Allenby, Edmund Henry (1861–1936)
ALLENBY, EDMUND HENRY (1861–1936)
English general. Edmund Allenby served first in Africa, notably against the Boers. In 1914, when World War I began, he took command of a cavalry division sent to France, then of the Fifth Corps and Third Army on the Somme. In June 1917 he took command of British forces on the Middle Eastern front. On 9 December in the same year he entered Jerusalem, with, among others, Captain T. E. Lawrence. In the following months, British troops defeated the Turkish-German army of Palestine, notably at Meggido, which led to the capitulation of the Ottoman Empire on 30 October 1918. Named marshal in 1919, then high commissioner in Egypt, Edmund Allenby contributed to the elaboration of a treaty recognizing the independence of Egypt.
SEE ALSO Lawrence, T. E.