Third Battle Of Gaza

The Third Battle of Gaza was fought in 1917 in southern Palestine during World War I. The British Empire forces under the command of General Edmund Allenby successfully broke the Turkish defensive Gaza-Beersheba line.

The critical moment of the battle was the capture of the town of Beersheba on the first day by Australian Light Horse units.

Allenby was sent to Egypt to be made commander-in-chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) on 27 June, 1917, replacing Sir Archibald Murray. Allenby quickly won the respect of his men by making frequent visits to front line troops (something which Murray, who generally ran his campaigns by remote control from Cairo, rarely did during his tenure with the EEF) and moving GHQ from comfortable Cairo to Rafah, much nearer the front lines at Gaza. His usual installation of discipline and organisation, organising the heretofore disparate forces of the EEF into three corps - the XX and XXI Corps, both of infantry, and the Desert Mounted Corps, made up of mostly Australian Light Horse (mounted infantry). One of Allenby's first moves was to support the efforts of T. E. Lawrence amongst the Arabs with £200,000 a month. Many of Allenby's men said after the war that they were willing to tolerate his strictness and rigidity because he gave the impression that he was in control of the situation, a feeling which Murray never inspired in his soldiers.