Allenby of Armageddon; A Record of the Career and Campaigns of Field-Marshal Viscount Allenby

Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1926. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. 353, [1] pages. Frontis illustration. Preface by David Lloyd George. Cover has some wear and soiling. Some endpaper soiling. Some page foxing noted. Raymond Savage (1888-1964) was a literary agent and writer. Field Marshal Edmund Henry Hynman Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenby, GCB, GCMG, GCVO (23 April 1861 - 14 May 1936) was an English soldier and British Imperial Governor. He fought in the Second Boer War and also in the First World War, in which he led the British Empire's Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire in the conquest of Palestine. The British succeeded in capturing Beersheba, Jaffa, and Jerusalem from October to December 1917. His forces occupied the Jordan Valley during the summer of 1918, then went on to capture northern Palestine and defeat the Ottoman Yildirim Army Group's Eighth Army at the Battle of Megiddo, forcing the Fourth and Seventh Army to retreat towards Damascus. Subsequently, the EEF Pursuit by Desert Mounted Corps captured Damascus and advanced into northern Syria. During this pursuit, he commanded T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), whose campaign with Faisal's Arab Sherifial Forces assisted the EEF's capture of Ottoman Empire territory and fought the Battle of Aleppo, five days before the Armistice of Mudros ended the campaign on 30 October 1918. He continued to serve in the region as High Commissioner for Egypt and Sudan from 1919 until 1925. Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War in October 1899, Allenby took part in the actions at Colesberg on 11 January 1900, Klip Drift on 15 February 1900 and Dronfield Ridge on 16 February 1900, and was mentioned in despatches by the commander-in-chief, Lord Roberts on 31 March 1900. Allenby participated in the actions at Zand River on 10 May 1900, Kalkheuval Pass on 3 June 1900, Barberton on 12 September 1900 and Tevreden on 16 October 1900 when the Boer General Jan Smuts was defeated. He was promoted to local lieutenant-colonel on 1 January 1901, and to local colonel on 29 April 1901. In a despatch dated 23 June 1902, Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief during the latter part of the war, described him as "a popular and capable Cavalry Brigadier". For his services during the war, he was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the South Africa honours list published on 26 June 1902, and he received the actual decoration of CB from King Edward VII during an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 24 October 1902. He was promoted again to the rank of major-general on 10 September 1909 and was appointed Inspector-General of Cavalry in 1910 due to his extensive cavalry experience. J. F. C. Fuller called Allenby "a man I grew to like and respect", a man who always asked his staff if they had any new ideas about how to win the war. Publicity surrounding Allenby's exploits in the Middle East was at its highest in Britain in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Allenby enjoyed a period of celebrity in the United States, as well. He and his wife went on an American tour in 1928, receiving a standing ovation when he addressed Carnegie Hall in New York City. Biographer Raymond Savage claimed that, for a time, Allenby was better known in America than Lawrence. Allenby was the subject of a 1923 documentary film by British Instructional Films entitled Armageddon, detailing his military leadership during World War I. However, the film is believed lost. The epic film Lawrence of Arabia depicts the Arab Revolt during World War I. Allenby is given a major part in it and is portrayed by Jack Hawkins in one of his best-known roles. Screenwriter Bolt called Allenby a "very considerable man" and hoped to depict him sympathetically. The efforts of T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") were greatly aided by Allenby in the Arab Revolt, and he thought highly of Allenby: "(He was) physically large and confident, and morally so great that the comprehension of our littleness came slow to him". The British journalist Mark Urban has argued that Allenby is one of the most important British generals who ever lived, writing that Allenby's use of air power, mechanized forces and irregulars led by Lawrence marked one of the first attempts at a new type of war while at the same time he had to act as a politician holding together a force comprising men from many nations, making him "the first of the modern supreme commanders". Urban further argued during the war, the British government had made all sorts of plans for the Middle East such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916 and the Balfour Declaration of 1917, but as long as the Ottoman Empire continued to hold much of the Near East, these plans meant nothing. By defeating the Ottomans in 1917-18, Allenby, if he did not create the modern Middle East, at the very least made the creation of the modern Middle East possible.