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The Battle of Megiddo (Turkish: Megiddo Muharebesi) took place between 19 September and 1 October 1918, in what was then the northern part of Ottoman Palestine and parts of present-day Syria and Jordan. It is less commonly known in English as the Battle of Armageddon and in Turkish as the Nablus Hezimeti ("Rout of Nablus"), the Nablus Yarması ("Breakthrough at Nablus") or the Battle of the Nablus Plain.[2] The battle, and its subsequent exploitation, were the final engagements in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War.
The Allied Egyptian Expeditionary Force, composed mainly of British, Indian, Australian and New Zealand troops, with a small French and Armenian contingent, launched an offensive against the Ottoman Yildirim Army Group (which contained a German contingent) following several months of preparation. After the Ottoman forces were distracted by attacks against their lines of communication by irregular forces of the Arab Revolt, part of their front was overrun by British and Indian infantry after a short but heavy artillery bombardment. Indian and Australian mounted divisions rode through the breach in the Ottoman lines and captured communication centres deep in the Ottoman rear areas, while British and Australian aircraft paralysed the Ottoman headquarters and prevented Ottoman troops rallying or escaping encirclement. Once the main Ottoman armies were destroyed, Allied mounted troops and Arab insurgents advanced to Damascus, effectively ending the campaign.
General Edmund Allenby, the British commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, took the name of this battle as his title when he was ennobled after the war, becoming the First Viscount Allenby of Megiddo. His operations during the Battle of Megiddo succeeded at very little cost, in contrast to many offensives during the First World War, and were widely praised in several military writings. Allenby relied on deception and surprise rather than brute force, and made significant use of both cavalry and aircraft, a historically rare combination. He also incorporated the irregular forces of the Arab Revolt into his operations, despite divergent political goals.
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After capturing Jerusalem at the end of 1917 and Jericho in February 1918, Allenby's forces were greatly weakened when many of his infantry units (two complete divisions, 24 infantry battalions from other divisions and nine regiments of dismounted Yeomanry) were sent to reinforce the British armies on the Western Front after the Germans launched their Spring Offensive on 21 March. Allenby's tank force was also shipped off to France, and would not return before the Armistice on the Western Front came into effect. In spite of this, Allenby tried to maintain the pressure on the Ottoman armies by twice sending mounted formations across the Jordan to capture Amman and Es Salt and to cut the Hejaz Railway. Both attacks were defeated, although Allenby retained a small bridgehead across the Jordan north of the Dead Sea.
At the same time (effectively from 8 March), the Ottoman command changed.[3] The highest level Ottoman headquarters in Palestine was the Yıldırım Army Group. (Yıldırım translates roughly as "thunderbolt", and the name was taken from the nickname of Sultan Bayezid I.)[4] The Army Group had originally been formed for the purpose of recapturing Baghdad which had been captured by British forces on 11 March 1917, but had been diverted to Palestine where the British threatened the front. The Army Group's first commander was the German General Erich von Falkenhayn, who wished to continue a policy of "yielding defence", being prepared to give ground while inflicting casualties and delay, rather than hold positions at all costs. He was also prepared to fall back to shorten his lines of communication and reduce the need for static garrisons. However, he was unpopular among Ottoman officers, mainly because he relied almost exclusively on German rather than Turkish staff officers,[5] and was blamed for the defeats at Gaza and Jerusalem. He was replaced by another German General, Otto Liman von Sanders, who had commanded the successful Ottoman defence during the Gallipoli Campaign.[3] Von Sanders reasoned that continued retreat in Palestine would demoralise the Ottoman troops, ruin their draught animals, encourage the Arab Revolt to spread further north into the Ottoman rear areas and also lead to all the Ottoman forces to the south in the Hejaz being finally isolated.[6] His forces halted their retreat and dug in to resist further advances by the weakened British, even regaining some ground near the Jordan as Allenby's two raids on Amman were repulsed.[7]
Over the following summer, Allenby's forces were built back up to full strength. Two Indian cavalry divisions, the 4th Cavalry Division and 5th Cavalry Division, were transferred to Palestine from the Western Front where there was comparatively little use for mounted troops, and were reorganised to incorporate some of Allenby's British Yeomanry units.[8] Two British Indian Army infantry divisions, the 3rd (Lahore) Division and the 7th (Meerut) Division, were transferred from the Mesopotamian Campaign to replace two British divisions which had been sent to the Western Front.[8] Four of Allenby's other depleted infantry divisions were rebuilt with newly-raised units from India, with three Indian battalions to every British battalion. The remaining infantry division, the 54th (East Anglian) Division, retained all its British units but Allenby was informed by the War Office that this division was required to supply reinforcements for the Western Front and could not be allowed to incur heavy casualties. A brigade-sized detachment of French North African and Armenian troops was attached to the division.[9]
For several months, the RAF had enjoyed superiority in the air and did not need reinforcements, but at Allenby's request more planes and men were supplied.
As this reorganisation proceeded, most of what action there was took place east of the Jordan where the Arab Northern Army (part of the Arab Revolt) was operating under the overall leadership of the Emir Feisal. Its regular soldiers, commanded by Jaafar Pasha, maintained a blockade of the Ottoman garrison at Ma'an after a failed attack (the Battle of Al-Samna) earlier in the year. Most of these regulars were former Arab conscripts into the Ottoman Army who had deserted or had changed sides after having been taken prisoner. Meanwhile, irregulars forayed from Aqaba against the Hejaz Railway, often accompanied and inspired by Lawrence of Arabia and other British liaison officers. West of the Jordan, the Ottomans and Germans themselves mounted a brief attack at Abu Tellul near the river, but were defeated by Australian Light Horse units with heavy casualties to a German Jäger unit.
Allenby intended to break through at the western end of his front, near the Mediterranean coast, where the terrain was suitable for large-scale cavalry manoeuvres and where British troops had seized crossings over a stream, the Nahr al-Auja, which was almost the only natural defensive position on this part of the front, during the last phases of the fighting in 1917 and early 1918. Once the breakthrough had been achieved, Allenby intended that the mounted troops of the Desert Mounted Corps would pass through the resulting gap in the Ottoman front lines, reach the passes through the Carmel Range before Ottoman troops could forestall them, and seize the communication centres of Al-Afuleh and Beisan. These two communication centres were within the 60 miles (97 km) radius of a strategic cavalry "bound", the distance mounted units could cover before being forced to halt for rest and to obtain water and fodder for the horses. If they were captured, the lines of communication for all Ottoman troops west of the Jordan would be cut.[10]
To make this breakthrough and exploitation easier, Allenby made laborious efforts to deceive the Turks as to his intentions, as he had done at the Battle of Beersheba. To fix the Turks' attention on the wrong end of the front, the detached Australian and New Zealand Mounted Division in the Jordan Valley simulated the activity of the entire mounted corps. Troops marched openly down to the valley by day, and were secretly taken back by lorry at night to repeat the process the next day. Vehicles or mules dragged harrows along tracks to raise dust clouds, simulating other troop movements. Dummy camps and horse lines were constructed[6] and a hotel in Jerusalem was ostentatiously commandeered for an Expeditionary Force headquarters. Meanwhile, a British battalion of the Imperial Camel Corps joined Arab irregulars in a raid east of the Jordan. They first captured and destroyed the railway station at Mudawara, finally cutting the Hejaz Railway,[11] and then mounted a reconnaissance near Amman, scattering corned beef tins and documents as proof of their presence.[12] Lawrence sent agents to openly buy up huge quantities of forage in the same area. As a final touch, British newspapers and messages were filled with reports of a race meeting to take place in Gaza on 19 September, the day on which the attack was to be launched.
West of the Jordan, the Allied forces enjoyed undisputed air supremacy by this time. The squadrons of the Royal Air Force and the Australian Flying Corps outnumbered and outclassed the Ottoman and German aircraft detachments in Palestine.[13] During the weeks before the September attack, enemy aerial activity dropped markedly; although during one week in June hostile aeroplanes crossed the British front lines 100 times, mainly on the tip–and–run principle at altitudes of 16,000–18,000 feet (4,900–5,500 m), by the last week in August this number had dropped to 18 and during the three following weeks of September it was reduced to just four enemy aircraft. During the 18 days before the start of the battle, only two or three German aircraft were seen flying.[14] Ottoman and German reconnaissance aircraft could not even take off without being engaged by British or Australian fighters, and could therefore not see through Allenby's deceptions, nor spot the true Allied concentration which was concealed in orange groves and plantations. By chance, the Royal Engineers had established a bridging school on the Nahr-al-Auja much earlier in the year, so the sudden appearance of several bridges across it on the eve of the assault did not alert the Ottoman front-line observers.[13]
Lacking intelligence on the Allied plans and dispositions, Liman was forced to dispose his forces evenly along the entire length of his front. Although the proportions of artillery and especially of machine guns (273 light and 696 heavy)[15] were unusually high, almost the entire Ottoman fighting strength was in the front line. As tactical reserves, there were only two German regiments west of the Jordan, and an understrength Ottoman cavalry division near Amman. Further back there were only some "Depot Regiments", not organised as fighting units, and scattered garrisons and line of communication units. After four years of warfare, most of the Ottoman units were understrength and demoralised by desertions, sickness and shortage of supplies, but Liman nevertheless relied on the determination of the Turkish infantry and the strength of his front-line fortifications.[15] However, these positions had only thin belts of barbed wire compared with those on the Western Front,[16] and Liman was unable to take into account the improved British tactical methods, involving surprise and artillery preparation based on aerial reconnaissance, in set-piece offensives.[17]
On 17 September 1918, the opposing armies were deployed as follows:
| Ottoman Order of Battle[18] | Allied Order of Battle[9] |
|---|---|
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Yildirim Army Group (Otto Liman von Sanders)
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Egyptian Expeditionary Force (Edmund Allenby)
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Arab Northern Army (Emir Feisal)
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On 17 September 1918, Arabs under T. E. Lawrence and Nuri as-Said began destroying railway lines around the vital rail centre of Deraa. Lawrence's initial forces (a Camel Corps unit from Feisal's Army, an Egyptian Camel Corps unit, some Gurkha machine gunners, British and Australian armoured cars and French mountain artillery) were soon joined by up to 3,000 Rualla and Howeitat tribesmen, under noted fighting chiefs such as Auda abu Tayi and Nuri es-Shaalan. Although Lawrence was ordered by Allenby only to disrupt communications around Deraa for a week and Lawrence himself had not intended a major uprising to take place in the area immediately, to avoid Ottoman reprisals, a growing number of local communities spontaneously took up arms against the Turks.[24]
As the Ottomans reacted, sending the garrison of Al-Afuleh to reinforce Deraa,[25] the units of Chetwode's Corps made attacks in the hills above the Jordan, intending to further divert the Turks' attention to this flank, although this did not fool the Ottomans. At the last minute, an Indian deserter warned the Turks about the impending main attack. The commander of Ottoman XXII Corps wished to withdraw to forestall the attack but his superiors Jevad Pasha, commanding the Ottoman Eighth Army, and Liman (who feared that the deserter was himself an attempted intelligence bluff) forbade him to do so.[6]
At 1:00am on 19 September, the RAF Palestine Brigade's single Handley Page O/400 heavy bomber dropped sixteen 112 pounds (51 kg) bombs on the Ottoman Headquarters and telephone exchange in Al-Afuleh. This cut the communications between Liman's headquarters and those of the Ottoman Seventh and Eighth Armies for the following vital two days, dislocating the Ottoman command.[26] Other aircraft bombed Seventh Army's headquarters at Nablus and Eighth Army's headquarters at Tulkarm, disrupting both formations.[27]
At 4:30am, Allenby's main attack opened. A barrage by 385 guns (the field artillery of five divisions, five 60-pounder guns, thirteen siege batteries of medium howitzers and seven batteries of the Royal Horse Artillery)[28] and 60 trench mortars and two destroyers off the coast, fell on the Ottoman 7th and 20th Infantry Division's front-line positions. As the barrage ceased at 4:50am, the British and Indian infantry advanced and quickly broke through the Turkish lines.[29] Within hours, the three mounted divisions of the Desert Mounted Corps were moving north along the coast, with no Ottoman reserves available to check them. By the end of the day, the remnants of the Ottoman Eighth Army were in disorderly retreat under air attack into the hills to the east, covered by a few hastily-organised rearguards. Jevad Pasha himself had fled, and Mustafa Kemal Pasha was unable to re-establish control over Eighth Army's troops.
The RAF prevented any of the German aircraft based at Jenin from taking off and interfering with the British land operations. Two S.E.5s, armed with bombs, circled over the German airfield all day on 19 September. When they spotted any movement on the ground, they bombed the airfield. Each pair of aircraft were relieved every two hours and before departing each pair machine-gunned the German hangars.[30]
During the early hours of 20 September 1918, the Desert Mounted Corps secured the defiles of the Carmel Range. The 4th Mounted Division passed through these to capture Al-Afuleh and Beisan, complete with the bulk of two Depot Regiments. A brigade of the 5th Mounted Division attacked Nazareth, where Liman von Sanders's HQ was situated, although Liman himself escaped. The Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade, also part of the 5th Mounted Division, captured the vital port of Haifa the next day. A brigade of the Australian Mounted Division occupied Jenin, threatening the rear of the Ottoman Seventh Army.[31]
Once nothing stood between Allenby's forces and Mustafa Kemal's Seventh Army in Nablus, Kemal decided that he lacked sufficient men to fight the British forces.[32] With the railway blocked, the Seventh Army's only escape route lay to the east, along the Nablus-Beisan road that led down the Wadi Fara into the Jordan valley.[33]
On the night of 20–21 September the Seventh Army began to evacuate Nablus.[33] By this time the Seventh Army was the last formed Ottoman army west of the Jordan and although there was a chance that Chetwode's XX Corps might cut off their retreat, its units had been delayed by Ottoman rearguards and had made poor progress in their advance. On 21 September, the Seventh Army was spotted by aircraft in a defile west of the river. The RAF proceeded to bomb the retreating Turks and destroyed their entire column. Waves of bombing and strafing aircraft passed over the column every three minutes and although the operation had been intended to last for five hours, the Seventh Army was routed in 60 minutes. All transport, artillery and heavy equipment was abandoned or destroyed, many Turks were killed and the survivors were scattered and leaderless. The wreckage of the destroyed column stretched over 6 miles (9.7 km) and Lawrence would later write that "the RAF lost four killed. The Turks lost a corps."[34]
Over the next four days, the 4th Mounted Division and Australian Mounted Division rounded up large numbers of demoralised and disorganised Ottoman troops in the Jezreel Valley. Many of the surviving refugees who crossed the Jordan were attacked and captured by Arabs as they approached or tried to bypass Deraa.
Several German and Turkish aircraft had continued to operate from Deraa, harassing the Arab irregulars and insurgents still attacking railways and isolated Ottoman detachments about the town. At Lawrence's urging, British aircraft began operating from makeshift landing strips at Um el Surab nearby from 22 September. Three Bristol F.2 Fighters shot down several of the German aircraft. The Handley Page 0/400 ferried across petrol, ammunition and spares for the fighters and two Airco DH.9s, and itself bombed the airfield at Deraa early on 23 September and nearby Mafraq on the following night.[35]
Liman had attempted to deploy a few rear-area detachments to hold the line of the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers around the Sea of Galilee. A charge by an Australian Light Horse brigade at last light on 26 September captured the town of Samakh, breaking this line.[36]
Allenby now ordered his cavalry to cross the Jordan, to capture Amman, Deraa and Damascus. Meanwhile, the 3rd Indian Division advanced north along the coast towards Beirut and the 7th Indian Division advanced on Baalbek in the Beqaa Valley, where the rearmost Ottoman depots and reinforcement camps were situated.
The Ottoman Fourth Army had begun to retreat from Amman in increasing disorder on 22 September 1918, ultimately dissolving into a rabble under attack by aircraft and Arabs.[37] A British Corps-sized detachment under Major General Edward Chaytor crossed the Jordan as the Turks fell back and abandoned the crossings. The ANZAC Mounted Division captured Amman on 26 September. The Ottoman detachment from Ma'an found its line of retreat blocked south of Amman, and surrendered intact to the ANZAC Mounted Division rather than risk slaughter by Arab irregulars.[38]
The 4th Mounted Division moved to Deraa, which had already been abandoned to Arab forces, and then advanced north on Damascus in company with them. The retreating Turks committed several atrocities against hostile Arab villages; in return, the Arab forces took no prisoners. An entire Ottoman brigade (along with some German and Austrians) was massacred near the village of Tafas on 27 September, with the Ottoman commander Jemal Pasha narrowly escaping. The Arabs repeated the performance the next day, losing a few hundred casualties while wiping out nearly 5,000 Turks in these two battles.
The 5th Mounted and Australian Mounted Divisions advanced directly across the Golan Heights towards Damascus. They fought actions at Benat Yakup, Kuneitra, Sasa and Katana, before they reached and closed the north and north-west exits from Damascus on 29 September.[39] On 30 September, the Australians intercepted the garrison of Damascus as they tried to retreat through the Barada gorge. Damascus fell the next day, with the Allies capturing 20,000 prisoners.[40] Jemal Pasha fled, having failed to inspire last-ditch resistance. Overall, the campaign resulted in the surrender of 75,000 Ottoman soldiers.[40]
After the fall of Damascus, the 5th Mounted Division and some detachments of the Arab Northern Army advanced north through Syria, capturing Aleppo on 26 October. They subsequently advanced to Mouslimmiye, where Mustafa Kemal (now in command of the Yıldırım Army Group) had rallied some troops under XXII Corps HQ. Kemal held his positions until 31 October, when hostilities ceased following the signing of the Armistice of Mudros.
The successful action at Megiddo resulted in the Megiddo battle honour being awarded to units of the Commonwealth forces participating in the battle. Two subsidiary battle honours, Sharon and Nablus were also awarded.[41]
The Bahá'í Faith in 1918 and today has its administrative and spiritual center in the environs of Haifa. As a direct result of the events of the battle, the leader of the Bahá'í Faith at the time was rescued after death threats were made against him in case the Ottoman side was to lose. In addition, because of `Abdu'l-Bahá's preparations against famine caused by social chaos caused by war, and his generosity in sharing food stores built up, he was knighted by the British Empire, though it was a title he never used.[42][43] In addition to the practical implications, the Bahá'ís believe the battle was one way the prophecies of the Battle of Armageddon were accomplished.[44]