CONQUEROR OF THE TURK

Otaki Mail, 6 January 1919, Page 4

CONQUEROR OF THE TURK

~ SIR E. ALLENBY. ~ ! General Sir Edmund Ailenby, the victor where Napoleon failed, lias long , been known to his associates as ‘' the j Bull ”—by reason of his massive stature and whirlwind way of doing things. 1 People who annoy him—and there have been several such, generals with a mania .for paper work and pipeclay—earn the sobriquet of “Matador.” ; Strikingly handsome, of the determined chin order, standing well oyer lift, he exudes force and energy. Ailenby pro- i motes on merit, not on medals, and it was in no small measure due to him that the first “Civilian helper” Currie, of Canada, got command of an army corps. With his wonderful breakthrough cavalry, he has had another non-regular in an accepted sense, Lieut.General Sir Harry Chouvel, of NewSouth Wales—although that brilliant » cavalry man,. Sir Phillip Chetwode, has probably been intimately concerned in the debacle, of “the old Turk.” I have several vivid recollections of: Ailenby—riding through Amiens after the retreat from Mons, a dripping waterproof figure at the head of his cavalry division; again, some months later, lifting little Flemish children up to a Christmas tree at his corps headquarters at Aboele; or, again, having a heart-to-heart talk with a group of men on the-Arras road after his 3rd Army had won the battle of that name, ‘j Ailenby has been hard at it since mobilisation day, and has inarched from success to success, ably seconded by Major-General Bdis (of Belgian descent), whom ho brought out to Palestine from Army Headquarters in France, together with his military secretary, .Lord Dalmcuy. I 'flic last I saw of General Ailenby i was at his desert headquarters, before Gaza a year ago, sitting uncomfortably , cramped and upright in a car, the king I of the desert, and the only car that will I tacklo the sand. He had arrived in Egypt only a few days before to take ! over the command, after a record war- | time trip of five <1 ays Jrom the West. | On arrival in Cairo he found the I j bulk of G.H.Q. installed there. “Well,” he said, “I'm going up to my men.” And a week later there he was carry- 1 ing on in a little wooden hut overlooking the Mediterranean, ten miles From flic Turk, instead of 100, and nil ■■nii]plcto and self-contained even to a hairdresser specially brought up from Cairo. He does not believe in “pigf ging it” just for appearance sake, and ! each day in the desert he used to get j fresh vegetables up from Cairo. Hi's aw, too, that others were not forgotten, ."promptly gaining the support ol all ranks by < Commandeering several Egyptian I State railway trains for leave purposes, and Collecting all the available beer in Kgypt for the troops. Ailenby then sal down to prepare the 1 Gaza-Bcershebn offensive. He got out j “specialists” from France, wooed the j | local Arabs in the Hodja*, and alter I everything was ready—batted. And | 1 with clockwork-like precision lie strollI I ed on foot into .lenisalem —where the Kaiser had arrived twenty years earlier all dressed up on an Aral) steed. He meant to get exactly where he got to the JaQVJericho line, whence the present attack re-started. 1 And now he has butted again. Four old Turk! (By “F.,” in London j ‘-Daily Mail.”)