Welcome to this custom tailored deep dive. We
are we're looking at a really fascinating stack
of material today. Yeah, it's a heavy one for
sure. It really is. So we are anchoring our conversation
today on the comprehensive Wikipedia article
detailing the third battle of Gaza. And, you
know, if you've ever found yourself just staring
down a massive, seemingly impossible project.
We've all been there. Right. Or an obstacle in
your professional life that just absolutely refuses
to budge no matter how much force you apply to
it, you are going to want to hear this. Definitely.
The lessons here are incredibly applicable. Exactly.
Because we are exploring how General Edmund Allenby
dismantled an allegedly impenetrable fortress.
Our mission today is to head back to November
1917 to the grueling desert theater of southern
Palestine in World War I. Where the British -Egyptian
Expeditionary Force, the EEF, finally broke a
brutal stalemate against the Ottoman Empire.
Yes, and we are going to unpack the brilliant,
often totally chaotic blend of ancient cavalry
tactics, cutting edge modern technology, and
elaborate psychological warfare that ultimately
decided this battle. Okay, let's unpack this.
Sounds good. To really understand the strategic
masterpiece that happened in November, we have
to look at the absolute nightmare that was the
setup. Right. It was a true nightmare scenario,
both tactically and psychologically. I mean,
to give you the proper context, you have to realize
that by late 1917, the EEF had already tried
to take Gaza twice. And failed both times. Miserably.
They fought the first and second battles of Gaza
in March and April that same year, and both were
bitter, incredibly costly defeats for the British.
The first one is especially agonizing to read
about. It is. In the first battle, they actually
had the city practically surrounded, but withdrew
due to a catastrophic miscommunication. Just
a total failure of command and control. And then
the second one was just brute force. Exactly.
In the second, they launched a frontal assault
and were simply slaughtered. So following those
two massive losses, a deeply demoralizing stalemate
just kind of settled over the region through
this scorching, unforgiving summer months. And
Gaza wasn't just a typical city anymore by this
point, was it? The Ottoman defenders had spent
that entire summer turning it into an absolute
meat grinder. They really had. Under the command
of the German general Kress von Kressenstein,
the Ottomans completely transformed Gaza into
a modern fortress. We are talking about heavy,
reinforced entrenchments and extensive deep -wire
entanglements. The kind of stuff that just halts
an army in its tracks. Exactly. But most dangerously,
they had engineered a cleared slope. What's called
a glaceon on the southern and southeastern edges
of the city. Meaning there was absolutely zero
natural cover for any attacking force. None.
You'd have to run up a totally barren climb.
And this fortress was manned by a veteran garrison
of 8 ,000 riflemen, supported by 116 artillery
guns. And they were dug in deep. They knew the
terrain intimately. So, you know, the EEF is
staring. at this open slope covered by 116 guns,
knowing full well that a daytime frontal assault
is essentially a suicide mission. Yeah, that
was off the table. Which forces them to get creative.
And this is the part I love. Before a single
shot of the main battle is even fired, the EEF
initiates this master level deception campaign
to totally blind. Ottoman intelligence. The misdirection
was on a massive scale. It really was. When the
British finally started secretly moving their
troops inland to concentrate for their actual
attacks, they left their old camps completely
intact at places like Khan Yunus and Rafa. And
they didn't just leave the tents up. actively
maintained the illusion of daily life. They kept
campfires burning. They had skeleton crews moving
around specifically to trick the German and Ottoman
aerial reconnaissance planes flying overhead.
Because they knew they were being watched. Right.
They wanted the Ottoman commanders to look at
those aerial photographs and think, excellent,
there are still six infantry divisions sitting
idle right there on the coast in front of Gaza.
It's a massive commitment of resources just to
sell a lie. But, you know, visual tricks only
go so far on land. What's incredible is how they
extended this theater to the coastline to make
the Ottomans deeply paranoid about an amphibious
assault. What's fascinating here is the sheer
logistical theatricality of their misdirection
at sea. The EEF controlled the coastal sea lanes,
right? So their intelligence service started
actively seeding rumors. through local channels
about amphibious landings behind Gaza. Just whispering
in the right ears. Exactly. But to provide proof
for these rumors, they actually had naval ships
taking visible soundings off the coast, literally
measuring the water's depth right in front of
the Ottoman observers. Which is exactly what
you do when preparing to bring in large troop
landing vessels. Precisely. They were pantomiming
an invasion. And they culminated this with a
massive fake embarkation on November 1st, right
before the attack. They used the Egyptian labor
corps. These were the logistics and support workers,
not even combat troops, and had them visibly
boarding motor launches, trawlers, and tugs at
a place called Dirbella. In broad daylight. Right
into the fading light of evening, yeah. Making
it look for all the world like a massive flanking
maneuver by sea was officially underway. It forced
the Ottoman defenders to constantly look over
their shoulders toward the water. It split their
attention and their defensive posture. But as
you hinted at earlier, they were also attacking
the minds of the defenders directly. Right, because
they didn't just mess with the troop movements.
They engaged in literal psychological warfare
from the sky. The airplane drops. Yes. There's
this amazing detail from a letter General Allenby
wrote to his wife describing airplanes flying
over the Ottoman lines. But instead of dropping
bombs, they were dropping packets of cigarettes.
Which the soldiers would obviously pick up. Of
course. And bundled with those cigarettes were
printed proclamations from the Sharif of Mecca.
Which is a brilliantly targeted move. I mean,
to understand why that matters, you have to know
that the Sharif of Mecca wasn't just a political
figure. He was the traditional steward of Islam's
holiest cities. His word carried immense weight.
Immense religious and cultural weight. So when
he issued proclamations actively encouraging
the Arab soldiers within the Ottoman ranks to
defect and join the Arab rebellion, it struck
a deep nerve. Because the Ottoman army wasn't
a monolith. Not at all. It was highly diverse.
And many Arab conscripts were already feeling
highly marginalized by the Turkish command. Allenby
noted that this propaganda actually worked. Quite
a few soldiers crossed the lines to defect after
finding those drops. When you look at all these
elements together, the fake camps, the Phantom
naval landings, the targeted propaganda drops.
It feels like a highly coordinated attack on
the enemy commander's sanity. That is precisely
the strategic takeaway here. And it's something
highly applicable to modern strategic thinking
or leadership today. This wasn't just about fighting
a physical battle of attrition. It was about
overwhelming the enemy's decision making process.
Cognitive overload. Yes. By feeding Kress von
Kressenstein and his command staff a constant
stream of false data, Allenby engineered that
cognitive overload. He forced the Ottomans to
expend immense metro energy guessing where the
real threat was coming from. Which means they
keep resources in reserve to defend against ghosts.
Exactly. Managing information and sometimes deliberately
manufacturing it is just as critical a weapon
as managing your actual troops. Here's where
it gets really interesting because once they
had the Ottoman forces sufficiently confused,
paranoid, and pinned down by these phantoms,
the EEF unleashed the real physical hammer. The
bombardment. Yes. On October 27th, the bombardment
of Gaza began. But this wasn't just standard
land artillery lobbing shells. It was a massive
coordinated joint operation involving both the
British and the French navies pulling up right
off the coast to provide offshore fire support.
The hardware they brought to bear was staggering,
especially for the Middle Eastern theater. Sitting
offshore, you had a naval flotilla that included
British destroyers, the cruiser HMS Grafton and
several monitors. And monitors are pretty unique
vessels. They are. For those unfamiliar, monitors
were essentially floating gun platforms, shallow
draft vessels designed specifically for shore
bombardment rather than ship -to -ship combat.
They were equipped with massive 9 .2 -inch and
6 -inch guns. This floating artillery, basically.
Pretty much. You also had the HMS Raglan, featuring
enormous 14 -inch guns, which could hurl a shell
weighing over 1 ,000 pounds. And joining them
were French vessels, including the coastal defense
ship, Raclan. So you have these floating fortresses
firing inland combined with the land -based heavy
artillery, which consisted of 68 medium and heavy
guns and howitzers. Over the course of the bombardment
leading up to the infantry attack, the EEF fired
15 ,000 rounds of heavy artillery. It's just
a punishing amount of steel. The sources point
out that this was actually the heaviest bombardment
of World War I anywhere outside of the European
Western Front. The sheer logistics of moving
15 ,000 heavy shells across the Sinai desert
to fire at Gaza is an incredible feat in itself.
And the tactical application was relentless.
They were engaging in sustained anti -battery
bombardments. Meaning they were targeting the
other side's guns. Exactly. They were specifically
using their heavy guns to hunt and destroy the
Ottoman artillery positions so they couldn't
fire back at the British infantry later. There's
this really visceral detail from the source material
that paints such a grim picture of this. The
bombardment was so incredibly intense that by
the sixth night, the concentration of fire from
onshore and offshore guns falling on one specific
small area of the Ottoman lines was actually
heavier than the bombardment on the first day
of the Battle of the Somme. We're just saying
something. It's terrifying. They were just systematically
erasing the landscape. They even fired gas shells
during these anti -battery missions. Though the
gas shells proved largely ineffective in this
specific environment. Because of the weather.
Yeah, the desert winds and heat disposed the
gas quickly, sometimes just producing a sickly
yellow smoke that caused momentary confusion
rather than mass casualties. Yet what really
stands out here is the incredible resilience
of the Ottoman defenders. They didn't break.
No. Despite this apocalyptic level of firepower
raining down on them for days, the Ottoman 7th
and 53rd Divisions held the line. They didn't
just cower, either. They actively fought back
against the warships. They did. An Ottoman shore
battery managed to track the French ship, the
Requin, and scored a direct hit on its mess deck,
causing 38 casualties. It's a stark reminder
for anyone studying conflict. Even the most overwhelming,
mathematically superior technological advantage
doesn't instantly break a well -entrenched, determined
defending force. Right. And because that massive
bombardment made it blindingly obvious exactly
where the British were focusing their fire, any
lingering element of tactical surprise on the
ground was totally gone. Completely erased. And
because the Ottoman machine gunners had survived
in their deep bunkers, daytime attacks across
that open glasses were still considered suicide.
So that forced the EEF into an incredibly dangerous
alternative, a massive infantry assault in the
pitch black of night. So we shift to the night
of November 1st heading into the early hours
of November 2nd. The British plan was a phased
infantry assault. They were targeting a specific
series of sand dunes and trench complexes that
formed the outer shell of Gaza's defenses. Phase
1 kicked off at 11 zero p .m. with an attack
on a prominent sand dune called Umbrella Hill,
which overlooked the main objectives. And this
was the Scottish Rifles, right? Yes, the 17th
Battalion of the Scottish Rifles. They were supported
by a heavy, sudden 10 -minute bombardment, and
then they charged the hill. And against the odds,
they took it in just 10 minutes. To keep their
direction in the dark, they had actually laid
down a white tape on the ground beforehand to
guide the troops forward. A very common night
tactic. But reading through the outcome of that
assault, you see the devastating paradox of their
own successful artillery fire. It's a classic,
tragic World War I problem. Yeah. The massive
bombardment we just talked about had actually
been too effective on Umbrella Hill. It had virtually
obliterated the Ottoman trenches. Which sounds
good until you have to occupy them. Right. Specifically,
it destroyed all the resitments, the wooden planks
and sandbag retaining walls that keep a trench
from caving in on itself. So when the Scottish
rifles captured the hill, they weren't jumping
into a fortified trench. They were basically
standing in shallow, unstable sand pits. Just
totally exposed. They had almost zero cover.
When the Ottomans inevitably launched their counter
-artillery fire onto the hill they had just lost,
the Scottish rifles suffered 103 casualties over
the next 24 hours, simply trying to hold a bare
sand dune. The reality on the ground for these
soldiers was just sheer chaos. There's an incredible
firsthand account in the sources from Lance Corporal
R. Loudon. He was a signaller with the Royal
Scots who were involved in the phase two attack
on the L. Erich Redoubt a few hours later, around
3 a .m. Oh, this story is wild. It is. He recalls
sitting there in the dark, the tension so thick
you could cut it just waiting for the whistle
to attack, and suddenly a soldier who had clearly
gotten way too much of his pre -battle rum allowance
to start singing at the top of his lungs. Just
belted it out. Right in the middle of no man's
land. A non -commissioned officer had to sprint
over and physically haul the guy away before
the Ottomans heard him and opened fire on the
whole line. It adds such a human gritty dimension
to the tactical maps. Loudon describes lying
down along that white guiding tape, waiting for
the signal and then plunging into the dark amid
intense shell and machine gun fire. His account
really brings home the terrifying reality of
night combat. You can't see anything. You can't.
He mentions that the first wave of the Royal
Scots advancing on the redoubt hit a field of
hidden Ottoman contact mines. The men were blown
to pieces, and because of the darkness and the
noise, the subsequent waves pushing forward didn't
even know what was happening until they were
right on top of it. And as the attacks spread
to the coastal defenses in phase three, the environment
itself became an enemy. The dust kicked up by
thousands of artillery explosions combined with
the smoke of battle and the hazy, cloudy night
sky just caused utter confusion. Complete disorientation.
Whole regiments, like the Norfolk and the Essex,
completely lost their direction in the dark.
They ended up attacking the wrong trench lines,
or were forced to withdraw simply because they
couldn't coordinate with the units right next
to them. And right in the middle of this chaotic,
terrifying trench assault, we see the introduction
of a brand new, highly disruptive technology
on this front tank. Yes. The Palestine tank contaction
was deployed here. But listeners shouldn't picture
the sleek, fast armor of modern warfare. They
only had eight tanks available, and mostly they
were obsolete Mark I models. Right, these were
the early clunky diamond -shaped metal boxes
originally designed for the mud of Flanders,
not the soft, shifting sand and scorching heat
of the Middle East. I mean, inside those things,
the temperature could easily hit 120 degrees.
And the crew were breathing in exhaust and cordite
the whole time. Miserable. Very. They were utilized
in a very experimental way to support the infantry.
They were driven forward to physically roll over
the Ottoman wire entanglements and crush them
so the infantry could pass. Which is a great
use for them. It is. In one fascinating case,
they didn't just use them as weapons. A tank
drove along the front line acting as an armored
tractor, literally unrolling new spools of barbed
wire behind it to secure a position the British
had just captured. That's brilliant. But they
were incredibly vulnerable. Many of them broke
down mechanically in the sand. Others were easily
spotted and disabled by concentrated Ottoman
artillery fire. Because they're big, slow targets.
Exactly. In one particularly grim instance, reserve
tanks that were brought forward to carry engineering
supplies had their payloads of sandbags set on
fire by hostile shots. How does a sandbag catch
fire? Well, early armor was highly prone to drawing
sparks from bullet impacts, which could ignite
anything flammable strapped to the outside. Wow.
So if we take a breath and look at everything
we've covered so far, the massive fake naval
landings, the propaganda drops, the heaviest
bombardment outside of Europe, the devastating
night attacks, the contact mines, the burning
tanks, we have to step back and ask the big question.
So what does this all mean? Why throw all of
this at Gaza? Well, here is the absolute biggest
twist of this entire deep dive. This whole brutal,
massive, complex assault on Gaza wasn't actually
designed to capture Gaza. That is the pivotal
strategic revelation of this entire campaign.
General Allenby never intended for this frontal
assault to take the city. The third battle of
Gaza was, at its core, a massive, bloody, highly
elaborate pinning maneuver. It's like holding
someone by the collar so they can't move while
someone else delivers the knockout punch. Exactly.
Allen B knew that if he wanted to genuinely break
the Ottoman lines, he had to do it miles away
to the east, at places like Beersheba and Sharia,
where the defenses were slightly less concentrated.
But to do that, he needs the Gaza garrison to
stay put. He needed the 8 ,000 veteran defenders
of Gaza to stay exactly where they were. If those
8 ,000 Ottoman troops had realized the main attack
was happening inland and moved to reinforce Beersheba,
the whole British offensive would have collapsed.
So he gives them a very loud, very deadly reason
to stay. Yes. He threw this terrifying, overwhelming,
multi -day assault at Gaza purely to lock them
in place. He had to make it look and feel like
the main event. And it worked perfectly. The
Ottoman forces were thoroughly convinced Gaza
was the primary target. They kept their forces
there, fighting desperately to hold the ruined
trenches. Doing exactly what Allenby wanted.
Right. But by doing so, they allowed their lines
to be shattered inland. By November 5th, the
Ottoman artillery at Gaza was exhausted. They
only had about 300 shells left. Which is nothing
after days of fighting. Nothing. When the Ottoman
High Command realized their eastern flank had
collapsed, they knew Gaza was completely untenable.
During the night of November 6, then into the
early hours of the 7th, the Ottoman forces skillfully
and very quietly evacuated the city. Which is
incredibly difficult to do. Retreating while
in active contact with an enemy is one of the
hardest military maneuvers to execute without
turning it into a total rat. But they managed
it. They did. They withdrew in good order to
form a new defensive line further to the north.
But the fact remains, Allenby's massive feint
accomplished its strategic goal. The entire Gaza
to Beersheba defensive line, which had held strong
and frustrated the British since March, was finally
broken. So the sun comes up on November 7th.
The British infantry patrols creep forward, expecting
machine gun fire, and find Gaza basically deserted
and in ruins. The EEF occupies the city. But
the deep dive doesn't end there because the fight
is absolutely not over. Now begins the pursuit.
And this pursuit is where the contrast between
eras of warfare becomes incredibly stark. It
really does. With the static trench lines broken,
the cavalry was finally unleashed. specifically
the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade, which included
the Hyderabad and Mysore Lancers. These were
traditional mounted cavalry troops armed with
lances and swords. Yes. On the morning of November
7th, they literally rode their horses through
the destroyed, smoking ruins of Gaza to chase
down the retreating Ottomans. By 1 .00 p .m.,
they had reached a settlement called Beit Hanun,
just north of Gaza, where they encountered a
heavily armed Ottoman rearguard defending a ridge
with numerous machine guns. And in a scene straight
out of the 19th century? the cavalry charged
them. They charged machine guns on horseback.
They fought their way up the ridge from the east
and actually captured the position, taking prisoners
and capturing artillery pieces. But amidst this
dramatic charge, the sources highlight one of
those wonderfully quirky logistical details that
dictate the reality of desert warfare. I love
this detail. During this capture, they secured
the town's water pumping machinery completely
intact. In the middle of the desert, an intact
water pump is worth its weight in gold for a
thirsty cavalry. Brigade, but there was a catch.
Right. The pump didn't run on standard liquid
fuel. It ran on gas made from charcoal. Which
they didn't have. The cavalry couldn't even use
it. They actually had to fall back to a different
town entirely just to get water for their horses,
while specialist engineers were brought up to
completely convert the machinery so it could
actually be utilized. It's a great reminder that
an army marches on its logistics. Absolutely.
And speaking of the clash of eras, while the
cavalry is dealing with charcoal water pumps
on the ground, the skies above them are painting
a very different picture. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, the juxtaposition is stunning.
Up in the sky, a completely new era of warfare
is dawning. The Royal Flying Corps took to the
air in force to harass the retreat. Dropping
the cigarettes was over. Long over. They relentlessly
bombed the retreating Ottoman trains, their aerodromes,
their transport hubs, and the columns of marching
troops. They were dropping bombs and strafing
from low altitudes with machine guns. It was
the terrifying new reality of combined air and
ground warfare, happening simultaneously with
the traditional cavalry pursuit. It really is
a mind -bending clash of eras. To wrap this deep
dive up, The Third Battle of Gaza is an incredible
case study of how a seemingly unbreakable deadlock
was finally shattered. It wasn't just brute force.
No, it was this wild calculated cocktail of massive
naval artillery power, the very first clunky
tanks, literal ancient cavalry charges, and master
level psychological deception that overloaded
the enemy's ability to respond. This raises an
important question. Something for you to think
about as you tackle your own complex projects.
We've talked a lot about the kinetic action today,
the tanks, the ships, the Lancers. The loud stuff.
Right, the loud stuff. But think back to the
Egyptian labor corps. These are the logistics
and supply workers. Yet Allenby used them to
visibly board ships and sell the massive fake
naval landing that kept the Ottomans paralyzed.
He used his support staff as a primary weapon.
Exactly. Yeah. In modern business leadership
or strategy, we so often focus entirely on the
soldiers. the engineers building the product,
or the salespeople closing the deal. But how
often do we overlook our logistics, our support
structures, and our operational routines, failing
to realize that they too can be leveraged as
active instruments of strategy, misdirection,
and competitive advantage? That is an incredibly
profound thought to leave on, looking at every
asset you have, not just the obvious ones, as
a tool for strategy. Thank you so much for joining
us on this deep dive into the source material
behind the Third Battle of Gaza. We hope we've
given you some fresh perspectives on strategy,
cognitive overload, and overcoming immovable
obstacles. Until next time, stay curious.