Allenby, Edmund, 1st Viscount Allenby

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Allenby, Edmund, 1st Viscount Allenby (1861–1936). Soldier and administrator. After extensive service in Africa before 1914, Allenby fought in France as a divisional, corps, and army commander before being posted to Palestine in June 1917. In the Middle East he proved himself a master of mobile warfare. In October 1917 his troops defeated the Turks at Gaza and by Christmas he had occupied Jerusalem. Further rapid progress was halted when his army was milked of reinforcements to be sent to France. But when he resumed his offensive in September 1918, operating in cooperation with Arab forces organized by Colonel T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia), he destroyed the Turkish armies in Palestine and Syria at the battle of Megiddo. Between 1919 and 1925 he served as high commissioner in Egypt. His notoriously bad temper earned him the nickname of ‘the bull’. He received his peerage in 1919.

David French

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