Okay, let's unpack this. Let's do it. Welcome
to this custom -tailored deep dive crafted entirely
to take you inside the mechanics of a truly baffling
historical event. Today, we are opening up the
archives. The really detailed archives. Yeah,
specifically a massive collection of historical
accounts and Wikipedia records chronicling a
very specific, very pivotal day, March 26, 1917.
Right. We are looking at the First Battle of
Gaza. Now, when most people hear, you know, World
War I, the immediate thought is the Western Front.
Mm -hmm, mud, trenches, the Somme. Exactly, the
Somme. But our mission for you today is to look
at a completely different theater. We're going
to explore a master class and how an incredibly
powerful, well -supplied military force can just,
well, how they can snatch defeat right from the
jaws of absolute victory. It really is a master
class in failure. And the culprits aren't what
you'd expect, right? Yeah. We are talking about
a patch of dense seafog, a sprawling maze of
prickly pear cacti, and just a catastrophic breakdown
in basic communication. What's fascinating here,
I think, is that the mechanics of failure are
universal. You don't need to be a military historian
to understand what happens when a massive organization's
communication architecture completely collapses
under pressure, whether you're managing a team.
Running a big corporate project or just trying
to coordinate a group dinner You know how fast
things fall apart when people stop talking to
each other. Oh, absolutely the group text goes
silent and suddenly everyone's at a different
restaurant. Exactly. Now, scale that up to tens
of thousands of lives. The Middle Eastern theater
of the First World War is often treated as a
secondary narrative to the grinding horror of
France and Belgium. But the stakes were monumental.
The British Empire was fighting to defend the
Suez Canal. That canal was the absolute lifeblood
of their global empire. It's the vital artery
connecting London to India and the Persian Gulf.
Right. By early 1917, the Egyptian Expeditionary
Force, the EEF, which was commanded by General
Sir Archibald Murray, they had decided that simply
defending the canal wasn't enough anymore. They
were going on the offensive. They wanted to push
out. Yeah. The ultimate strategic goal was to
advance deep into Palestine, capture Jerusalem,
and completely cut off the Ottoman forces operating
in the region. But to do any of that, to move
north, they had to go through Gaza. So why Gaza?
I mean, I'm looking at the map and our sources,
and it seems like there's a lot of open desert
out there. Why does an entire army have to funnel
through this one specific town? Well, geography
dictates strategy, right? And Gaza is perhaps
one of the oldest strategic choke points in human
history. Wow. We are talking about a 4 ,000 -year
-old gateway city. For millennia, any army moving
between Egypt and Levant had to pass through
or take Gaza. The topography itself makes it
a natural fortress. Okay, paint a picture for
us. What does it actually look like on the ground?
The city is built on this incredibly fertile
plateau sitting about 200 feet above sea level.
It's separated from the Mediterranean Sea to
the west by a two -mile stretch of rolling, really
difficult sand hills. Like dunes. Yeah, massive
dunes that are a nightmare to cross. But the
real defensive anchor, the absolute key to the
area, is a single looming 300 -foot hill right
at the edge of the city called Alimuntar. Alimuntar.
Right. It provides this sweeping, completely
unobstructed view of any approaching force. The
descriptions in the archives paint such a vivid
picture of the environment, too. It wasn't just
a hill and some sand. Inland, the city was surrounded
by these incredibly lush orchards, massive orange
groves and vineyards. It's a true oasis. Yeah.
There's this wild detail that the barley grown
around Gaza was actually of such high quality
is exported to England specifically to be brewed
into beer. I love that detail. It really grounds
the history in something relatable. But tactically,
that lush agricultural density acts as a massive
physical barrier. If we look at the Ottoman strategy,
their commander, a German officer named Friedrich
Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein. That is quite
the name. It is. Kress von Kressenstein understood
the terrain perfectly. The Ottomans had actually
withdrawn their forces 14 miles north from their
previous defensive lines just to establish themselves
at Gaza. They gave up ground just to fight there.
Exactly. They dug in, creating a formidable defensive
line stretching from the Mediterranean coast
eastward across a massive dry riverbed called
the Wadi Guzi, all the way to a place called
Tel Esh Sharia, where the Palestine railway crossed.
They knew the British had to come up the coast
and Gaza. was the door they had to kick in. I
keep thinking about the psychological contrast
for the soldiers on the ground. You have British,
Australian, and New Zealand troops who have been
marching for weeks through the absolute barren
desolation of the Sinai desert. Right, nothing
but baking sand. Heat, thirst, just miles of
nothing. And then they crest a ridge and see
Gaza. There's a quote in our sources from a Lieutenant
Robert Wilson who described arriving in this
area as seeing, delightful country. cultivated
to perfection, a mass of orange, fig, and other
fruit trees. The relief must have been incredible.
The psychological relief of smelling orange blossoms
instead of dust must have been staggering. It's
an oasis, but it's an oasis heavily fortified
with machine guns. The contrast is striking,
for sure. But before you can even fight a battle
in an oasis, you have to physically move your
army across that barren sand. And that brings
us to the logistics. Yeah, let's talk about that.
Because how do you move an army of over 22 ,000
combatants, 12 ,000 infantry and 11 ,000 mounted
troops across a desert without them dying of
exposure before they even see the enemy? Right,
because looking at the raw numbers, the math
just seems impossible. You can't just drink sand.
How did the EES sustain an advancing city of
men and animals in the middle of nowhere? They
executed a logistical miracle that is genuinely
hard to comprehend. They didn't just march. They
had to literally build a world to sustain themselves
as they moved. Build a world. Yeah. The British
laid 388 miles of standard gauge railway straight
across the Sinai Peninsula. Wait, standard gauge?
Like, full -size trains running across the dunes.
Exactly. Full -size locomotives. And the engineering
mechanics of laying heavy steel rails and wooden
ties in soft shifting sand are brutal. Can't
even imagine. It just sinks. It does. They had
to build massive foundations of brushwood just
to keep the tracks from sinking into the dunes.
And they were laying this railway at a staggering
rate of about one kilometer every single day.
One kilometer a day. Driven by sheer human labor.
But the railway only solves the problem of moving
heavy equipment and ammunition. The ultimate
limiting factor for human beings, especially
in the desert, is water. I was going to ask about
that. A train can't deliver enough water for
tens of thousands of men and horses every day,
can it? Maybe it could, but it would take up
all the cargo space? It cannot. So they built
a massive water pipeline stretching 300 miles.
300 miles of pipe. They pump fresh water all
the way from the sweet water canal of the Nile
in Egypt, pushing it through steel pipes right
behind the advancing army. That is insane. You
have to imagine the massive pumping stations
required to maintain pressure over hundreds of
miles of scorching desert, the constant maintenance
to prevent the pipes from bursting or being clogged
by sand. Yeah, one leak and the whole army stops.
Exactly. And alongside the pipeline and the railway,
they laid down hundreds of miles of wire mesh
and brushwood roads over the soft sand just so
their wheeled supply vehicles could maintain
traction. Let's talk about the scale of those
supplies because the transport required is mind
-blowing. The sources note that supplying just
one brigade, just one, meant feeding and watering
2 ,000 men and 2 ,000 horses every single day.
And they had many brigades. Right. And it wasn't
just horses out there either, was it? Not at
all. The transport columns were massive, archaic
beasts of burden systems. We are talking about
endless convoys of camels, pack mules, and donkeys.
It sounds biblical. It really does look like
something from antiquity. The transport wagons
were pulled by these incredibly innovative five
-mule teams. They were driven by a single man
sitting on the box, which proved so efficient
it actually became the standard for the entire
Egyptian expeditionary force. And the horses
themselves had to adapt to this extreme environment.
There's an incredible biological detail in the
archive that blew my mind. Oh, about the water.
Yes. Because the volume of water was so strictly
capped by the capacity of that single pipeline
we just talked about, the horses actually learned
out of pure evolutionary necessity to survive
on just two drinks of water a day instead of
their usual three. They just adapted. The whole
army is essentially redlining its biological
limits just to exist in this space. Every man
and animal is pushed to the absolute brink. And
layered right on top of this ancient biblical
style caravan of camels and thirsty horses, you
have the sudden intrusion of cutting edge 20th
century technology. The contrast is fascinating.
Like what? Well, alongside the pack meals, you
have the number seven light car patrol and the
number 11 and 12 armored motor batteries. Armored
cars driving on brushwood roads. Yes. Early heavy
armored cars fitted with machine guns bouncing
over scrub land. And above them in the sky, you
have biplane from the Royal Flying Corps and
the Australian Flying Corps. Oh, wow. In the
weeks leading up to the battle, these open cockpit
planes were flying by moonlight to bomb the Ottoman
railway lines and supply depots at places like
Junction Station and Beersheba. They were actively
trying to disrupt the Ottoman lines of communication.
So you have a war being fought with medieval
cavalry tactics and modern aerial bombardment
simultaneously. Exactly. It's a bizarre transitional
period in warfare. Which means this incredible
tail we just described completely dictated the
timeline of the whole operation. You can't attack
Gaza until the railways reaches a town called
Rafa, which is just down the coast. You're tied
to the track. Right. The entire British Army
is tethered to the end of a water pipe. If the
Ottomans managed to swing around and cut that
pipeline or blow up the railway, the entire British
Army wouldn't be defeated in battle. They would
just dry up in the sun. And the commanders were
acutely aware of that vulnerability. British
intelligence estimated that up to 12 ,000 Ottoman
soldiers were positioned inland, away from Gaza,
precisely to threaten that British supply line.
So they were looking over their shoulders the
whole time. Yes. The British had to maintain
a strong defensive posture in their rear while
simultaneously preparing to punch forward into
the fortress of Gaza itself. OK, keeping that
immense pressure in mind, there is a detail from
March 21st, 1917 that feels almost absurd. They
are at Rafa. The railhead has finally arrived.
They are days away from launching a massive bloody
assault on a fortified city. And what do the
troops do? They hold a horse race, a literal
race meeting in the desert. It sounds like fiction,
but it's entirely true. The archives say the
Yeomanry. which were the British volunteer cavalry
units, along with the Australians and New Zealanders,
set up an enclosed paddock. They built jumps,
marked out a course, and even printed up official
programs. They went all out. They even set up
a totalizator. For anyone unfamiliar with the
term, a totalizator was an early mechanical computer
used to calculate and display bedding pools.
Right. In the middle of a war zone, sitting at
the very edge of their supply line, they were
running a fully functioning racetrack. and placing
bets on their cavalry mounts. It perfectly captures
the bizarre reality of military campaigns. It's
an extreme example of normalcy bias. Normacy
bias. Yeah. When human beings are placed in highly
stressful, entirely abnormal situations, like
waiting to assault a heavily fortified machine
gun position, they will often go to incredible
lengths to construct pockets of bizarre familiar
routine to cope with the impending trauma. Just
trying to feel normal for an after - Exactly.
But that waiting period was short -lived. By
March 25th, the logistics were set, the railway
was in place, it was time to execute the master
plan. So let's break down the chessboard. What
exactly was General Dobell's grand strategy to
take Gaza? The plan was essentially a coup de
main. A Swiss trike. Right. A swift, overwhelming,
synchronized strike intended to capture Gaza
and its entire garrison before those inland Ottoman
reinforcements could march to their aid. The
strategy had two main components, the hammer
and the net. OK, let's start with the hammer.
First, the hammer. The infantry, specifically
the 53rd Welsh Division commanded by Major General
Alistair Dallas, was ordered to march up from
the south and east and punch straight into the
Ottoman defenses. Their primary objective was
to assault and capture that looming high ground
we talked about, Alimentar. The net was the mounted
troops. The Anzac Mounted Division under Major
General Harry Chevelle and the Imperial Mounted
Division under Major General Henry West Hodgson.
They were tasked with creating a massive 15 -mile
long screen encircling Gaza to the north and
east. 15 miles? That's a huge perimeter. It is.
Their job was to isolate the town, cut the roads,
stop the garrison from escaping and, crucially,
block any of those Ottoman reinforcements from
reaching Gaza from the inland garrisons. It sounds
perfectly logical on paper. The infantry takes
the hill, the cavalry holds the perimeter. When
you look at the command structure they set up
to execute this, it is a master class in decentralized
command gone completely wrong. Oh, absolutely.
It's like the ultimate disconnected corporate
structure. How so? Let's trace the chain of command
for the listener. Well, you have General Murray,
the commander -in -chief. He isn't even on the
battlefield. Not even close. He establishes his
headquarters in a railway carriage miles and
miles away back at El Arish. His role is essentially
to advise, like a CEO, phoning it in from a golf
course. A very apt comparison. Then you have
General Dobell commanding the Eastern Force,
sitting at a place called Inserat. Subordinate
to him is General Philip Chetwood, commanding
the Desert Column, who is also near Inserat,
but actively moving forward. Getting a little
closer to the action. Right. And finally you
have General Dallas, commanding the 53rd Welsh
Division, who is actually on the ground, leading
the infantry assault. This entire chain of command
is stretched over miles of barren desert. And
you have to remember the technology they're relying
on to connect that chain. They don't have encrypted
radios or satellite feeds. No cell phones. Exactly.
They are relying on visual signals flags and
heliographs and World War I field telephones.
Which brings us to the morning of March 26th.
The approach marches begin in the pitch black
right around 1 a .m. The infantry is moving out.
The mounted divisions are moving into position
to cross the dry Wadi Ghazi. Everyone is moving
into place. The plan requires absolute synchronization.
And then, at 3 .50 a .m., the environment intervenes.
A dense, blinding sea fog rolls in off the Mediterranean.
And we are not talking about a light morning
mist here. The historical accounts state that
visibility dropped to a mere 20 yards. 20 yards.
That's nothing. A man could not see his own horse's
head clearly, let alone the soldier marching
20 paces ahead of him. The sun technically comes
up around 5 a .m., but the battlefield is just
a solid wall of white. How does weather like
that impact a synchronized multi -division plan?
It seems like you would just shut everything
down immediately. It acts as a massive disruption,
but it does so in two completely opposite ways
for the two different parts of the British force.
What do you mean? Well, for the mounted troops
forming the net, the Anzac and Imperial divisions,
the fog was actually a bizarre, incredibly lucky
blessing. Because they were trying to sneak past
the city to encircle it. Exactly. The movement
of thousands of horses kicks up massive clouds
of dust that can usually be seen for miles by
artillery observers. Oh, right. Dust in the desert
is a dead giveaway. But hidden entirely by the
thick mist, the cavalry was able to rapidly push
forward across the roads leading north and east
out of Gaza and completely cut the Ottoman telegraph
lines without being spotted. Wow. They moved
like ghosts. They even stumbled upon and captured
30 German pioneers, combat engineers, and their
packhorses who had absolutely no idea the British
were even in the area. The sources mentioned
one specific unit pulling off an incredible maneuver
in the fog. The 7th Light Horse Regiment pushed
all the way to the Mediterranean coast, successfully
completing the northern encirclement. Right to
the water. And in the process, they actually
captured the commander of the Ottoman 53rd Division
and his entire staff. Just bumped right into
them. Yeah, they were riding in to strengthen
the Gaza garrison and they just rode right into
the British net because they couldn't see past
their own noses. So the cavalry achieves its
objectives flawlessly, thanks to the fog, but...
For the infantry, for General Dallas and the
53rd Welsh Division, who are supposed to be the
hammer, the fog is a total paralyzing curse.
Because they have to attack. Dallas's orders
are to launch a direct coordinated assault on
fortified entrenched trenches. But he cannot
see the trenches. He cannot reconnoiter the ground
to align his battalions. And what about the planes?
Couldn't the Royal Flying Corps just fly over
and spot for them, like give them some aerial
recon? They tried. The biplanes took off, but
when they reached the battlefield, the pilots
looked down and saw nothing but an unbroken blanket
of white clouds. They couldn't spot targets,
so they had to turn around and land. So they're
blind in the sky, too. More critically, the British
artillery, which requires visual confirmation
to register its guns and adjust its fire, is
completely blind. You cannot fire heavy artillery
into a fog bank when your own infantry is somewhere
out there in the whiteout. You'd hit your own
men. Exactly. So what does Dallas do? He's sitting
there with an entire division of men, the clock
is ticking, and he's completely blind. He makes
the only logical choice a frontline commander
can make in that situation. He waits. He stops.
He halts his advance at a place called El Brej,
and waits for the fog to lift. He refuses to
send thousands of men charging blindly into an
unseen machine gun crossfire. Which makes sense.
It does. But remember that stretched command
structure you mentioned earlier? This is where
it fractures. As Dallas halts and waits, his
moving headquarters loses communication with
General Chetwood in the rear for two excruciating
hours. Wait, I need to stop you there. Two hours.
Two hours. How did two generals, in the middle
of a major offensive, just lose touch for two
hours? Are they relying on couriers just wandering
around in the fog? They are trying to use those
field telephones. But field telephones in 1917
rely on physical spools of heavy copper wire
that signalmen have to drag across the desert
floor. Oh, right. The wire. As Dallas' headquarters
moved forward, the wires had to be laid and connected.
In the fog and the confusion, the connections
aren't made. The wires get tangled or cut by
movement or simply run out. So the line is just
dead. So Chetwood, sitting miles back, has no
idea why Dallas has stopped. Meanwhile, the British
artillery, which Dallas believes is lost or delayed
in the fog, is actually already in position.
Oh no. But because of the communication blackout,
the artillery commanders don't know where the
infantry is and the infantry doesn't know the
artillery is ready. So a perfectly synchronized
attack has become entirely fatally disjointed.
The cavalry is in position by mid -morning, waiting
in the net. But the infantry is just standing
there. Doing nothing. Think about the physical
toll of that on the soldiers. You've marched
all night, the adrenaline of the approach is
pumping, and then you are forced to just stand
in the cold, damp morning fog for hours. The
chill really sets in. The adrenaline fades, the
muscles stiffen. You were just waiting for orders
while the sun slowly begins to burn off the cover.
By 8 0 a .m. the fog is finally lifting. Visibility
returns. But this reveals a catastrophic new
reality. The Ottoman defenders on Ali Muntar
can now see exactly what is happening. The curtain
goes up. The element of surprise for the main
assault is completely gone. Hostile Ottoman planes
immediately fly over the exposed British infantry,
strafing them with machine gun fire. And I imagine
the commanders in the rear are losing their minds
looking at their watches. The frustration at
the higher headquarters boils over into outright
hostility. Chet Wode is sitting miles back, looking
at his map, realizing the entire carefully choreographed
timetable is shot. Because the reinforcements
could be marching. Exactly. At 1130 a .m., the
Desert Column staff sends Dallas a blistering,
incredibly aggressive message. It reads, and
this is a quote, I am directed to observe that
you have been out of touch for over two hours,
that time is passing, and that you are still
far from your objective. You must launch your
attack forthwith. Basically, hurry up and attack
right now. They send it again at noon. The pressure
from the disconnected executives at the rear
is immense, completely disregarding the physical
reality of the terrain and the delays on the
ground. And so the meat grinder begins. It is
noon. The sun is blazing in the desert sky. Now
the fog is completely gone. Dallas finally issues
the order for the 53rd Welsh to attack. What
exactly are these infantrymen walking into? They
are walking into a tactical nightmare. The approach
to Ali Muntar from the south involves advancing
over completely open bare slopes. There is no
cover. No trees, no rocks, no defiles to hide
in. Just coarse grass and firm soil leading steadily
upward. And at the top of these slopes are the
entrenched Ottoman defenders, a highly capable
unit designated as Group Tiller, who now have
a perfectly clear, elevated view of the entire
British line of advance. What about that artillery
support? You said the guns were in position right.
Did they soften up the hill before the infantry
marched up? The British artillery bombardment
finally began at noon, right as the infantry
stepped off. But because of the morning's chaos
and the lack of communication, there was no time
to develop a coordinated artillery program. So
they didn't know what they were aiming at. They
hadn't properly identified the specific Ottoman
redoubts or machine gun nests, so they were essentially
firing blind, scattered barrages. The infantry
is advancing up a bare slope with completely
inadequate artillery support against determined,
entrenched defenders equipped with heavy machine
guns. The casualties must have been immediate.
They were severe. The 14th Royal Sussex Regiment,
advancing up the center of what was known as
the Essire Ridge, walked directly into intense
concentrated fire. Wow. They lost their commanding
officer almost immediately. They managed to reach
the crest through sheer grit, but the volume
of Ottoman fire was so overwhelming it broke
their line, forcing the survivors to fall back
down the slope in disorder before they could
finally rally. That's devastating. It was a brutal,
bleeding frontal assault that was chewing up
the Welsh division. By 13 zero, one o 'clock
in the afternoon, it becomes clear to General
Chet Wode that the infantry is completely bogged
down. The 53rd Welsh is bleeding out on these
open slopes, fighting for every inch, and the
timeline for taking the city before the Ottoman
reinforcements arrive is rapidly evaporating.
He has to make a change. Right. Chet Wode looks
at the map and makes a massive tactical pivot.
He realizes the hammer isn't working fast enough.
So he contacts General Chauvel, who is commanding
the Anzac mounted troops sitting up north forming
the net, and says, I need you to attack Gaza
from the north. Which fundamentally changes the
entire nature of the battle for those mounted
troops. How so? Well, they weren't equipped or
positioned to be an assault force. They were
supposed to be a static blockade. But now the
Anzac mounted division is ordered to dismount
from their horses and attack the town directly.
And the terrain they have to attack through on
the northern and eastern sides of Gaza is the
exact opposite of the bare slopes the Welsh are
fighting on. It is a dense, suffocating labyrinth.
The archives literally capitalize it. Yeah. The
labyrinth. We mentioned those beautiful orchards
and vineyards earlier. What we didn't mention
is what surrounded them. The hedges. Yes, they
were partitioned by prickly pear cactus hedges
and a mature prickly pear hedge is not a garden
bush. No, it's not. It is a massive, impenetrable,
spiky wall, often several feet thick and incredibly
tall. You cannot walk through it. You certainly
cannot ride a horse through it. The only way
through is to hack a path with machetes and bayonets.
From a tactical command perspective, committing
cavalry to fight on foot inside a cactus maze
is a worst -case scenario. I can see why. First,
you lose your primary advantage mobility. Second,
a mounted brigade, when forced to dismount and
leave a significant portion of its men behind
just to hold the horses, is reduced to the functional
rifle strength of a single infantry battalion.
Oh, because every fourth guy has to hold the
horses. Exactly. So they are instantly fighting
at a massive numerical disadvantage. Third, you
lose all unit cohesion. Platoons and squads become
instantly isolated from one another in these
narrow winding pathways between the towering
hedges. You can't see your squad mates. Right.
And finally, they are entirely vulnerable to
Ottoman snipers hiding in the stone buildings
and camouflaged rifle pits scattered throughout
the orchards. The physical toll of this is hard
to fathom. These are Australian light horsemen
and New Zealand mounted riflemen. They marched
all night. They sat in the freezing fog all morning.
Now, in the blazing heat of the afternoon, they're
off their horses, on foot, physically hacking
through thick, spiky cacti while unseen snipers
shoot down at them from the windows of stone
houses. It's a nightmare. It is absolute, chaotic,
brutal, close quarters combat. But despite the
horrific conditions, the aggression and tactical
skill of these troops is remarkable. They don't
stall. They push forward, clearing the labyrinth
yard by bloody yard. There is one highly specific,
incredibly cinematic moment detailed in the sources
that perfectly illustrates this aggression. The
Wellington Mounted Rifles Regiment is fighting
their way through the eastern outskirts of the
maze. They are taking heavy, accurate fire from
snipers holed up in several reinforced stone
houses. During the assault, the regiment manages
to overrun an artillery position and capture
two 77 -millimeter Austrian Krupp field guns
from the defenders. Let's contextualize what
a Krupp field gun is for a second. This is not
a rifle. Right. This is heavy artillery designed
to fire high -explosive shells across miles of
battlefield to shatter trenches. It weighs over
a ton. A ton. And instead of just securing these
massive guns and moving on, the Wellington troops
physically turn them around. They improvise.
They manually muscle these ton heavy artillery
pieces forward, pushing them through the orchards
on their wheels. They load them, aim them at
the stone houses where the snipers are hiding,
and fire them at point blank range. Firing a
77 millimeter high explosive shell into a stone
structure at zero range is devastating. The concussion
alone would shatter the building and anyone inside
it. They literally blow the sniper houses to
rubble. The psychological shock is so immense
that 20 hostile soldiers immediately surrender
on the spot. It's an incredible display of tactical
improvisation. And it is exactly this kind of
sheer localized willpower that finally starts
to turn the tide of the entire battle. The momentum
shifts. Between 16 .30 and 17 .0, the combined
relentless pressure of the bloody frontal assault
from the south and the grinding explosive advance
through the cactus hedges from the north finally
breaks the Ottoman lines. They push through.
The 53rd Welsh Division, reinforced by dismounted
New Zealanders who had swung south to aid the
assault, finally storm the crest and capture
the heavily fortified Alimantar Hill. The commanding
heights, the key to the entire fortress, are
firmly in British hands. I mean, by 18 .0, as
dusk is starting to approach, the Anzac -mounted
troops have fought their way entirely out of
the orchards and are fighting in the actual streets
of Gaza's northern and western outskirts. They're
in the city? The Ottoman defenders are breaking.
They're retreating into the very center of the
town in disarray. The British hold the high ground.
They hold the outskirts. They have captured 462
prisoners, including the German general who was
the divisional commander. That's a huge prize.
They have captured the Austrian artillery battery
and an entire supply convoy. The men on the ground,
the soldiers bleeding in the streets and standing
exhausted on the hill know beyond a shadow of
a doubt that they have won. The garrison is moments
away from total capitulation. But here is where
the tragedy of this deep dive truly begins. The
men on the ground know they are winning, but
the generals sitting miles away in their headquarters
do not. The map in the general tent does not
match the mud on the soldiers' boots. Exactly.
Let's look at what General Dobell and General
Chetwode are seeing from their vantage point
at Insarat. They aren't seeing the captured Krupp
guns or the retreating garrison. What they are
seeing are the frantic reports coming in from
the cavalry screen holding the outer perimeter.
Oh, right. The screen that was supposed to block
the reinforcements. Because while the brutal
assault on Gaza was happening, Chris von Kressenstein's
massive Ottoman reinforcements, the 3rd and 16th
divisions, were finally arriving from the east
and the north. And the defense against these
reinforcements is an epic battle all on its own.
You have thousands of fresh Ottoman infantry
and cavalry bearing down on the thin British
perimeter and who is holding them back. The screen
is this incredible mix of specialized units.
You have the Imperial Mounted Division. You have
the Imperial Camel Brigade. Soldiers fighting
from camel back, which presents a completely
different logistical and tactical profile than
horse cavalry. Exactly. I mean, imagine the height
advantage, but also just how strange that looks.
And alongside the camels, you have the armored
motor batteries and the light car patrols. The
cars again. It is like a steampunk desert movie
playing out in real life. heavy armored cars
with machine guns driving over scrubland, laying
down covering fire alongside ranks of kneeling
camels, desperately trying to hold off a massive
advancing army in the fading evening light. And
remarkably, they do it. The screen holds the
armored cars and the cavalry units, particularly
the 3rd Light Horse Brigade and the 6th Mounted
Brigade, engage the Ottoman reinforcements and
stop their advance dead in its tracks. They hold
the line. The Ottoman columns are halted before
they can even get halfway to Gaza. But the sheer
size of the approaching Ottoman force terrifies
the British command. Dobell and Chetwood are
looking at the reports of thousands of incoming
troops. They are looking at their maps. And most
importantly, they are looking at the sky. The
sky is the absolute key here. It's 18 .0. The
sun is setting in Cairo time. And in 1917, nightfall
meant absolute loss of control for a military
commander. You're completely blind. You can't
see your troops. You can't signal them with flags
or heliographs. Plus, you have the water issue
again. The horses of the mounted divisions have
been fighting all day in the intense desert heat.
They haven't had their carefully rationed two
drinks. Right. They're dying of thirst. Chetwood
is terrified. that if he leaves his cavalry engaged
in the streets of Gaza overnight, surrounded
by approaching Ottoman reinforcements, without
access to the water pipeline, he might lose the
entire mounted force. Fear completely overrides
the reality on the ground. At 1810, Dobell and
Chetwode, who are completely unaware that Ali
-Muntar has been fully secured and the garrison
is breaking, make the most fateful decision of
the campaign. The big mistake. They conclude
that Gaza cannot be completely taken before dark.
And so Chetwo issues the order to General Chevelle,
break off the action, withdraw the entire mounted
force, retire across the Wadigooza. The fatal
order, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
General Chevelle receives this order while his
men are standing victorious in the streets of
the town they just bled to capture. Unbelievable.
According to some historical accounts, Chevelle
protested the order strongly, arguing that they
had essentially won, though the official British
records conveniently note there's no written
record of his protest. Of course not. But regardless
of his objections, orders from the desert column
are orders. The withdrawal begins, and it is
slow, confusing, and absolutely agonizing. It's
a logistical nightmare to disengage a fighting
force in the dark, especially in an environment
like the Labyrinth. Trying to find your way back
through the cactus. The dismounted troops are
heavily intermixed. Some units, like the 7th
Light Horse Regiment, are nearly four miles away
from where their horses are being held in the
rear. They have to walk those four miles in the
pitch black hacking back through the cactus maze
while desperately trying to locate and collect
all their wounded comrades and transport the
hundreds of prisoners they just captured. Must
have taken forever. It takes hours of miserable,
exhausted effort. But the withdrawal of the cavalry
is only the first half of the disaster. The second
half is a communication breakdown so catastrophic
it belongs in a textbook on organizational failure.
Okay, let's look at the timeline of this phone
call because it's unbelievable. It is 1900, seven
o 'clock at night. The cavalry in the north is
pulling back. General Chetwode, still miles in
the rear, gets on the field telephone to call
General Dallas. the commander of the 53rd Welsh,
who is sitting squarely on top of the captured
Ali -Muntar Hill. Right. He's holding the prize.
Chetwood tells Dallas that the cavalry is withdrawing,
and because of that, Dallas' right flank is going
to be exposed to the dark. So Chetwood gives
him an order to adjust his defensive lines for
the night. He tells Dallas to move his right
flank back to gain touch with the 54th division.
Gain touch. It's a remarkably vague phrase spoken
over a degraded, crackly copper wire stretched
across miles of active battlefield. It's just
terrible phrasing. To understand why this fails,
we have to look at the two vastly different realities
these men are operating in. Chetwood, looking
at his static headquarters map, assumes the 54th
division is positioned relatively close to Dallas's
current position, maybe a mile north of a spot
called Mancira. There's just a slight adjustment
to him. So in Chetwood's mind, gain touch simply
means Dallas needs to bend his defensive line
back slightly, maybe a mile, to link up and form
a continuous front. But Dallas, on the ground,
has outdated information about where the 54th
actually is. He thinks the 54th division is still
way back at a place called Shake… which is four
miles to the rear. Precisely. So when Dallas
hears the order, gain touch with the 54th, he
translates that in his head to mean, abandon
everything you just captured, including the vital
heights of Ali -Muntar, and retreat four miles
back into the desert. Dallas actually protests
this over the phone. He realizes how insane it
is to give up the hill. He asks for reinforcements
to hold the position instead of retreating. Because
he knows he's holding the key to the city. But
Chet Wode... oblivious to Dallas's misunderstanding
of the map, denies the reinforcements and repeats
the order verbally. And because of this massive
tragic misunderstanding over a faulty wire, Dallas
issues orders at 22 .30 for his entire force
to withdraw. It's heartbreaking. The 53rd Welsh
Division physically abandons the high ground
they just sacrificed, over 500 dead and wounded
men to capture. They pack up their gear and walk
away from the prize in the pitch black. And here
is the ultimate irony, the detail that makes
this entire sequence so excruciating to analyze.
At 23 -0, just 30 minutes after Dallas issues
the retreat order, and as the infantry is actively
walking away from the hill, General Dobell at
Eastern Force headquarters receives a delayed
intercepted a wireless message. What did the
message say? It was a direct communication between
the Ottoman commander Kress von Kressenstein
and Major Tiller, the German officer commanding
the Gaza garrison. The intercepted message clearly
and unequivocally indicated that the Gaza garrison
was completely out of ammunition in a desperate
situation and on the verge of total collapse.
They were giving up. It was the hard proof that
the British had won. Dobel reads this intercept
and immediately realizes the massive error he
has made. He sends frantic, urgent orders to
Chetwood and Dallas to cancel the withdrawal,
to dig in and to hold their captured positions
at all costs. But it's too late. The momentum
is completely gone. The troops are already moving
back into the desert. The communication lag was
just too great. So the sun comes up the next
day, March 27th. The morning hangover. What do
the commanders do when the Sun reveals the magnitude
of their mistake? Panic, essentially. At 5 a
.m. Chetwood finally learns the truth. Dallas
didn't just bend his line back. He completely
abandoned the entirety of the Ali -Muntar Ridge.
He gave up the whole thing. Chetwood frantically
issues counter orders for the infantry to turn
around and immediately reoccupy the exact positions
they had just left. The exhausted 53rd and 54th
divisions send patrols pushing back up the slopes.
Marching right back up the hill, they just walk
down. And initially in the early morning light,
they find the hill unoccupied. Some companies
of the Essex Regiment actually managed to climb
back up and reoccupy Alimantar and a neighboring
crest called Green Hill. But the window of opportunity
has slammed shut. By daylight, the Ottoman reinforcements,
those thousands of troops that the cavalry and
armored cars that so brilliantly held off the
night before, realize the British have left the
door open. They see the mistake. They simply
walk forward. They flood into the empty trenches
that the Welsh had abandoned. When the British
attempt to properly counterattack to take the
hill back for a second time, they aren't fighting
a broken garrison. They are hit by fresh, heavily
armed Ottoman troops and coordinated artillery
fire. It's a completely different fight now.
The British suffer severe, rapid losses and are
completely repulsed. By the end of the day, on
March 27th, Dobell realizes the situation is
entirely hopeless. He issues orders for the complete,
humiliating withdrawal of the entire British
force back across the Wadigooza. The final casualty
figures underscore the tragedy. The British suffered
roughly 4 ,000 casualties, including 523 dead
and over 500 missing, many of whom were wounded
men taken prisoner during the highly confused
night retreat through the cactus hedges. Those
poor guys in the labyrinth. The Ottoman forces
suffered around 2 ,447 casualties. The British
had expended over 300 heavy artillery shells
and an astounding 150 ,000 rounds of small arms
ammunition to capture a fortress, only to voluntarily
hand it right back to the enemy. And the aftermath?
The way the leadership handles this, it's just
a master class in toxic self -preservation. The
spin is unbelievable. You have General Murray
and General Dobell sending official telegrams
to the war office in London claiming a brilliant
victory. A brilliant victory. Murray literally
writes, we inflicted very heavy losses upon him.
All troops behave splendidly. Dobell writes in
his official report that, had the early part
of the day been normal, victory would have been
secured. Blaming the weather. He blames the morning
fog completely, entirely ignoring the catastrophic
communication failures, the misunderstood phone
calls, and his own panic decision to withdraw
a victorious army because the sun went down.
They try to sell this absolute unmitigated disaster
as a triumph of British arms. Which is deeply
indicative of the culture of high command at
the time. There was immense political pressure
from London to show positive results, especially
with the war bogging down into a bloody stalemate
on the Western Front. They needed a win. Admitting
that they ordered a victorious army to retreat
because of a misunderstood phone call and a fear
of the dark was politically impossible for Murray.
He had to construct a narrative of success, but
the delusion of their own reporting had dire
immediate consequences. Right. because they believed
their own lies. Because they convinced themselves,
and London, that they were on the very verge
of taking Gaza, it led directly to the Second
Battle of Gaza just a few weeks later in April.
And the Second Battle was even worse, wasn't
it? Much worse. Because the Ottomans had time
to reinforce the city massively. The Second Battle
of Gaza was a disastrous World War I -style frontal
assault against heavily fortified trenches. It
failed completely, cost even more lives than
the first attempt, and eventually led to both
Murray and Dobell being quietly relieved of their
commands. I think the ultimate insult, the detail
that truly caps off this tragic comedy, comes
from the Ottomans themselves. A few days after
the battle, while the British press in London
is printing all these sanitized reports of a
great Middle Eastern success based on Murray's
telegrams, an Ottoman airplane flies over the
British lines. Oh, the message dropped. And the
pilot drops a physical message down into the
British camp. The message reads, you beat us
at communiques, but we beat you at Gaza. With
absolute audacity. But they were right. They
were entirely right. And that message synthesizes
the grand lessons of this battle perfectly. You
can engineer the greatest logistical miracle
in the world. You can lay 388 miles of railway
across a desert. You can pump water from the
Nile. You can execute a brilliant cavalry encirclement
under the cover of fog. But warfare, like any
massive organizational effort, is fundamentally
a human endeavor. And if the humans in charge
cannot communicate a clear shared reality to
one another, if the map in the general's tent
does not match the blood and mud on the soldier's
boots, all that engineering, all that technology,
and all that bravery amounts to nothing. That
is the ultimate takeaway for you here today.
The First Battle of Gaza wasn't lost by the soldiers
hacking through the cactus hedges with machetes.
It wasn't lost by the armored cars holding the
line against cavalry in the dark. It was lost
by a fog -induced delay, an institutional fear
of the dark, and a tragically misunderstood phone
call. It is a profound historical lesson in the
illusion of control. You can have all the data,
all the resources, and all the manpower, but
if you don't communicate clearly with the person
on the exact other end of the line, you lose
the whole thing. Precisely. It highlights the
friction of war, the way small errors, a delayed
headquarters, a cracked telephone wire, a vague
phrase compound into systemic catastrophic failures.
And it forces us to look at our own systems of
communication, our own organizational structures,
and ask where our own field telephones might
be dropping the signal. Exactly. And I want to
leave you with a final thought to mull over,
something to explore on your own that built on
everything we've just uncovered. Think about
that precise moment General Dobell received that
delayed intercepted wireless message at 23000.
The intercept. The message confirming the Ottoman
garrison was out of ammo, desperate and ready
to surrender. He read that hard proof of victory
just hours after he had personally ordered his
own victorious army to turn around and walk away
into the night. It makes you wonder how many
times in our own lives, in our careers, or in
history have we completely abandoned a pursuit
just moments before the invisible breaking point
of success, simply because we couldn't see through
our own proverbial fog. A haunting thought. It
really is. Thank you so much for joining us on
this deep dive. Until next time, keep questioning
the narrative and always double check your communications.