On 3 August 1916 an Ottoman expeditionary corps under the German Colonel Kress von Kressenstein, with German and Austrian gunners, moved forward to Qatiya in the Sinai, facing the British position at Romani east of the Suez Canal. On the night of 3/4 August it attacked. Two brigades of Australian light horse fell back through the dunes until New Zealand and British mounted troops struck the Ottoman flank, and at dawn on 5 August about 1,500 exhausted men surrendered around Wellington Ridge. Kress brought most of his force and guns back to El Arish, but the British official history calls Romani the end of the campaign against the canal. Also on 3 August, in 1914, Germany declared war on France.
Battle of Romani
3 August 1916 · 110 years ago
Across the Sinai
After the Allied evacuation of Gallipoli, Ottoman forces were free to strike at the Suez Canal again, and in mid-July 1916 an expeditionary corps set out across the Sinai. It was commanded by Colonel Kress von Kressenstein, a German officer in Ottoman service, and built around the Ottoman 3rd Division. With it went a regiment of camelry, German machine gun companies, heavy and anti-aircraft artillery and two Austro-Hungarian mountain batteries. Kress put the corps at about 16,000 men; Murray's despatch, at some 18,000, including 15,000 rifles. According to both Kress and the British official history by George MacMunn and Cyril Falls, the trench mortar companies never took part. In both accounts the aim was not to cross the canal but to dig in opposite Qantara and bring it under heavy artillery fire.1
In May and June, according to the official history, the 52nd (Lowland) Division took up a fortified position at Romani, at the head of a railway from Qantara. Romani lay about 35 km east of the canal by the Anzac Memorial's reckoning, about 40 km by that of Liman von Sanders. Major General Lawrence commanded the sector, and Major General Harry Chauvel's Anzac Mounted Division watched the desert in front of it. From 20 July its 1st and 2nd Light Horse Brigades took turns to ride out towards Qatiya before dawn, probe the enemy and return at nightfall. General Sir Archibald Murray, the commander-in-chief, wrote that he meant to attack about 13 August, "the date of full moon, unless myself attacked earlier".2
In the dunes
By the morning of 3 August, in the official history's words, the enemy "had moved forward to Qatiya"; Murray describes the same day's advance as "a general move forward". Kress himself dates the first contact to 2 August, and Liman von Sanders the attack to 4 August.3
"The night of the 3rd August was mild and still," the official history begins. Ottoman troops had followed the 2nd Light Horse Brigade back from its patrol, hoping to slip round the British flank on its heels. Murray reports that the outpost line, two regiments strong, was attacked "from midnight onwards". H. S. Gullett, the Australian official historian, writes that the Turks kept silent "From midnight until nearly 1 o'clock", then broke into shouting, with the battle cry "Allah! Allah!" and "Finish Australia! Finish Australia!". At 2.30 a.m. they charged Mount Meredith, a high dune in the center; the first rush was beaten back, but pressure on the flanks made the hill untenable, and at about 3 a.m. it was abandoned.4
At daybreak the light horse fell back to Wellington Ridge, and J. R. Royston's 2nd Light Horse Brigade came up. Gullett writes that Royston, "nearly sixty years old", rode up and down the exposed firing line, telling his men to keep their heads down: "Stick to it, stick to it! You are making history to-day". The Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne credits Chauvel with riding back and forth between his brigades under fire.5
The Ottoman left meanwhile worked round towards Mount Royston, a dune to the west, making for the railway behind the British position. In the afternoon the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the yeomanry of the 5th Mounted Brigade attacked it, with British infantry coming up in support. By the evening Mount Royston was taken, with about 500 prisoners and a mountain battery; by 6 p.m. in the official history, by 6.30 p.m. in Murray's despatch. Infantry of the 52nd Division attacked Wellington Ridge as darkness fell but could not clear it before night.6
Surrender on Wellington Ridge
At daybreak on 5 August the attack on the ridge was renewed. In the official history's account the 8th Scottish Rifles advanced with the 7th Australian Light Horse and the Wellington Mounted Rifles; a white flag went up, and "Eight hundred and sixty-four men surrendered to the 8/Scottish Rifles", with about 1,500 prisoners taken around Wellington Ridge in all. Murray credits "the Scottish Territorial Infantry, assisted by Australian and New Zealand mounted troops", with about 1,500 prisoners. In Gullett's account the 1st and 2nd Light Horse Brigades advanced with the bayonet at 4 a.m., and by 5 a.m. "upwards of 1,000 prisoners had been captured". Lieutenant Colonel G. M. M. Onslow was shot down leading the 7th Light Horse forward; lying wounded outside an ambulance tent at Etmaler, Gullett writes, he watched the prisoners stream past and found the sight "very gratifying".7
"The attack evidently surprised the English and at first made good progress," Kress wrote of the main attack in 1921, but towards evening an enemy cavalry division struck the flank of the Turkish column sent against their rear, and "The Turkish infantry was too exhausted to put up any further vigorous resistance and surrendered" (our translation). He broke off the fight after dark and ordered a return to the starting positions.8
West of Hamisah the 3rd Light Horse Brigade took 425 prisoners by the official history's count, some 450 by Murray's, but the attack on the rearguard at Qatiya that evening was stopped. On 9 August a British attack at Bir el Abd was beaten off, and the Ottoman force drew back to El Arish.9
A victory not followed up
The official history calls Romani "a considerable British victory", but found it "disappointing that the enemy should have been able to retire with his force in being and his artillery practically intact". Gullett writes that by the evening of 5 August the Turks "had made good their retirement, and had so far escaped with most of their guns", and Kress that all the guns were brought back. Murray wrote that the speed of the Ottoman advance from the south obliged Lawrence to divert the cavalry meant for the enemy's rear to strengthen his line, and the official history repeats the point. On 5 August the British infantry was slow to move. Once it was on the move, the official history adds, in the intense heat and soft sand it could not approach the speed of the Turks.10
The official history puts British casualties at 1,130, the majority in the Anzac Mounted Division; Gullett gives the same breakdown for "the five days' operations". The Australian War Memorial gives approximately 1,100 allied casualties. Murray reported some 4,000 prisoners, including 50 officers, and estimated total enemy casualties at about 9,000 from the number of dead buried. Gullett counts 49 officers and 3,900 other ranks captured by the evening of 5 August, and puts their battle casualties besides at about 5,250. Liman von Sanders wrote in 1919 that the corps lost about a third of its strength in the attack and the retreat to El Arish.11
For the official history, Romani "marks the end of the campaign against the Canal"; Liman called it "the second and last major Turkish undertaking against the Suez Canal and Egypt" (our translation). The light horse went on to fight at Magdhaba on 23 December 1916 and then in Palestine. Its 1st Brigade, the official history notes, was Chauvel's old brigade, which he had commanded at Gallipoli. That campaign is told in our article on Gallipoli.12
Battle of Freiburg, 1644: Enghien and Turenne against Mercy's entrenchments
3 August 1644 · 382 years ago
Near Freiburg im Breisgau, a French army under Condé and Turenne attacked the entrenched Bavarian army of Franz von Mercy over several days in the Thirty Years' War. The fighting was extremely bloody, and Mercy finally withdrew when his supply lines were threatened.
Read the full story of Battle of Freiburg, 1644: Enghien and Turenne against Mercy's entrenchments ›Also on this day
1914: in Paris the German ambassador, Schoen, handed René Viviani, President of the Council and Minister for Foreign Affairs, a letter stating that "the German Empire considers itself in a state of war with France"; the French Yellow Book dates the audience to 6.45 p.m. on 3 August. The Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's telegram of 3 August, in the German Foreign Office's published documents, told the ambassador to communicate its contents to the French government at 6 o'clock that afternoon. Among the acts both texts cite are bombs dropped by French airmen on the railway near Karlsruhe and Nuremberg, and the German editors, who print the text as the declaration of war on France, note that the telegram arrived in Paris garbled. The war in the west that followed is told in our article on the First Battle of the Marne.13
