Pyramids and Fleshpots

PROLOGUE

LAST STAND AT KATIA

For Arthur Dabbs, a 28-year-old bank clerk from Birmingham, it was all over. His war, and probably everything else, was going to end at a desolate oasis in the Sinai Desert, 30 miles east of the Suez Canal, on this Easter Sunday, 23 April 1916. Outnumbered and surrounded, his troop of the Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars (Yeomanry) had ridden all night, and then fought most of the day under the blazing sun, burrowing into the hot sand for cover. Now, at 3 p.m., with ammunition and water all but gone and no hope of help, the end had come:

Suddenly I saw the right flank beginning to fall back and saw that the Turks were in amongst them. Then the Turks opposite us leapt up shouting 'Allah, Allah' and charged us. I stood up and fixed my bayonet and waited for the end, hoping it would come quickly. I felt miserable to think I had to die, especially in a hole in the desert like this and I wondered how my people would get to know of it and who would be alive to write and tell them. I wondered which of the advancing Turks would kill me and if I should be able to kill one or two before I was done in. We had almost stopped firing, and the Turks too and it was strangely quiet except for their shouting.

Then the colonel said 'It's no good, boys, throw down your rifles.' Very gladly I obeyed though feeling very cheap and very much conquered as I held up my hands. I was astonished to see that the Turks who came up were holding out their hands and saying 'Ingleesi good'.1

Corporal Dabbs would be one of the 'lucky' ones, experiencing two and a half years as a prisoner of war in Turkey, kept on short rations and worked hard to build roads and railways. Many of his comrades would be left behind in the desert at Katia, and more still would die as a result of the harsh conditions of their captivity (see Appendix I).

Their sacrifice stalled an attempt by German-led Ottoman Turkish forces to establish positions where their artillery could dominate the Suez Canal. This sliver of water, connecting the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez and the Indian Ocean beyond, was Britain's lifeline to its Dominions and Colonies in India, the Far East and the Pacific. Millions of tons of vital war supplies and raw materials flowed through it to feed Britain, the Empire's industrial powerhouse, and tens of thousands of men to feed the insatiable demands of the Western Front. At the same time, the trade goods that helped fund the war effort flowed out to the Empire and neutral countries.

While these supplies could be sent around the southern tip of Africa, such a route would add days and weeks to the journey. Throughout the war, Britain suffered an acute shortage of shipping and walked a fine tightrope of having just enough ships carrying just enough supplies, arriving just in time. To divert Far Eastern traffic around the Cape would be a serious disruption.

The Suez Canal had been of increasing importance since it was first cut in the 1860s. After initial British disinterest, a growing realisation of its significance had led to the purchase of a controlling interest in the Canal in 1878, and an occupation of Egypt in 1882, even though the country remained nominally part of the Ottoman Empire. Allies for most of the nineteenth century, the early twentieth century saw friction between the two empires grow, coming, with the rest of the Europe, to a crisis point in the summer of 1914. The Ottomans held off against the demands of their German allies for as long as possible, but finally, in November 1914, war was declared. To preserve the safety of the Suez Canal, Britain immediately declared a protectorate over Egypt and would spend the next five years in fear of nationalist and Islamic unrest and revolt within the country. Externally, the great fear was of an Ottoman strike against the Canal.

The first such strike came in February 1915 and the resulting battle was fought and won on the banks of the Canal itself. Any attempts to prevent future attacks by dominating the Sinai Desert were forestalled by the Entente campaign in the Dardanelles, which sucked in all of the available troops and resources of both sides. However, when this misadventure finally ended in the first days of 1916, protection of the Canal again became the centre of attention. Control of the Sinai Peninsula now became the priority.

To move even a few divisions into the desert would require significant logistical effort. Water, in particular, would be a problem, and while railways and water pipelines were constructed from Kantara (El Qantarah) stretching out into the desert, water holes and oases along the way would also need to be exploited. In April 1916 parties of Royal Engineers, with strong cavalry escorts, began to locate and develop such sites.

Of particular importance were the wells around Katia (Qatia). Numerous wells covered a large area, and several of the main tracks across the desert met there. Throughout April, this area was swept by the Yeomanry units of the 5th Mounted Brigade, under Brigadier Edgar Wiggin. Consisting of the Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars (QOWH), Royal Gloucestershire Hussars (RGH), and the Warwickshire Yeomanry (each of around 500 men), the brigade had served on foot at Gallipoli, and since January had been recovering in Egypt and readjusting to mounted operations. Through April they swept the Katia area, tangling on several occasions with long-range patrols of Ottomans and their Bedouin allies.2

By mid-April, the brigade had settled into a north-south line to cover the work of the Royal Engineers. Furthest north, the RGH was concentrated at Romani, where the railway, already well underway, was expected to run, with a single squadron of around 150 men detached to Katia to the south, in the centre of the line. Furthest south were the Warwickshires, with 'C' Squadron of QOWH, grouped around Hamisah. In front of the line, at Oghratina, 7 miles east of Katia, were the two remaining squadrons of the QOWH.3

On 19 April 1916 Brigadier Wiggin, then at Hamisah, received intelligence from patrols of the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) that a force of 200-300 Ottomans had been spotted at Mageibra, about 10 miles south of his position.4 After conferring with his own commanding officer, he decided to make a reconnaissance in force, with the hope of catching and engaging the enemy.5 On 22 April he led his entire force (two squadrons of Warwickshires and one of QOWH) in a night march to come upon the reported camp at dawn. His decision to take his whole force was later criticised by many of his men, although there is perhaps more than a touch of hindsight in these opinions. In the event, while only halfway there, Wiggin's scouts reported back to say that the camp at Mageibra was deserted. Wiggin decided to push on, but when he reached the camp at dawn on Sunday 23 April the campsite was indeed empty except for half a dozen Ottoman orderlies. These were captured, but more interesting was the clear evidence that a body of several hundred enemy troops had been there only the night before.

In fact, this Ottoman force was only one of several busy in the area that morning, albeit probably the smallest. Earlier that month a force of some 3,700 infantry, 1,000 irregular (Arab) camel troops, six artillery pieces and four machine guns had set out from Palestine under the command of the German Colonel Kress von Kressenstein. Their mission was to roll back the British forces in the Sinai, pinning them back behind the Canal to enable larger Ottoman forces (then being prepared) to follow up and establish strong points from where artillery could dominate the Canal, effectively cutting it. A secondary objective was to create such a threat that the movement to France of troops being withdrawn from Gallipoli would be stopped.

They crossed the Sinai Desert by a route judged by the British as impassable, and had arrived within a few miles of the British outposts without detection, despite warnings by the RFC that forces were gathering.6 In the south, a small force had camped at Mageibra, but moved on the evening before Wiggin's arrival. This contingent would get the closest to the Canal, attacking a redoubt held by a single company of the 5th Royal Scots at Dueidar just after dawn. Despite artillery support, their repeated attacks failed, and the Ottomans were forced to withdraw in the early afternoon when reinforcements from the Australian Light Horse arrived.

The other, much larger, Ottoman forces met with greater success. In the early hours of 23 April 1916 they converged upon Oghratina, where 'A' and 'D' Squadrons of the QOWH, under Major Williams-Thomas, were protecting their party of Royal Engineers (RE). A thick fog, caused by moisture rolling in from the sea during the night and evaporating as the dawn broke, had covered the area around the oasis. Although three patrols were sent out to maintain a watch in the dawn, visibility remained minimal. Two patrols returned and reported no contact, but the third did not come back. No alarm was raised, even when one of the outposts reported hearing activity around some of the outlying wells to the west, towards the Canal. A small patrol under Captain E.S. Ward of 'D' Squadron was sent out to investigate, expecting to find the lost patrol. Instead they observed through a gap in the fog a small Ottoman patrol watering their animals. Returning to the main force, Ward collected the rest of his troop (about thirty men) and headed back to ambush them. Creeping up under cover, they managed to surprise the Ottomans, who fled with heavy casualties.7 The Yeomen eagerly took up the chase, but this had only been a scouting party. Within moments, they ran into the advancing main...