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WITH ALLENBY IN PALESTINE.

GREAT MILITARY LEADER. BOOKMAN AND NATURAXIST AS WELL Although it took Field-Marshal Lord Allenby just one year to do what the Crusaders were unable to accomplish in 100 years, nevertheless, while carrying out the most brilliantly executed campaign in the annals of military history, he by no means spent, all of his time fitting Turks (says ilr. Lowell Thomas, the American war correspondent). One expects a gTeat military leader to be conversant with military tactics and the history of war, but it is a bit extraordinary to find the leader of a great army a bookman and naturalist. But Lord Allenby probably knows as Hiueh as any man living about the flowers and wild animals and birds ot the Holy Land. He stationed a Yorkshire sergeant at a watering place which migratory birds frequented, and whenever a new species arrived the commander-in-chief would forget the cares of his campaign and slip, off to the pond to see the bird for himself. He is the type of man whom John Burroughs would make a boon companion. ■While with your forces in Palestine, I discovered that Allenby was exceptionally popular with the men in the ranks. Bat I was told everywhere that his Generals got shaky in the knees when in his presence, because if anything went wrong you could hear the deliverer of Jerusalem all the way from Dan to Beersheba. SOLDIER AXD BOOK-LOVER. Since the Boer war, when he first made •his reputation as a great cavalry leader, he has been known to his men as '"Bull" Allenby, and the rank and file of the Tommies and Anzacs seldom go far wrong in their measure of a man. A thousand years from now historians, I believe, will rank Allenby with Thothmes HI., Barneses L, Joshua, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great, Titus, Richard Coeur de Lion, Saladin, and the other mighty conquerors wno have led their hosts across the Plains of Sharon and Armageddon. And I believe they will write his name at the head of the list. Allenby succeeded where even Xapoleon failed. His' was a campaign such as all military men have dreamed of, but few have realised. But though essentially a man of war, who prefers to wear a uniform made of tie same cloth as that worn by his privates, to eat the same food, and to roar like lion, Allenby has another side to ■his nature. He reads both Greek and Latin fluently, and he carried with him on his campaign such books as George Adam Smith's Geography of the Holy Land, a Bible Dictionary and, of course, , a copy of the Holy Scriptures. Just after the capture of Jericho, Allenby and the Duke of Connaught took a run down to the edge of the Dead Sea. When they arrived the soldiers were enjoying their noonday siesta, and there were some motor-boats lying out a bit too far, being knocked about by the waves. , THE DUKE OX THE ROPE. The C.-in-C. angrily ordered them to be pulled in. Both he and the Duke lent a hand. The temperature was about 110 degrees. Both were wringing wet with perspiration, and hardly as comfortable as. the soldiers helping them, who were wearing absolutely no clothing. When the job was done," Allenby remarked quietly to one of the boys that it was a pity they couldn't have taken a cinema of his Royal Highness pulling on the rope between two naked Australians. An hour later, on their way back to Jericho, the car rounded a bend within gunshot of the Turks. Somewhere near the place that Joshua and the Israelites ! are supposed to have crossed the Jordan on dry land, the Rolls-Royce sank up to its hubs in quicksand and salt. Instead of allowing his men to do it, Allenby insisted on crawling through that slime, scooping out room to lie down under the car, and then, using his enormous hands as shovels, he scooped out the white mud around all four wheels 60 the Rolls-Royce could be pulled out by his staff captain's car. When he crawled out, the conqueror of the Holy Land was absolutely unrecognisable and covered with a mass of oozy slime. THE HUIIAX SIDE. People are far more interested in little stories about the human side of General Allenby than they are in how he turned the Turkish flank at Beersheba, or'how he captured Aleppo and cut the Bagdad railway. When Allenby captured Jerusalem he had accomplished one of the most dra- j matic feats of all human history. The ' best that Richard Coeur de Lion could do was to reach the top of Nebi Samwil and get a view of the Holy City. Herr I WiThelm Hohenzollern, before his bubble I burst, showed the world what a buffoon ! he was by entering Jerusalem on a white charger, dressed in white robes and followed by his resplendent comic opera cavalry. As everyone knows, when Allenby, the great deliverer, entered the Holy City, he merely walked in with three officers in front of him who occupy a far more prominent position in the official photographs than Allenby himself. When the Kaiser rode into Jerusalem he went to the German Cathedral and delivered an oration, as if he were tie reincarnation of the Apostle Paul. "When Allenby entered he stood modestly while another man read his very brief proclamation for him. HOW IT FELT TO CAPTURE JERUSALEM. One day, while having lunch with the Duke of Connaught and Lord Allenby, I asked the Commander-in-Chief what his ieelings were when he received the news that his men had taken Jerusalem, the City of David, " the city which, more taan Athens, more than Rome, taught the nations civic justice, the city which gave her name to the ideal city which men are ever striving to build on earth, the city which gave her name to the city of God which shall one day descend from Heaven—the new Jerusalem." Allenby replied: "Oh, I guess I felt pretty much the same as you feel when ycu capture any town." Lieut.-General Sir Philip Chetwode, who commanded the army corps which captured Jerusalem, one of Allenby's most closest friends, his companion through Ohe Boer war, and his second in command during the campaign in the Holy Land, described the deliverer of j Palestine to mc one day while we were ' seated in the Kaiser's palace on the Hount of Olives, as "the straightest man j drew oa a boot."

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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19191115.2.128

Bibliographic details

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 272, 15 November 1919, Page 17

Word Count
1,081

WITH ALLENBY IN PALESTINE. Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 272, 15 November 1919, Page 17

WITH ALLENBY IN PALESTINE. Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 272, 15 November 1919, Page 17