The British take Palmyra

On the morning of 1 July 1941, in the Syrian desert some 65 kilometres north-east of Palmyra, a patrol of Bedouin soldiers of the Arab Legion from Transjordan ran into a French light desert company near the village of Sukhnah. Led by their British commander, John Bagot Glubb, known as Glubb Pasha, the legionaries charged it in lorries and armoured cars, as men had once charged on horseback. The Vichy company scattered, and after a short pursuit five officers and 75 men were taken prisoner. This small clash sealed the fate of Palmyra, which had been under siege for ten days: its exhausted garrison surrendered early on the morning of 3 July. That same day General William Slim’s 10th Indian Division took Deir ez-Zor on the Euphrates with a daring outflanking move. Within three days eastern Syria had passed into British hands, and the Vichy forces defending Lebanon were threatened from the rear.

Some chronologies of the war state under 1 July that the British “won the battle of Palmyra”. This needs qualifying. The fighting for Palmyra had been going on since 21 June, and on 1 July the decisive clash took place at Sukhnah, after which the defence of the oasis lost all purpose. Palmyra itself, however, surrendered only on the night of 2–3 July; French accounts give the time as about 2.30 a.m., while the British official history speaks of the early morning of 3 July.

A front from Iraq

When on 8 June British, Australian, Indian and Free French forces began the invasion of Syria and Lebanon, they attacked only from the south, from Palestine and Transjordan. The plan of General Henry Maitland Wilson did provide for an attack from the east, from Iraq, but the troops that were to carry it out were still tied down on the Euphrates and the Tigris. The British had only just ended the war with Iraq, and after the surrender of Baghdad on 31 May Major General John George Walters Clark’s column, known as Habforce, still had to keep order in a country where the Regent’s authority had only just been restored. Only when the 10th Indian Division arrived from Basra and took over its duties could Habforce move west.

For three weeks the fighting in Syria and Lebanon went badly for the Allies. On the coast the Australians were struggling to push north, in the mountains the battle of Jezzine was under way, and the Vichy forces had gone over to counter-attacks at Marjayoun and Quneitra. Damascus fell only on 21 June. That same day a new front was opened: on Wilson’s orders Habforce crossed the Syrian border with the task of taking Palmyra and cutting communications between Damascus and Homs. Soon after it, from 27 June, the 10th Indian Division, under the command of General Edward Quinan, commander of the forces in Iraq, advanced up the Euphrates. Both thrusts were meant to threaten the rear of General Henri Dentz’s Army of the Levant and draw his forces away from Beirut.

Palmyra, an oasis in the very heart of the Syrian Desert, famous for the ruins of Queen Zenobia’s ancient city, mattered in 1941 above all for its communications and its oil. It had an airfield where German aircraft flying to Iraq had refuelled in May, which had prompted the British to launch raids on Vichy airfields in Syria. Next to the oasis ran the Iraq Petroleum Company pipeline, through which oil from the fields near Kirkuk flowed via Haditha on the Euphrates to Tripoli in Lebanon, with pumping stations designated by the letter T. A second branch of the same pipeline, running to Haifa, fuelled the British fleet and forces in the Middle East. Taking Palmyra was meant to secure the whole of this system.

Habforce at Palmyra

Habforce was in essence a reinforced brigade. Its core was Brigadier James Kingstone’s 4th Cavalry Brigade, made up of a composite Household Cavalry regiment and two yeomanry regiments, the Royal Wiltshire and the Warwickshire, carried in lorries. To these were added the 1st Battalion of the Essex Regiment, a field artillery battery, an Australian anti-tank battery, an anti-aircraft battery and a motorised regiment of the Arab Legion, lent by the Emir of Transjordan, Abdullah. Glubb’s Bedouin, who knew the desert like no one else, guided the columns, reconnoitred routes and covered the flanks. According to French studies, the British had about a thousand men at Palmyra itself.

The Palmyra garrison was much smaller. It consisted of legionaries of the 6th Infantry Regiment of the Foreign Legion, a Bedouin light desert company and air force ground staff. The British official history speaks of two Legion companies and one desert company; French studies speak of the 15th Company of legionaries, 187 strong, and about 300 men in all under the command of Commandant Ghérardi. The main position was Fort Weygand, north-east of the ancient ruins; smaller posts held the palm grove, the ruins, the hills with their tower tombs and the Arab castle of Qalaat ibn Maan overlooking the oasis. The legionaries, many of them of German and Russian origin, were experienced soldiers.

Habforce set out on 21 June in two columns: one moving west from Abu Kamal on the Euphrates, the other north from the Haifa–Baghdad road in the area of Rutbah. Surprise was not achieved. On the very first day the column coming from Abu Kamal ran into a legionaries’ post at the T3 pumping station, a dozen or so kilometres east of Palmyra, and failed to take it; it bypassed the post, leaving a detachment to watch it. The French now knew where the threat was coming from. On 22 June the first British vehicles approached the oasis, the next day the main force arrived and Palmyra was surrounded. Most of the Bedouin desert company deserted, but the legionaries held firm.

Twelve days under the bombs

The hardest trial for Habforce turned out to be the Vichy air force. The cavalry stood in the open desert, without cover and with only a handful of anti-aircraft guns, and the French bombers and fighters could choose their moment to attack. According to French tallies, on 22 June alone aircraft from Beirut flew more than a hundred sorties over Palmyra, and the next day several dozen bombers and fighters were thrown against Habforce. The British official history admits that the 4th Cavalry Brigade lost many men and vehicles and that its weak regiments struggled to keep up pressure on the oasis. For two weeks the men of Habforce barely saw a fighter of their own; the RAF, which was supporting the fighting in Lebanon and around Damascus at the same time, could send them little. Instead of the swift capture of the oasis that had been expected on the first day, a siege began.

The French also tried to come to the aid of the besieged. On 24 June the garrison made sorties at several points, and a small column of armoured cars arrived from the direction of Deir ez-Zor, which the British beat off. The fighting in the palm grove resembled a tug-of-war: on 28 June some positions changed hands, while the post in the castle of Qalaat ibn Maan, defended by about twenty legionaries, beat off attack after attack. The castle and the mouth of the pass of the tombs fell into British hands on 29 June. Meanwhile the 1st Battalion of the Essex Regiment, brought up from reserve, established itself on 28 June on the hills north-west of the town and for the next three days, together with the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry, attacked the ridge above the oasis from the west, forcing its way into the outskirts.

On that same 28 June the men of Habforce at last saw their own air force gain the upper hand in the sky. Eight Tomahawks of No. 3 Squadron RAAF, escorting Blenheims on a raid on Palmyra, ran into a formation of French Martin 167 bombers and shot down several of them in full view of the troops. For the exhausted cavalrymen it was the first heartening event in a week.

The charge at Sukhnah

From the start the Arab Legion operated far from the oasis, patrolling the desert and guarding the long supply line. At the end of June it forced the surrender of the French post at Seba’ Biyar, south of Palmyra; the British official history dates this to 26 June, other accounts to 28 June. The garrison laid down its arms without a shot being fired, and Habforce was able to switch its supplies to a shorter and safer route. The next day the Bedouin, reinforced by a squadron of the Household Cavalry, occupied the village of Sukhnah, which the French had left ungarrisoned, on the road from Palmyra to Deir ez-Zor.

On the morning of 1 July the Vichy 2nd Light Desert Company, coming from Deir ez-Zor, attacked Sukhnah. Glubb was in the area at the time on a reconnaissance. The legionaries reacted, as the British official historian writes, “vigorously, if somewhat unorthodoxly”: they jumped into their vehicles and charged the enemy like mechanised cavalry. The French company took to flight and got stuck in a sandy, enclosed valley, where it had to surrender. According to the British official history, eleven Vichy soldiers were killed and five officers and 75 men taken prisoner; the Legion lost one killed and one wounded. News of the rout of the company that was to have supported Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor spread quickly and robbed the defenders of hope of relief.

For the Arab Legion itself the fight at Sukhnah was a turning point. Glubb later wrote that the short campaign in Iraq and at Palmyra had surrounded the Legion with a “halo of glory”. Thousands of volunteers from the Bedouin tribes now came forward to join the mechanised regiment, and the force, which in 1941 numbered about 1,600 men, became in the years that followed one of the best-trained armies in the Arab world.

The oasis surrenders

After 1 July the defenders’ position became hopeless. Food and ammunition were running out, the siege was in its twelfth day, and there was no chance of relief. At about one o’clock on the night of 2–3 July the legionaries abandoned the Temple of Bel, their last position in the ruins of the ancient city, and at about 2.30 a.m. Commandant Ghérardi surrendered. According to a French study, he had only 88 men fit for combat left by then. General Clark had the vanquished accorded military honours. The British official history states that 187 men, including 48 airmen, were taken prisoner, counting the garrison of the T3 post; French tallies speak of 165 prisoners, including six officers, 87 legionaries, 48 air force men and 24 Bedouin, and say of the T3 pumping station that its 23 legionaries surrendered only on 6 July. The discrepancies probably arise from different ways of counting the wounded and the men from the outposts.

Taking Palmyra had taken twelve days instead of one, but it opened the way west for Habforce. On 6 July the 4th Cavalry Brigade made contact with British armoured cars operating alongside the Free French, who had earlier taken Nabk on the road from Damascus to Homs, and on 7 July it entered Furqlus, about 30 kilometres from Homs. From then on supplies could come through Damascus. The Vichy air force, however, did not let up, and until the end of the campaign the cavalrymen stood east and south of Homs, only a few kilometres from the city.

The outflanking move at Deir ez-Zor

The second thrust from Iraq went further north, along the Euphrates valley. Deir ez-Zor was the main town of eastern Syria, with two bridges over the Euphrates, a junction of roads to Aleppo, Palmyra and Iraq, and an airfield. The 10th Indian Division had been commanded since May by General William Slim, who had fought in the Sudan and Eritrea in the winter and had been Quinan’s chief of staff in Iraq. For the advance along the Euphrates he assigned Brigadier C. J. Weld’s 21st Indian Brigade, reinforced by a Gurkha battalion from the 20th Brigade, which had meanwhile been sent on a feint attack from the direction of Mosul; the 17th Indian Brigade of the 8th Division was to seize the railway line in the so-called Duck’s Bill, the north-eastern tip of Syria.

The leading units set out from Haditha on 27 June and took Abu Kamal on the border without a fight. The march was slowed by sandstorms, a bad road and air raids by the Vichy air force, against which the division was covered by only four Hurricanes and four Gladiators. On the evening of 1 July the leading units were a dozen or so kilometres from Deir ez-Zor and under artillery fire from the town. Fuel was running out. Slim planned two simultaneous attacks: a frontal one from the south-east and a wide outflanking move by the left wing, across the desert, onto the Aleppo road in the defenders’ rear. The risk was great – the outflanking column might find itself out of petrol at the moment of contact with the enemy, far from the rest of the force. Slim judged that the chance of complete surprise was worth it.

At 4.15 a.m. on 3 July the outflanking column set out from Mayadin: the infantry of the 4th Battalion, 13th Frontier Force Rifles, and the armoured cars of the 13th Duke of Connaught’s Own Lancers. It crossed the Palmyra road and at about 10.30 a.m. reached the road to Aleppo. At nine o’clock the Gurkhas of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Gurkha Rifles, attacked from the south-west. The surprise worked: the column from the rear burst into the town, seized both bridges intact and shook the defence facing the Gurkhas, which abandoned its positions at about eleven. In the afternoon the last resistance died away. Only about a hundred men were taken prisoner, because many Syrian soldiers changed into civilian clothes and dispersed into the surrounding countryside, and most of the 2nd Desert Company had already been captured two days earlier at Sukhnah. Nine guns, several dozen lorries, a few aircraft and large stocks of weapons, ammunition and petrol were captured.

Popular accounts say that “British troops” used “bold and risky” outflanking tactics. The assessment of the tactics is accurate, but the fighting was done almost entirely by soldiers of the Indian Army, including Nepalese Gurkhas, led by British officers. Slim’s biographers see Deir ez-Zor as a foretaste of his later style of command: bold outflanking moves and a readiness to take risks, which in 1945, as commander of the Fourteenth Army, he applied on a grand scale in Burma. On 5 July units of the 21st Brigade took Raqqa, 120 kilometres upstream, without a fight, and light columns reached as far as Jarabulus on the Turkish border. They were still attacked from the air by the Vichy air force, and on their supply lines roamed the bands of Fawzi al-Qawuqji, a Syrian guerrilla leader who had fought against the British in Iraq in the spring; on the night of 9–10 July one of his raids near Raqqa was beaten off with two bayonet charges. Aleppo was now under threat, and with it the railway to Turkey and the whole of northern Syria.

Its place in the war

The capture of Palmyra and Deir ez-Zor was not the biggest battle of the Syrian campaign – that was decided by the Australians in heavy fighting on the Damour river, on the approaches to Beirut, on 5–9 July. The thrusts from the desert, however, closed around the Army of the Levant a net from which there was no way out. General Dentz was losing control of eastern Syria and the Euphrates valley, Homs and Aleppo were under threat, reinforcements from France could not get through, and the Vichy air force was dwindling. On the evening of 11 July he asked for a ceasefire, which came into force one minute after midnight on 12 July. The day of 1 July had another significance too: that day General Claude Auchinleck flew into Cairo, and on 5 July he took over the Middle East command from General Archibald Wavell, whom Churchill had relieved. The Syrian campaign, into which Wavell had long had to be pressed, was ending under his successor.

The strategic gain was clear. From then on the British controlled the whole area from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, had secured the pipelines from Kirkuk to Haifa and Tripoli and the Basra–Baghdad–Haifa road, and for the first time had a common, passable border with Turkey. After Germany’s attack on the USSR the importance of this belt grew further still: in August 1941 troops from Iraq, among them Slim’s division, entered Iran together with the Red Army, and a large part of Western supplies to the Soviet Union later flowed through Iraq and Iran. Slim, whom Deir ez-Zor had revealed as a bold commander, took over a corps in Burma in 1942 and in 1944–1945, as commander of the Fourteenth Army, defeated the Japanese. The Arab Legion, which won its first fame at Palmyra, proved seven years later, still under Glubb’s command, to be the most effective Arab army in the first Arab–Israeli war.