WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE 1917

96 WAR MEMOIRS OF DAVID LLOYD GEORGE
coming autumn and winter, no geographical objective being
set as the limit for his advance.
The spirit of the troops in Palestine had been greatly improved
by Allenby's arrival. They knew that he had been
sent for the purpose of breaking the deadlock before Gaza
and pressing forward to victory. He decided that in order
effectively to organise and direct the attack it was necessary
that he should himself be at the front with the Army, instead
of directing them from Cairo, where Sir Archibald Murray
had kept his headquarters, and he established his G.H.Q.
near Khan Yunis, between Rafah and Gaza. Throughout
August and September he was completing the very elaborate
arrangements necessary for furnishing supplies — particularly
water — to the troops in their advance, and moving
them into position. Best of all, perhaps, Allenby was not
wedded to the fantastic obsession which dominated the War
Office and Headquarters in France, that the best place to
attack the enemy was at his strongest point. In the Turkish
Front from Gaza to Beersheba, Gaza itself had now become
a formidable fortress, on which a frontal attack could only be
made with very heavy casualties, and Allenby decided to
strike instead at Beersheba, the most distant but weakest
part of the line, and turn Gaza, instead of sacrificing men
in an effort to capture it by direct assault. It is characteristic
of a certain type of military mind that in spite of the success
of his plan, he has been severely blamed for this strategy in
some military quarters, and the "Gaza school" have insisted
that his proper course was to attack on that nearest and
strongest point.
Towards the end of October he started to move his troops
eastward in earnest; and as he had previously carried out
sundry reconnaissances in force, the Turks did not realise
that he was really preparing an attack on the remote Beersheba
end of their line — they still expected it to fall on