Yoram Ettinger, ISRAEL HAYOM, December 05, 2014
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, the Chief Political/Intelligence Officer of the British Mandate in Palestine, inspired the late Senator Daniel Inouye, who laid the foundation for the landmark US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act of 2014, which was overwhelmingly supported by Congress. The Act reflects Israel’s increasing and unique strategic contribution to vital US defense and commercial interests, and the mutually beneficial, two-way-street nature of the US-Israel relationship.
Col. Meinertzhagen’s Middle East Diary 1917-1956 is as relevant today, for the USA, as it was 80-100 years ago, for Britain, maintaining that a Jewish State would be the most reliable and effective beachhead of Western democracies in an area, which is vital to their critical economic and national security interests.
In 1923, Col. Meinertzhagen stated: “Britain will not be able to sustain its control of the Suez Canal [1882-1956] endlessly…. [Therefore], I’ve always considered the Land of Israel to be the key to the defense of the Middle East…. When a Jewish state will be established, Britain shall benefit from air force, naval and land bases… as well as Jewish fighting capabilities…. which will secure its long-term regional interests…. Unlike the Arabs, Jews are reliable and do comply with agreements…. Zionism is the hope for the reconstructed Jewish homeland; it is also a clear strategic benefit to the British Empire…. The British policy in the Middle East bets on the wrong horse, when appeasing the Arabs….”
In 1920, he wrote: “I firmly believe that a sovereign Jewish State shall be established in 20-30 years, militarily assaulted by all its Arab neighbors.” In 1919, he assessed that a long-term, and possibly insoluble, clash between Jewish and Arab nationalism was inevitable. He expected the Jews to prevail due to their impressive military track record in ancient times. Jewish quality would overcome the Arab quantity.
In 1920, Meinertzhagen noted that the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestinian issue was the Arab obsession with the existence – not merely the size – of a Jewish State, as evidenced by the systematic campaign of anti-Jewish incitement by Arab leaders, especially the Jerusalem Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini [the role model for Mahmoud Abbas and Arafat].
He noted that while Zionism was relentlessly determined to reestablish Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, the Arab worldview was dominated by a 7thcentury fanatic Islam. Arabs displayed hopeless inter-Arab fragmentation, intrigues, tenuous regimes and policies, as well as violent intolerance, featuring ruthless incitement, towards the Christian and Jewish “infidel,” in a region which Muslims perceived to be divinely ordained only for the followers of Islam (Waqf).
Meinertzhagen opposed British policy, which egregiously violated legally-binding commitments made to Jewish sovereignty over (at least!) the entire area west of the Jordan River, such as the 1917 Balfour Declaration, the 1920 San Remo Conference British Mandate, and the 1922 League of Nations reaffirmation, which was integrated into Article 80 of the 1945 UN Charter. He claimed that British policy was driven by pro-Arab and anti-Semitic sentiments, discriminating against Jewish aspirations, thus radicalizing the Arabs and minimizing the prospects of peace.
Meinertzhagen considered a sovereign Jewish entity a strategic and moral asset, while the Arabs were defined as a strategic and moral liability, urging the British government to ally itself with the reliable and grateful party.
The conviction-driven British clairvoyant was convinced that the Jewish state was destined for a rosy commercial and military future due to boundless Jewish tenacity – as evidenced by the survival of Judaism in defiance of historical adversity – and Jewish brainpower, inspired by values that generated monotheism and Western democracies. Moreover, in 1920, Meinertzhagen wrote that “the Zionist entity shall provide its Arab citizens with enhanced economy and security.” In 1949, he referred to the newly-born Jewish State as “one of the world wonders, and the only positive outcome of the Second World War.”
Noting in 1937 that “a secure Jewish State would bolster the regional position of Britain,” while “a splintered Land of Israel would weaken, and possibly, eliminate, the Jewish State,” Meinertzhagen delineated the security lines of the Jewish state[before the intensified unpredictability, instability and threat generated by the Arab Tsunami]: from the Lake of Galilee to the Jordan River, the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba in the east; from the Gulf of Aqaba to Rafiah (Southern Gaza) in the south; the Mediterranean in the west; and the Litani River (Southern Lebanon) in the north. Meinertzhagen’s map was similar to the map of Israel’s minimal security requirements, submitted on June 29, 1967 to President Johnson by General Earl Wheeler, the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff.
Against the backdrop of the 2014 controversy over the Jewish State Law, it is instructive to read that, Col. Meinertzhagen indicated in 1932: “it is clear that [for the sake of Britain] the Land of Israel will become a Jewish State no less than England is English.”
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Hi, Sebastien
Since you’re a history buff, you might be interested that my paterna great-grandfather was with the 37th Wisconsin during the siege of Petersburg. He was in Company B, not Co. K, which took part in the Battle of the Crater; but he was discharged just after that incident.
He served under Gen. Grant, a distant relative of mine. My other ggrather was taken out of action at Shiloh, earlier on. Both went west after the war; and my aunt remembers her grandmother telling of hiding under the circled wagons when they fought Indians.
My Shiloh ancestor was farming cranberries in central Wisconsin in 1871, when the Peshtigo fire broke out to the northeast. That fire actually had more dead than the smaller, but better-publicized, fire in Chicago that broke out at the same time. So, we have family history of some of the historical events of the day; but I am flattered that you expect me to remember the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. I actually hadn’t been born yet 🙂
You are correct about Grant vs. McClellan. Grant was willing to take enormous casualties, dogging the enemy in lopsided battle after lopsided battle, until he ran Lee to ground. McClellan would fit in better in today’s world, wherein avoiding casualties is a top priority and actually “winning” is never an object. As one blogger said, we have been engaged for decades in the “Forever War”.
My mention of the hurricanes and fires, is because the events on the two continents have been happening at the same time as each other, and correspond to exactly the same sort of wrong political decisions in both places. I don’t think that has happened before. To me, these things have meaning; but then, we have had to breathe the smoke from the wildfires.
President Trump has offically washed his hands of Kurdistan. I don’t think that will protect him from the fallout of the war there.
@ Michael S:
And weren’t leaders on both continents sucking up to Hitler and Mussolini in the 30’s? And various anti-Communist dictators and later Islamist terrorists like Bin Laden during the Cold War? There’s a lot that hasn’t changed. The biggest change is that everybody has their face in their smart phone every spare minute, something that is not well-reflected in movies and tv in the West (in S. Korea it is.)
@ Michael S:
Things were always bad somewhere. We haven’t had anything like the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 in the 60s or now.
“The 1906 San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 5:12 a.m. on April 18 with an estimated moment magnitude of 7.8 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). High intensity shaking was felt from Eureka on the North Coast to the Salinas Valley, an agricultural region to the south of the San Francisco Bay Area. Devastating fires soon broke out in the city and lasted for several days. As a result, up to 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city of San Francisco was destroyed. The events are remembered as one of the worst and deadliest earthquakes in the history of the United States. The death toll remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California’s history and high in the lists of American urban disasters.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_San_Francisco_earthquake
or the Great Chicago Fire of 1871
“The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned from Sunday, October 8, to early Tuesday, October 10, 1871. The fire killed up to 300 people, destroyed roughly 3.3 square miles (9 km2) of Chicago, Illinois, and left more than 100,000 residents homeless.[1]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire
Well, actually, we have come to think of it with a couple of the hurricanes, but it’s always something. Remember Krakatoa East (really West) of Java?
One thing we don’t have that we had in the 70s is really awesome disaster movies in sensurround. But every era has its disasters. And its doomsayers. LIke “climate change”. or “the ozone layer.”
Michael S Said:
and why should they be? Are they at war with anybody that they need to look for historical lessons and parallels to plunge into the dark with?
Not too many Americans still laboring over Pearl Harbor or the sinking of the Lusitania, either. They’re similarly not relevant. But our experience in the Vietnam War is.
OK. I just read the Wikipedia article on him and I retract that last. He did win battles on the battlefield. But, he is the wrong person to be orchestrating a war, certainly this war. Your observation underlnes that.
@ Michael S:
Not surprising if they haven’t noticed. My point about McMaster is that he rose to prominence — while still a Major, according to the Wikipedia article on his 1997 book, “Dereliction of Duty” — with his book about all the mistakes we made in a war we actually won on the battlefield, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because of political considerations, rode the wave of liberal political correctness to the top and then to his present position because Trump — mistakenly, I believed even during the campaign — wanted to avoid nation-building wars like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan — and appointed someone who shared those views to organize strategy in a similar war. McMaster is unqualified on every level to be running this war, not just because of Israel. He is the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is Trump’s McClellan. When will see his Grant?
Hi, Sebastien
“‘The general, who had previously given multiple interviews about the conduct of North Vietnam during the conflict, told reporters that he felt the time was right to set the record straight about “our long national nightmare.”
“We had actually been looking for a way to end this endless war or ‘quagmire,’ that we had found ourselves stuck in, ever since 1945,” Giap said. “Just when we thought we were done fighting the Japanese we found ourselves fighting the French and then the Americans.”
“‘Giap also added, “We weren’t even supposed to win [the Vietnam War]. We were just trying to get rid of a group of political prisoners and create the face-saving conditions for us to sue for peace.””
You and Edgar both are cranking up the old nostalgia machine for me. For the sake of the readers, I will note that “Giap” is pronounced “Zahp” in the Hanoi dialect, which I was fluent in at the time.
Both sides were exhausted in 1975; and if you go to Vietnam today, you’ll find that about the only ones interested in “the war” there, are American tourists. The Vietnamese themselves have moved on.
Of course, Americans today are about as tired of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (both of them, curiously, next-door neighbors of Iran) as they were in the final days of Vietnam. Besides that, our evening news at the time was saturated with the depressing “Watergate” scandal, which the Democrats are trying so hard nowadays to re-create. The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.
The tactical situation in Iraq has many similarities with Vietnam, as well: Our best allies (the Hmong and Montagnards then, and the Kurds now) are isolated mountain people; and when we leave them high and dry, as we almost certainly will, there will be no way to keep them from the tender mercies of their enemies.
The biggest thing to happen in the region, in recent months, that few people — certainly not McMaster, Matthis and company — have noticed, is the arising of a deadly Axis-type alliance of Turkey, Iran, Syria and Iraq, with Russia, China and North Korea all in the cheerleading section. Our questionably-intelligent generals still seem to think that Turkey and Iraq are on our side. When I mentioned “nostalgia”, I believe I was subconsciously thinking of them.
Shalom shalom 🙂
@ Edgar G.:
Hi, Edgar.
“Tomorrow I visit nostalgia again…Is there anything you’d like me to pick up for you…at the right price. I’m always at your service you know.”
Oy! That’s a tough question, Edgar! I was pumping gas when it was 25.9¢ per gallon and cigarettes, I believe were 29.9¢/ pack. There was baggage with those times, though — like the Vietnam War, which I’ve been guilty of “nostalgically” alluding to here, the “Black LIves Matter” of their day rioting in the street, a psycho with a rifle randomly shooting people from an elevated position in Texas, a pervert mass-murderer in Chicago, a disappointing teenage love life and my parents going through a divorce.
Nah, don’t pick anything up for me I think we all have it already.
One thing we DIDN’T have in the sixties, war back-to-back deadly hurricanes-cum-wildfires in both the US and Europe, at the same time that leaders on both continents have turned against free, democratic elections in favor of dictators (in Kurdistan and Catalonia).
I was loose-tongued in calling you on the “nostalgia” card. Chalk it up to my poor communication skills. I am not upset with you at all, but squirming with figurative worms in my belly, watching today’s events unfold. What should we call the Kurdistan situation? I already compared it with Saigon ’75. How about Corregidor ’42, and Dunkirk ’40? Let’s take up a collection to make “I shall return” buttons for McMaster.
During the late ’60s, there was a semi-popular song, “The Twelve Days of Peacetime”. It ended,
“On the twelfth day of peacetime, Lyndon said to me… Save your uniforms; there won’t be a World War III.”
In all the nostalgia I can conjure up, I could never fit into my old uniform.
Shalom shalom 🙂
Michael S Said:
Maybe that’s the root of the problem with this guy. But in a different way.
See:
“In Memoriam: Vo Nguyen Giap, Admitted US ‘Almost Won’ Vietnam War In 1975”
“…The legendary general had made headlines recently with his revelation last spring that the government of North Vietnam was literally days away from quitting the Vietnam War, even as its troops overran Saigon in 1975. He was interviewed by Duffel Blog in April 2013 at his private residence in Hanoi, on the anniversary of the Fall of Saigon.
“As our tanks were rolling into the presidential palace [in South Vietnam], if America had conducted just one more air strike we would have thrown in the towel,” Giap admitted. “And thank god they didn’t,” Giap added, “because, let me tell you, that tank was running on fumes.”
‘The general, who had previously given multiple interviews about the conduct of North Vietnam during the conflict, told reporters that he felt the time was right to set the record straight about “our long national nightmare.”
“We had actually been looking for a way to end this endless war or ‘quagmire,’ that we had found ourselves stuck in, ever since 1945,” Giap said. “Just when we thought we were done fighting the Japanese we found ourselves fighting the French and then the Americans.”
‘Giap also added, “We weren’t even supposed to win [the Vietnam War]. We were just trying to get rid of a group of political prisoners and create the face-saving conditions for us to sue for peace.”
‘After ten years of bloody stalemate, North Vietnam launched one, last-chance offensive in 1975 using several thousand “expendable” old men and prisoners, pushing mostly wooden tanks and carrying loudspeakers meant to simulate an entire army.
“When we saw pictures of the American helicopters over their embassy, we just assumed they were bringing in reinforcements and figured the game was up,” Giap laughed. “Even after the South Vietnamese surrendered, we thought it was some kind of trick and fled to the hills for a month until we found out we’d actually overrun the country.”
‘Duong Xuan Dung, a soldier with the 324th Division in the People’s Army of Vietnam, was one of Giap’s soldiers.’
“They just kept sending us south and assumed we were all getting killed,” Comrade Dung told Duffel Blog in his village of Ap Bac. In reality we kept looking for someone to surrender to, but all the South Vietnamese we saw ran away from us. We figured if we went all the way to Saigon, someone there would have to accept our surrender.”
“I think when we burst into the presidential palace it was a race to see who could surrender faster — us or the enemy…”
https://www.duffelblog.com/2013/10/vietnam-war-winning/
@ Michael S:
Yes, of course I live in the past..Historians sometimes do. Where else would I get a 50 lb.sack of potatoes for 99 cents, or a glass of beer for 5 cents along with all you can eat free…. Just last month, I bought a top-of-the-line V 12 cylinder Lagonda Rapide for $7,642, and got the 40 gallon tank filled for $2.40. If I store it away for 100 years it’ll be worth 2 million. I gave the pump attendant a generous tip of 10 cents.
So now I;m back again to the unpleasant present, reading one of your recirculated and depressing points on a subject-any subject- flayed to tatters, already dissected and catalogued by those far abler than me………and you. An att
empt to denigrate the dissemination of some general but little known information on the subject of an oddity like Meinertzhagen is not becoming. Oh yes, I mentioned Von Lettow Vorbeck because he was the only undefeated German General in the War, (later Hitler offered him the Supreme Command to come out of retirement. He wisely refused). . Another item, Meinertzhagen was suspected of murdering his wife to marry again…
Tomorrow I visit nostalgia again…Is there anything you’d like me to pick up for you…at the right price. I’m always at your service you know.
HI, Arnold Harris; and Edgar, I apologize if I seemed brusque. Arnold wrote:
“The USA indeed has taken on the role undertaken in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Treading the same foolish and self-destructive path of our British imperial predecessors, the USA is fucking over the Kurds precisely the same as the British nitwits did to the developing Jewish state after the first world war.”
It remains to be seen, to what extent we have “f—d” over the Kurds; but the situation there looks ever-worse by the hour.
I am not privy to the counsel President Trump is getting from his generals; but here’s how it seems the situation has progressed:
1. Pres. Trump made a campaign promise to destroy ISIS. In pursuit of this policy, he supported the Rojava Kurds in Syria, even against our presumed allies at that time, the Turks. This was a rather awkward situation; because the Iraqis are allied with the Iranians, the Syrians likewise and the Turks actively fighting against our Kurdish allies. If we planned to stay the course in Rojava, therefore, we needed to secure a corridor along SE Syria to Jordan. We began doing this, then abandoned the project in favor of the Assad regime/ Hizbullah. That left us with only Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan, in particular) as a supply corridor. In effect, Trumps generals have been painting him into a corner.
2. Once ISIS was about to be defeated in Iraq, the Kurds there voted for independence. We stood against them, siding with the Turks, Shiite Iraqis and their Iranian-backed allies, and, lo and behold, Iran itself. Even Jordan and Egypt turned on the Kurds, completely isolating them.
3. Our generals: What on earth are they thinking??? They are acting as though the Iraqis and IRANIANS are our friends! This is a worse fiasco, strategically and tactically, than the Vietnam War; and one person who ought to know this, backward and forward, is Gen. H. R. McMaster — who WROTE THE BOOK about our mistakes in Vietnam!
Where do I stand in all this, I am disheartened, to see a repeat brewing in Iraq and Syria, of the debacle in Saigon in 1975. I don’t have a particular affection for any of the players here; but I am appalled at the lack of understanding of some basic human, spiritual principles on the part or our leaders — the most important of which, in this case, is that we need to be faithful to our allies, if we want ANYONE to trust us. Obama blew it royally in this department; and Donald Trump is hard on his heels.
As I said elsewhere, the Kurds are a miner’s canary for Israel. If we abandon the Kurds, we will also abandon Israel in the near future.
Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, who must be accounted as the sui generic of the officer class of the British Army at the height of the power of the British Empire, having been born March 13 1878, survived to 89 years when he died June 17 1967. That was precisely 12 days after the combined air and ground blitzkrieg mounted by Israel, starting with more or less simultaneous air attacks that destroyed air forces of Egypt, TransJordan, Syria and Iraq, followed by Israel’s armored ground assaults that carried the various Jewish armored and armored infantry forces west to the Suez Canal, east to the Jordan River, and northeast through the Golan Heights.
I like to think that Col Meinertzhagen was alive and sufficiently alert to take note of what Zahal had accomplished militarily, but which had all been predicted by him some 50 years earlier, that Zionism would bring about the rise of a powerful Jewish state on the very same soil which had been trod by Avraham, the father of the Jewish nation, and by the all but immortal judges and kings of Israel and Judea.
The USA indeed has taken on the role undertaken in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Treading the same foolish and self-destructive path of our British imperial predecessors, the USA is fucking over the Kurds precisely the same as the British nitwits did to the developing Jewish state after the first world war.
Was this British colonel a military genius? That’s not for me to judge. But I note that he developed the war plans that fooled his imperial German counterpart, Kress von Kressenstein of the German Asia Corps, a star no less of the Imperial German General Staff.
Arnold Harris, Outspeaker
Edgar,
I don’t question your right to live in the past, nor do I object to it. I simply said that it is not for me. Meinertzhagen talked about the foolishness of the British abandoning a “reliable and grateful party”, namely Israel, to curry the elusive favor of the Arabs. That was Britain’s mistake; and they have suffered from it, becoming a third rate power in the process. Now The US is in the place that Britain was, 70 years ago; and the “reliable and grateful party”, at the moment, is the Kurds.
We have just deserted the Kurds, abandoning them to the Iranians at Kirkuk, while allowing them to cross one of our “red lines”. Britain’s error was in the past; ours is in the present. We are abandoning our Kurdish friends today, and we will abandon our Israeli friends tomorrow. That is what I am focused on.
BTW, I don’t think it’s profitable, to second-guess the British; it’s just in the past.
@ Michael S:
My “nostalgia’ as you call it, was exactly in line with the article, upon which I was commenting. I make no “superior”: remarks about any of your bloviating dissertation. It is commonly believed that every site member has the right to post his comments and so far I’ve heard nothing critical from anyone….except that you object to “nostalgia”. Be my guest..
Because the book is almost impossible to find these days, I was filling in, for the readers, some of the contents of the above mentioned Diary of Meinertzhagen, along with a few critical remarks from other writers.. You seem not to be aware , that in his day, which lasted a very long lifetime, he was a rather famous person, nationally and internationally, and his Diary was required reading for a long time.
I won’t even tell you to bugger off like some bad tempered person might, just drift silently away with the breeze,….ah..that breeze brings back a nostalgic memory of days of yore. ..
So nostalgia or not, it’s MY business what I write, not YOURS..
“Meinertzhagen considered a sovereign Jewish entity a strategic and moral asset, while the Arabs were defined as a strategic and moral liability, urging the British government to ally itself with the reliable and grateful party.”
Since Meinertzhagen wrote this, the British have become passé in the Middle East and in the world. Now, it is the US which needs to be concerned about “strategic and moral liabilities”.
Of course, the US needs to continue to support Israel, if it hopes for any moral cachet in the region. There is no moral advantage to be gotten, say, in supporting the Saudis against the Iranians nor the Turks against Assad. All of those elements will ultimately desert us, and ally with one another — something that is already happening. Israel, however, remains adamant in its position, which is based on truly ancient moorings.
There is another entity in the ME, besides Israel, which has proven itself to be something of a “reliable and grateful party”. That is the Kurds — who, interestingly, are closely linked with Israel. At the moment, the Kurds are threatened militarily by all their Muslim neighbors (a situation similar to Israel’s), with the Terrorist-sponsoring Iranians forming the forward element outside Kirkuk.
It remains to be seen, whether US President Trump, on the heels of proclaiming that he would resist the shenanigans of the Iranians, will side with the Kurds at Kirkuk in a military confrontation. He has alreadby drawn yet another of those famous “red lines” there:
“Washington also notified Baghdad that the US would not tolerate military aggression against Irbil, capital of the KRG, Dohuk or Sulaymaniyah, or military incursions of Kirkuk, only a small party of civilian officials.
“It is not clear whether Abadi will heed Washington’s directives. However, DEBKAfile’s sources stress that President Donald Trump’s speech Friday night, laying out a new, tough strategy for Iran and its Revolutionary Guards, lent a potential military clash over Kirkuk a new perspective beyond a local conflict.
“After Trump declared that the entire IRGC was guilty of terrorism, including all its agents and proxies – the Iraqi PMU militia would lay itself open to the definition of terrorists for attacking Kurdish forces, who are America’s frontline military ally in the war on the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.”
— https://www.debka.com/iran-backed-iraqi-ultimatum-kurds-leave-kirkuk-first-test-trumps-threat-rev-guards/
I’m all for putting away Edgar G.’s nostalgia about Meinertzhagen, and Watsa’s talk of “crystal balls”, in favor of applying the general’s warnings to the present situation. The Kurds, in fact, can be a “miner’s canary” as to whether the US will or will not stand by its friends in the region. If we can’t find a way to stick with the Kurds, in an Iraq that we fought so hard to win, it’s reasonable to believe that we will also desert Israel, in which we do not have such a historic stake.
Very few have this kind of crystal ball.
This is the very first time that Meinertzhagen has been mentioned in this whole mess going on for so many years. I often wondered why not? His mother was one of the famous Potter sisters; he was a friend of King George 5th , Churchill as well, and was related to just about everybody in Britain that mattered, He was also rather an adventurer, and sometimes not over particular as to how he attained his goals. He was at the Paris Peace conference and many other major Conferences.
He was a close friend of Lawrence (of Arabia) and regarded him as a fraud. They tented together for a few years whilst the War was on so knew him very well. I quoted one of his sayings about Lawrence on these pages last year, In the context of how Lowell Thomas made him famous.. He said ” Lawrence had an uncanny knack of slowly backing into the limelight…” Pretty good, and very descriptive.
He also said that he was there when the last British troops left Palestine and was firing a rifle with the IRGUN in Jaffa, because he felt he needed to show his feelings before he embarked. He thought about assassinating Hitler, whom he met twice. (His greatest military opponent was General Von Lettow-Vorbeck in German West Africa). This may or may not be true but it’s well within his natural instincts.. I first got the book from the library, read it about 3 times, then finally found a second hand copy for myself.
The movie “The Lighthorsemen” about the Australians, centres around an incident he concocted to mislead the Turks and Germans,in the War which again, may or may not be wholly true, but nevertheless scintillating.
He even mentions that his grandmother, fervently supporting the return of a sovereign Judea, started off from London for Jerusalem with a donkey train of aid (sometime in the mid 1800s?) . He said he didn’t think she’d got very far.
A fascinating character, and as sharp as a tack, which can be seen above in the article.