- from the book ‘The Children’s Story of the War’ vol 5
- 'The Senussi'
- by Sir Edward Parrott, M.A. L.L.D.
In the Libyan Desert
The Senussi
Before I return to the Western front, let me relate the story of a dashing little campaign fought on the desert frontier of North-Western Egypt. You know that when Germany plotted to bring about the downfall of the British Empire she did not rely wholly upon her armies, great and well trained as they were. She sent her secret agents into all parts of the Empire and its borders, and did her utmost to persuade the disaffected to rise in revolt as soon as war was declared. You have read how those who yielded to her blandishments in South Africa came to grief, and in a later chapter I shall tell you how some thousands of Irishmen were beguiled into a hopeless rebellion that was put down in a week. In this and the next chapter you shall learn how the Senussi, who live on the frontier of North-Western Egypt, were lured to their doom by German officers and their Turkish dupes.
In the first half of the nineteenth century an Algerian lawyer named Mohammed Ben Ali went to and fro in Morocco and Arabia preaching a reformed Mohammedan religion. In 1855 he and his followers settled at a place about one hundred and thirty miles south-west of Solium, on the western frontier of Egypt. Mohammed died in 1859, and his second son, Sidi el Mahdi, became the leader of the sect known as the Senussi. This man gradually acquired authority over the desert tribes, and won the favour of the Sultan of Turkey. When he died, in 1902, his nephew succeeded him, but was dethroned seven years later.
In 1911, when the Turco-Italian War broke out, the Senussi fought fiercely against the Italians, and even after Turkey had made peace with Italy they continued the struggle. They professed, however, friendship towards the Egyptian Government, and in February 1915 undertook to keep peace on the frontier. In May several Turkish and two German officers appeared among them, and began to stir them up against Britain. One of the Turkish officers was Nuri Bey, a brother of Enver Bey, and it was he who persuaded the Senussi to throw in their lot with the enemy. He had already raised a large force of Bedouin Arabs, and now proposed to attack the Egyptian border.
Up to the month of November 1915 the Senussi remained quiet. They were watching events in Gallipoli, where, as you know, we were making but little progress. On 19th November some three or four hundred Arabs fell upon one of our frontier posts, but were beaten off. The leader of the Senussi still professed to be friendly; but there is no doubt that he was secretly urging his followers to take up arms against us. By 21 st November more than two thousand Arabs, under Turkish and German officers, were threatening Solium. As the place was only defended by four British officers and 120 British and Egyptian soldiers, it was decided to withdraw the garrison to Mersa- Matruh, a small seaport and Egyptian coastguard station on the coast, about one hundred and fifty miles west of Alexandria. At the same time a mounted brigade of Yeomanry and Australian Light Horse, with a battery of the Royal Horse Artillery and four infantry battalions, was dispatched to Mersa-Matruh.
On 11th December this force came in contact with detachments of the enemy and dispersed them. By this time, however, the Senussi had occupied Solium and other frontier posts; and the main body, which numbered about two thousand four hundred, and was armed with Maxims and field guns and a plentiful supply of ammunition, had taken up a position under Nuri Bey and Jaafar, the chief of the Senussi.
A Gallant Rescue
On the morning of Christmas Day our troops moved out in two columns—one for a frontal attack, the other to turn the enemy's flank. Aeroplanes spied out the enemy's position, and spotted " for the artillery. As soon as our gunners got to work, light- draught vessels off the coast began shelling the series of sand ridges on which the enemy was posted. While our infantry carried ridge after ridge the cavalry managed to get to the south of the enemy, who then fled westwards, leaving 200 dead and one gun behind them.
Again, on 22nd January, a force of all arms, consisting of British, South African, Australian, and Indian troops, marched westwards from Mersa-Matruh * to engage the enemy, whose camp had been discovered by our airmen about ten miles west of Bir Shola. Each man carried a day's rations, and a further supply for two days was packed on the motor wagons which accompanied the column. From 3 a.m. until 10 p.m. the troops tramped seventeen miles across sodden and heavy ground, and bivouacked by the side of a small well, from which the field engineers pumped sufficient water for men and horses.
Next morning the march was resumed in two columns, and after eight miles had been covered the mounted men, who formed the advance guard, came in contact with the enemy at Agagia. The infantry now marched to the sound of the guns, and soon found that the enemy had dug themselves in on a low ridge with a front of two and a half miles. Our men were received with heavy fire from machine guns and nine-pounders. While the mounted troops worked round the flanks, the infantry were sent forward to attack the centre. They had to cross a stretch.
"We had a good many casualties in the charge, but not nearly so many as I expected. Colonel Souter led us in front of the whole regiment, which rode behind him in line as at a general's inspection. It was splendid.
"We charged with a yell over the crest of the little hill, and suddenly saw beyond us a wide valley, full of the enemy running like mad. In less time than it takes to write we were among them, sticking and slashing, and the men went at it like furies. Most of our casualties happened then. . . . Colonel Souter had his horse shot under him, and a second lieutenant had two horses shot under him. There were some very narrow escapes. The most wonderful bit of experience was that Colonel Souter, when his horse fell, found himself in front of Jaafar Pasha, who surrendered to him.
"We rode on through the valley, and then rallied to the left; but as there were so many wounded, and the horses were done, we could not do much more. I don't know how many of the enemy we got, but I should think about three hundred. Our casualties were heavy; but I believe that we have given the Senussi a real blow, which I hope will shorten or end the show."
Now let me tell you a story which sounds as if it had been lifted bodily from the pages of a boy's book of adventure. On November 5, 1915, H.M. armed boarding- steamer Tar a was sunk by a German submarine in the Bay of Solium. The Germans rescued some of the crew and handed them over to the Turks, saying, " You are now the prisoners of his Most Excellency the Sultan." Others who managed to gain the shore were also captured and held captive by the Senussi, who treated them shamefully. Their sufferings were shared by a number of men who had escaped when the steamship Mooringa went down on nth November. They became slaves of the Senussi, and were forced to work in the fierce sun, like the Christian captives of the Bey of Algiers who were urged to their tasks by the whips of their masters. One of the Tara's men kept a diary, from which you will learn how the poor fellows were tortured.
"Nov. 21.—Yesterday one of the prisoners was missing, and instead of the guard being punished, as would be the case in England, we have all been punished by being kept without food for twenty-four hours, and marching twenty-six miles.
"Nov. 22.—At a place called Zebla we were told that the Senussi had declared war on England. Our position is peculiar. We were sunk under the German flag, and landed under the Turkish flag into a neutral country, which has now declared war on us.
"Nov. 23.—Day after day in the scorching, maddening sun, in ragged clothes, we have tramped the desert. Our feet are blistered and burnt, our eyes bloodshot and almost blinded. We have lost nearly all our strength because of scanty and bad food. We can just drag one leg after another. We only stop for a moment when it is impossible to move an inch further, and then we are prodded on by the bayonets behind. . . . The air is so hot that we can scarcely breathe, and our tongues are black and swollen.
"Nov. 24-Dec. 2.—We have been put into a well. It is very damp, about ten feet deep and eighteen feet square, with only room for a man to get through the opening; so it can be imagined what it is like when seventy-eight men sleep in it at night.
"For four dreadful nights in succession we have had to crawl into this horrible hole— the whole seventy-eight of us—and try and breathe until the dawn. It must be much worse than the Black Hole of Calcutta. I don't know how we have lived through it. Owing to Leading Seaman J. Markwick being taken seriously ill, we have been allowed to come out into the fresh air again. It was like coming out of a tomb. No words can describe the awful experience of those nights. The only ventilation came through the little hole at the top of the well, through which we could just catch a glimpse of the sky, and occasionally the grinning black face and the white teeth of one of the guards looking down upon us as we groaned and gasped for air. ... To make matters worse, our food has been reduced to twelve ounces of rice per day per man."
So the miserable story goes on. Sometimes the starving men managed to satisfy their hunger by eating a sheep that had been killed by a wolf, or a young camel that had been drowned. In December they were reduced to snails, and on Christmas Day they feasted as follows:—
- BREAKFAST.—Rice, boiled with a little salt.
- DINNER.—Two ounces of boiled goat flesh, and "pudding" (made of flour and sugar that had been saved for the occasion).
- TEA.—One small pancake, with very weak tea.
British troops were now on the move, and our sailor reports: "The next few days we saw searchlights in the sky, and heard the boom of heavy guns from the north-east. On 20th February Captain R. S. Gwatkin-Williams, commander of the Tara, tried to escape, in order that he might reach Solium and beg deliverance for his men. Some few of us knew he was going, and we fully understood the perils he would have to go through. We prayed earnestly to our heavenly Father to protect his footsteps." Unhappily he was captured before he had gone far. Our sailor's entry for 29th February reads as follows:—
"About 3 p.m. we suddenly heard rifle shots to the northward. A few minutes later there appeared over the brow of a small hill some men and camels, and there, walking apart from the rest, was our brave captain. We were now witnesses of one of the most degrading and brutal sights it has been my lot to see. He was lashed with a rhinoceros hide whip, and the guard punched him violently in the face. Then the women came up and pelted him with the largest stones they could find."
Relief, however, was on the way. You have already read how the Arabs and the Senussi were beaten and scattered on 26th February at Agagia. On 14th March our troops occupied Solium, which had been abandoned by the enemy, and that very day nine armoured motor cars and twenty-six other cars, together with ten motor ambulances, under the command of the Duke of Westminster, went forward in pursuit of the enemy. The going was bad for the first eight miles, but after that the cars struck a good road, and flew along at nearly forty miles an hour. Hundreds of Bedouins fleeing westwards were passed on the road; but they were unmolested, as more important work was afoot.
The main camp was now seen, and all the armoured cars but two, which were detailed for a flank attack, advanced in line. As they approached they were fired on by one gun and two machine guns, but the gun teams were shot down at a distance of 400 yards. Then the cars dashed into the camp, and the enemy fled in every direction, leaving ninety-one of their prisoners in our hands. The poor fellows were in the last stage of hunger and despair. They were thunderstruck at the sight of the armoured cars, and at first thought they saw a mirage. Food was immediately served out to them, and "the men might have been seen holding beef in one hand and biscuit in the other—just gorging." Four of them had died of neglect, and their captain had recited the burial service over them from memory. Our sailor's diary thus concludes:—
"It is pretty clear to us now that we were rescued in the very nick of time. We were in such a state of weakness that we should not have lasted long, and what would have been the end of it all does not bear thinking about. So we one and all of us say, 'God bless the Duke of Westminster and his brave men for their very timely rescue.' "
Thus happily ended one of the most adventurous episodes of the war. For the first time armoured motor cars had proved their value in desert warfare. They had made a most dashing raid, and, besides rescuing the prisoners, had scattered the enemy and captured his artillery and machine guns. By the end of March the remnants of the Senussi had been driven far beyond the Egyptian border, and had been rendered powerless for further mischief.
