As featured in

Despatches Spring 2018

The author takes us through the tough actions of Gaza, the Palestine desert, Jordan Valley and Amman to the capture of Jerusalem. The story concludes with the superb victory at Megiddo and lastly the taking of Damascus in 1918.

Military Vehicle Trust

I have been lucky enough to visit the battlefields of Allenby’s successful campaigns in what was Palestine on more than one occasion. The next time I go I will be taking this book with me. The author has broken the campaigns into chronological narratives that are an ideal thread for an associated tour itinerary, each supported with excellent maps. The content is as digestible as the format is clear and logical. While focussed on the Guns and the Gunners of both sides, the other Arms that they supported are not excluded. The result is an excellent overview of a dramatic and hard fought campaign.

Guild of Battlefield Guides

Allenby's campaign is not perhaps, a forgotten front, but it has had little attention paid to it in the centenary period. This book goes some way to redressing the balance. It is not a book to be read and given away, but one to be retained as an invaluable work of reference, saving us all many hours of labour in the archives. Well done and thank you Mr Smith!

Stand To! Journal of the Western Front Association

As featured by

The Armourer, May 2018

This book has re-sparked an interest in me in the Sinai and Palestine Campaigns of 1916 to 1918 as well as a desire to look further now at the carving up of the Middle East by the British and French post war.

Mr Smith, you have written a remarkable history and I commend you for it. It is a book I will refer to again many times in the coming years. And hour to spare, a narrative to read. Well written, I have no hesitation in recommending this book to anybody with an interest in Military History.

Read the complete review here.

Thomo's Hole - Reviewed by Ian Thompson

Integrated photographs, maps, tables and also abbreviations guide is included at the front of the book, thus providing helpful links and points of information as you read. As you open the book, the author has enclosed a striking portrait if General Edmund Allenby. The photographs, maps, and tables included as all listed at the front. Some books may have one or two photo sections spread throughout. This text, however, beautifully intersperses the photographs throughout the development of the text, therefore giving the reader constant pictorial references to descriptions. I also thought it was different how, upon each major section of the book, a photo page separates the key date period. Overall, the research which has gone into this work is exemplary; at all levels. Artillery made a significant impact on the success of the campaigns in the Middle East. This book is a permanent testimony to that achievement.

Jon Sandison, Freelance

This Australian perspective has been well-researched and provides a view of highly successful desert campaigns during WWI. Descriptive text is supported by interesting and rare images through the body of the book – Most Highly Recommended.

Read the complete review here.

Firetrench

A product of Newcastle, the author combined a career in the Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited with service as a Reservist from 1951 until 1968 in regimental postings in artillery and later logistics staff postings. He holds a Masters degree from the University of Newcastle in commerce and economics and he is the Editor of the Journal of the Royal Australian Artillery Historical Company, Cannonball. This is not his first publication. He is also the author of Do Unto Others, another publication in the Australian Army History Collections.



It would not be possible to present an account and evaluation of the part artillery played in the Sinai and Palestine campaigns of 1916 to 1918 without first describing the strategic setting and then giving an account of the sequence of events that took place. In doing so, it would be easy to lose sight of the aim of focus on the artillery.



The author is not only able to strike a balance between the narrative of the events that took place and the part artillery played. He similarly treats the description of the big picture and of detail, such as an incident of a gun falling into a wadi, and between general narrative and technical detail. In this way he has produced a work that should preserve the attention and interest of the reader from beginning to end, whatever the reader’s level of knowledge of warfare or of artillery.



To achieve this Alan Smith has consulted and drawn on an impressive array of sources, primary and secondary, which he lists in his Notes on Sources, and alludes to in a helpful Preface. One has a sense that the material distilled into this book is the tip of a vast iceberg of research.

Maps, photographs and tables illustrate the book. Keys to abbreviations and map symbols are provided and there is an extensive index and a bibliography and there are unobtrusive footnotes throughout. There are eight appendices to accommodate data such as orders of battle, a chronology, senior postings, war establishments of men and equipment, and ammunition expenditure. In a final chapter and epilogue Alan Smith draws conclusions from the material he has presented in this book and comments on the future of the lessons learned during the campaign.



I heartily commend the book whether the reader be a scholar or someone just looking for a good read.

RUSI Victoria