men, guns, and stores up a mountainous road over the Amanus from Baghche to Radju, or risk great losses by the coast route between Payaz and Alexandretta. The Turks took this chance, and were successful, for there was no allied warship in the Gulf of Alexandretta to oppose their progress. On December 17, 1914, H.M.S. Doris, a protected cruiser, appeared off Alexandretta and destroyed four bridges on the road and railway between that town and Payaz. The captain of the Doris sent an ultimatum to the Turkish commandant of Alexandretta demanding the surrender of the town, failing which he threatened bombardment of the place. To this the Turks paid no attention. A second ultimatum brought forth a telegraphic message from Djemal Pasha at Damascus, threatening to execute allied subjects interned in that city if any Ottoman noncombatants were killed at Alexandretta by the British guns. The captain of the Doris promptly replied that Djemal Pasha would be held responsible for the execution of allied subjects, if he dared to carry out what he proposed. Thanks to the influence brought to bear on the Porte by the American Embassy at Constantinople, the Ottoman military authorities in Syria became more reasonable, and finally agreed to blow up the two railway engines at Alexandretta themselves, much of the war material having been removed from the town while negotiations were pending.

During the first three months of 1915 there was only one fight of any importance on the coast of the Gulf of Alexandretta. On February 6 a landing party from H.M.S. Philomel was subjected to heavy fire from a concealed trench where eighty Turks were located. Six of the British and New Zealanders who formed the crew of the Philomel were wounded, three mortally. The cruiser promptly avenged their death by steaming in and opening a point-blank fire on the trenches with her 4.7-inch guns. More than fifty of the Turks were killed or badly wounded, the high-explosive shells shattering some to pieces. After this salutary lesson the Turks at Alexandretta did not seek any further encounters with the sailors of allied war vessels.

The British cruisers were late in arriving in the Gulf of Alexandretta, and had lost some opportunities to injure the enemy by their delay, but now they did valiant duty in preventing the Turks from sending any number of men or stores to Aleppo for the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, or the Egyptian border by the coast route, which would greatly have facilitated their movements. They were forced, owing to the vigilance of British warships, to send their troops and munitions over the Giaur Dagh by the pass called the Syrian Gates, between Cilicia and northern Syria, a rough, mountainous region, with bad roads, that made progress extremely difficult.

At the beginning of the allied operations against the Dardanelles, the observation of the Syrian coast was taken over entirely by the French fleet.

On April 19, 1915, the Turkish intrenchments at El Arish were bombarded by the French battleship St. Louis. The Turks had some fifteen or twenty field guns, and replied vigorously, but only one shell hit the battleship, which did no damage. The Turks suffered some losses. In the early part of May the big camp at Gaza, where numbers of Ottoman soldiers were gathered to be reviewed by Djemal Pasha, was shelled by the St. Louis, when some fifty Turks were killed by French shrapnel, and perhaps as many more wounded.

On April 29, 1915, the cruiser D'Entrecasteaux worked effectively on the Cilician coast, shelling the trenches at Taruss, while her hydroplane, dropping a bomb on the railway tracks, blew up trucks laden with high explosives and wrecked the railway station. On May 10 the Turks at El Arish were again shelled by the guns of the Jeanne D'Arc.

On Ascension Day, Alexandretta was the scene of some spirited work, in which the cruiser D'EstrÉes played the leading part. M. de la PassadiÈre, her commander, demanded of the Kaimakam that the German flag should be hauled down that was flying over the German Consulate. The Turkish commander sent no reply, and it was pretended that he was ill or absent. M. de la PassadiÈre having fixed a time limit when the flag must be hauled down, cleared his decks for action and trained the ship's guns on the consulate building. At the expiration of the time limit he opened fire, and the consulate was reduced to ruins. The only casualties were three Turkish soldiers, who, in spite of warning, had remained near the building.

The captain of the D'EstrÉes on May 14, 1915, destroyed a petrol depot which might be used to supply hostile submarines, and which contained over 1,000 cases. A few days earlier a much larger depot containing some 20,000 cases at Makri on the southern coast of Cilicia had been destroyed by the cruiser Jeanne D'Arc.

Budrum on the southwest coast of Asia Minor in the Gulf of Halicarnassus was bombarded for a serious act of Turkish treachery. The captain of the Dupleix had sent two boat crews to parley with the authorities, when they were fired upon by armed Turkish civilians and some soldiers. About twenty French soldiers were killed or captured as a result of this treacherous act, concerning which the Ottoman authorities published a communiquÉ in which they described the incident as the repulse of a landing force. The French losses were quickly avenged, for the Dupleix at once began a bombardment of the Moslem quarter of the town, and continued firing for three hours during which great damage was done.

Armed Turkish inhabitants perpetrated a similar outrage on boat parties on May 18, 1915, at Banias, near Latakia; a tug and a boat belonging to the D'EstrÉes were fired on from roofs and landing places while chasing a merchantman belonging to the enemy that was seeking refuge in the port. As a punishment for the treachery of the civilians, who had posed as peaceable inhabitants until the French boats came into port, part of the town was destroyed by the shells of the D'EstrÉes.

In February, 1915, toward the close of the month, in the Red Sea, the French armored cruiser Desaix landed a reconnoitering party near Akaba, and found the Turks occupying a neighboring village. After receiving reenforcements from the cruiser, the French sailors drove out the fifty or sixty Turks hiding among the houses of the village, killing and wounding a dozen of them, their only casualty being one man, who was slightly wounded. The Red Sea was now patrolled by vessels of the Indian Marine, which were frequently successful in making captures, and in removing mines from the Gulf of Akaba.

On March 21, 1915, H.M.S. Dufferin at Mutweilah on coast of Midian, where an old Turkish fort is located, was the victim of the white-flag trick. Through this treacherous act one British sailor was killed, and an officer and nine other men were wounded. In the middle of May, H.M.S. Northbrook captured a dhow, having on board six German officers belonging to the merchant marine, and ten men who were trying to reach one of the Turkish Red Sea ports to the north. In these waters and in the Levant there were many incidents of this character, insignificant in themselves, but important in the aggregate, since they kept the enemy worried, and created a wholesome fear of allied vigilance.

In the last week of January, 1915, the three Turkish columns advancing on Egypt, the northern marching toward Kantara, the central and main advance headed for Ismailia, and the southern, whose objective was Suez, had been located, and were under surveillance of allied aeroplanes. By January 26 advanced guards of the central and southern columns were discovered near the canal. The central column was at Moia Harab, and some thousand men were also discovered at Wadi Um Muksheib. The southern column was found to be located at Bir Mabeiuk. On this same date British troops engaged the northern Turkish column a few miles east of El Kantara, losing in the skirmish five men and one officer. It was now evident to the British that the Turks were about to begin the main attack on the canal. Consequently the Auckland and Canterbury Battalions were dispatched to Ismailia; the Otago and Wellington Battalions were sent to El Kubri, and the New Zealand Infantry Brigade was sent up by rail from Cairo.

While this was transpiring on land, H.M.S. Ocean, Swiftsure, Clio, and Minerva joined the French warship D'Entrecasteaux and H.M.S. Hardinge and two torpedo boats already stationed in the canal. For three or four days following there were numerous skirmishes between enemy outposts and British patrols, the most effective work being wrought by allied aeroplanes and hydroplanes, which dropped bombs on the Turks as they swept over them and killed many camels and men. Lieutenant Patridge of the Indian Army Reserve of Officers and a French pilot lost their machine outside the British lines through the engine breaking down, and on returning to camp at night were shot and killed by a British picket.

On February 1, 1915, Djemel Pasha's main force occupied Katayib el Kheil, some low hills east of the southern end of Lake Timsah. The Turkish commander had every reason to feel satisfied with the progress he made in bringing his army across the desert in good condition, and with only the loss of a few deserters from among the irregulars. As many Tripolitan, Algerian, and Indian pilgrims had been forced to join the army by the persuasion of the leaders of the irregular troops, the Turkish force had increased in numbers.

Djemel Pasha's plan was to attack the canal with the main force, made up of the Twenty-fifth Division, and all, or part of the Twenty-third Division, which were to force their way between Serapeum and Tussum, while his right wing by a feint attack was to hold the British force at the Ismailia Ferry bridgehead. El Kantara was to be attacked by the northern column, while at the same time to prevent reenforcements from arriving, a demonstration was to be made at Ferdan. The southern column was directed to carry out the same tactics at Kubri, near Suez, which, as was subsequently shown, they did most ineffectually.

In the morning of February 2, 1915, an Indian reconnoitering force met the Turks about four miles east of the Ismailia Ferry. In the desultory action that followed, the British troops tried ineffectually to draw the Turks within range of their main position, and a violent sand storm arising in the afternoon, the engagement ended. The Turks retired and intrenched themselves about 2-½ miles southeast of the Ferry post. On this same afternoon the Twenty-fifth Division of the Turkish army had arrived at a point within four or five miles of the canal. Their scouts were already established on the eastern bank, which is backed by trees, brushwood, and sand hills, affording excellent cover for infantry. A narrow sandy beach, not more than 9 feet wide extends along the foot of the eastern bank. The Turkish advance was made after night had set in, the Twenty-fifth Division, with pontoon companies and engineers of the Fourth and Fifth Army Corps, being first to reach the canal. They brought with them some twenty pontoons, and five or six rafts constructed out of kerosene cans fastened in wooden frames.

The first comers were followed by a part of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, old fighters from Tripoli and the Balkans; "Holy Warriors" as the Arabs called them. About 3 a. m. they had gained the openings along the canal bank, the most northerly of which being within a few hundred yards of the Tussum bridgehead. The remainder of the Seventy-fifth Regiment covered them from the left. Toward Serapeum, some distance south, the Seventy-fourth Regiment was stationed.

The night was dark and thickly clouded, and from the silence on the western bank of the canal the Turks must have believed it to be unoccupied. That they were entirely confident of success was shown in a letter afterward found on a dead Turkish officer and dated February 2. After describing the hard march across the desert, he concluded, "And to-morrow we shall be across the canal on our way to Cairo!"

The Turks crowded on the narrow strip of beach or in the gaps in the banks, and suffered heavily from the fire of this mountain battery. A number of their boats which left the shore were sunk. The Sixty-second Punjabis left their cover under a withering fire, and pluckily charged down the bank to repel the Turkish attempts to make a landing. Toward Tussum, farther south, a field battery belonging to the East Lancashire Division, supported by New Zealanders of the Canterbury Battalion, opened a rattling fire, to which the Turks immediately replied with machine guns and rifles. The small torpedo boat O-43 with its crew of thirteen now took part in the fray by dashing up the canal and landing a few men at a point south of Tussum.

At the first gray light of dawn the action became general, and fresh forces entered the conflict. The Turks on the eastern bank who had occupied the day line of the Tussum post now advanced, protected by artillery, against the bridgehead, while the Serapeum post was assailed by another body of troops. On the canal and Lake Timsah the allied warships opened fire, and continued it for some time. From the slopes of Katayib el Kheil three batteries of Turkish field guns replied, doing considerable damage to every visible target. But they had not taken careful observations of the British positions, and the carefully masked Territorial battery between Tussum and Serapeum was not discovered. This battery, aided by the New Zealanders, almost silenced the Turkish fire from the eastern bank, and enabled them to attend to the reserves of the enemy now seen advancing on the desert to the east. Four of the Territorial gunners were wounded by the Turkish batteries. A pontoon which the Turks had pushed across the canal in the dark was sunk, but until daybreak those who had engineered this work managed to keep afloat, and continued sniping with some damage to British artillery horses until they were rounded up and taken prisoners by some Indian cavalry.[Back to Contents]

Footnote 1: See chapter on "Exploits of the Submarines."[Back to Main Text] Footnote 2: There are two passes named Beskid.[Back to Main Text]