HAIG’S TOWER OF STRENGTH

Centenary commemorations of World War I in Britain have been largely fixated on the Western Front; most recently the horrors of Passchendaele and then the Hundred Days Offensive have inevitably captured the public’s attention. Often neglected is the extent to which it was a truly world war. One theatre receiving less attention than it deserves is the fighting in the Middle East, in particular the successes of General Sir Edmund Allenby’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force against the Turks and their German allies in the final two years of the war.

In Palestine and Syria, he had launched his army against the Turks with a freedom of movement unimaginable on the Western Front, culminating in the audacious Battle of Megiddo in September 1918, in what is now northern Israel. Megiddo is a fascinating early example of blitzkrieg and is regarded as one of the greatest cavalry battles in history. Fought on the biblical site of Armageddon, it spelt the end of the Ottoman Empire, Germany’s ally, with the subsequent territorial manoeuvrings of the British and French and its immense implications for