THE PALESTINE CAMPAIGN EARLY NOVEMBER 1917
The Advance through Palestine and the Battle of Megiddo, 1918: Australian members of the Imperial Camel Corps near Jaffa in Palestine prepare to mount. Their camels are kneeling in a row, their heads pulled by their bridles towards the mounting riders. © IWM (HU 75737)
Gaza, Beersheba and Sheria Of the Palestine campaign, Jim Tyler had arrived from Salonika with the Foresters and L/Corp. Cotton (page 114) joined him after a second convalescence. Pte. Herbert Smith (page 126) arrived to fight with the 2nd Leicesters, already engaged with the Meerut Division, lately from Mesopotamia (page 60) and Pte. Cecil Loader RAMC arrived to be slain attending the wounded. Pte. Loader “was a born nurse, and I have heard from man after man, ‘as gentle as a woman’. I don’t think I ever met a man with such a gentle touch – a touch that never hurts,” wrote his captain. The Third Battle of Gaza and those of Beersheba and Haria and Sheria, where he died, broke 6 months stalemate. Artillery destruction of Gaza allowed Pte. Loader, Pte. Tyler and L/Corp. Cotton to visit war on Beersheba. The British and Empire troops then closed the gap and visited victorious fury on Sheria which lay between. 108
A troop of the Australian 4th Light Horse (photo next page) sweeping through Cecil Loader’s attacking London battalions took a Sheria redoubt having failed to hear the order to retire. Cecil Loader died whilst attending the wounded under heavy shell fire. The Egyptian Expeditionary Force, 200,000 strong, matched by Laurence of Arabia’s Arab Revolt, advanced, took Damascus and the Ottoman Empire was to be no more. His parents could draw some consolation reading that “your son led – an example to us all for straight living, and making the best of every opportunity the Chaplain could give us of Holy Communion services, and at the last forgetting self for others.”