This short and interesting account of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force examines the campaign in Sinai and Palestine in the First World War largely from the perspective of the soldiers themselves. This is a charming and interesting read that tells of life in the desert and the hardscabble and sweaty existence of the troops forced to march across Sinai, watching the exceedingly slow progress of the railroad tracks being built,...
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Although the title sounds as if the book will be about the entire campaign in the Middle East it concentrates primarily on the Sinai-Palestine campaigns as told mostly in first person accounts. While extremely interesting in that it discusses details of life and campaigning as experienced by the typical soldier it loses the "big picture" fairly quickly (despite discussions of foibles and weaknesses of the British generals...
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The Preface observes "Not only has the campaign in Egypt and Palestine been neglected in the historiography of the war, the ordinary British soldier has not been given his due." Author, David Woodward, corrects these omissions by narrating World War I warfare in the Turkish theater using the diaries and letters of the British soldiers to describe combat in this area. Woodward writes "The British soldiers in Egypt and Palestine,...
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Most histories of World War I tend to ignore the British army's Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) and its battle against the Turks in Palestine. While this theater of war was treated by the powers-that-be as a "sideshow", to the men fighting and dying in the Middle East it was a real war. Conditions there were different from those in France. Trench warfare was not the norm and the soldiers had to combat, not only the enemy,...
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