Edmund Allenby
Edmund Allenby conquered Palestine and Syria from the Ottomans in the last year of the First World War. Born in Nottinghamshire in 1861, he failed the Indian civil service examination twice and went to Sandhurst instead, serving in Bechuanaland, Zululand and the Second Boer War, where he commanded a mounted column. He led the Cavalry Division in 1914 and then the Third Army on the Western Front. His men called him the Bull for his temper. He directed the attack at Arras in April 1917, which took Vimy Ridge and then bogged down, and he quarrelled with Haig over prolonging it. He was sent to Egypt in June 1917, in effect a demotion, to take over an offensive that had already failed twice at Gaza. He transformed it. He moved his headquarters forward from Cairo to the front, reorganised supply, water pipelines and railways, and rebuilt the force's confidence. At the third battle of Gaza in late October 1917 he feinted at Gaza and struck at Beersheba, which fell to an Australian mounted charge, turning the line. He entered Jerusalem on 11 December 1917 on foot through the Jaffa Gate, out of respect and in deliberate contrast to the Kaiser's mounted entry in 1898. It was the first Christian control of the city since the crusades and was received in Britain as a Christmas present. At Megiddo in September 1918 he broke the Ottoman armies with cavalry, aircraft and deception, and took Damascus and Aleppo within weeks, coordinating with the Arab Revolt and T. E. Lawrence. He was High Commissioner in Egypt from 1919 and died in 1936.
- Lived: 1861 CE – 1936 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: field_marshal, military_leader
