Soldier’s heroics in the desert heat

THE citation says it all: “On October 31, 1917, Corporal Collins repeatedly went out when his battalion was forced to lie out in the open under heavy shell and machinegun fire and he brought back many wounded. In subsequent operations he rallied his men and led the final assault with great skill in spite of heavy fire at close range and uncut wire. He bayoneted 15 of the enemy and with a Lewis gun covered the reorganization and consolidation most effectively although isolated and under fire from snipers and guns.”

Merthyr Tydfil’s John Collins won the most illustrious British gallantry medal not on the Western Front, but in a more distant theatre of war as a member of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force.

These were the British and Commonwealth units that drove a Turco-German force out of Palestine, capturing Jerusalem shortly before Christmas 1917, “a Christmas present for the British people”, as Lloyd George described it.

The action for which Somerset-born Collins was decorated (and promoted to sergeant) took place near the Biblical city of Beersheba where troops from the 53rd (Welsh) Division played a key role in the 10-day battle to capture Gaza and surrounding areas.

This had been a target twice before in March and then April 1917, when success had narrowly eluded British forces, despite entering Gaza itself after heavy fighting in the March encounter.

When at the age of 35 Collins joined the Welsh Horse Yeomanry in 1915 (later to become the 25th battalion of the Royal Welch Fusiliers) he had already been a seasoned soldier, though at the time he had left the Army and was working as a collier in Bedlinog colliery, near Merthyr.

At the age of only 15 he had enlisted in the Royal Horse Artillery, serving in the Boer Wars. He also served in India and in World War Two as a sergeant-major in the Home Guard.

Collins’ journey to Palestine took him first to another bloody battlefield, Gallipoli, where the 53rd were among the last troops to leave the peninsula in December 1915.

This followed months of fruitless efforts to dislodge the Turks from the high ground overlooking the coastal positions of the invading British forces.

Exhausted and depleted, the Division was evacuated to Egypt where it spent much of 1916 defending the Suez Canal – Britain’s crucial lifeline to India and Australia.

Once the Turks had been pushed out of the Sinai Peninsula in battles in the early part of 1917, Gaza represented the key to a successful assault on Palestine. The city was welldefended, however, occupied a commanding position, and was surrounded by gorse.

After the previous two failures, the newly-arrived commander of British Empire forces, General Sir Edmund Allenby, insisted on being sent extra divisions and he decided rather than mount a third direct attack on Gaza first to capture Beersheba 30 miles away, drive other forces through the middle of the line between the two towns and then put into action an enveloping drive against the high city stronghold.

The horrors of the action around Gaza will bear comparison with some of the worst battles in France and Belgium. But the problems facing the Army in this campaign were rather different from those on the Western Front. Instead of the cold and wet of the Continent there was the heat of the desert, the flies attracted by thousands of horses, camels and men, disease (and especially dysentery), and the sheer monotony of life miles away from any forms of relaxation.

Water had been one of the constant problems for the Army during this campaign with a vast force of men, horses, and camels all requiring prodigious amounts of water.

So, too, did the steam locomotives plying the tracks the Royal Engineers had had to lay down through the desert to keep the troops supplied.

The total water requirement for the successful capture of Gaza was 400,000 gallons a day, all of which had to be found in wells, piped from Egypt or transported by train or camel.

The bravery of Collins – and other men from the Welsh battalions attacking Beersheba – brought success and the Turks quit Beersheba for the Khuweilfeh Heights, 10 miles north of Beersheba, a series of difficult-to-cross knolls offering ample secure spots where the defenders’ machine guns could be concealed.

The Welsh soldiers, too, were now suffering from thirst and heat, exacerbated by hot blasts from the Khamseen, the desert wind.

John Collins went on to win a Distinguished Conduct Medal for a further act of bravery in 1918 as the Turks were pushed further back out of Palestine, and served as a sergeant major in the Home Guard in World War Two. He died in 1951 and is buried in Pant Cemetery in Merthyr Tydfil. He is also commemorated by a plaque in the museum in Cyfarthfa Castle.

Rhys David is the author of Tell Mum Not to Worry: A Welsh Soldier’s World War One in the Near East. ISBN 9-78-0-9930982-0-8.