Australian Light Horse Studies Centre

Citation: Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Ted Andrews Account

Posted by Project Leader at 12:01 AM EADT

Updated: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 11:30 PM EADT

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Monday, 3 August 2009

Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Advertiser Account
Topic: BatzP - Surafend

Surafend, the massacre

Palestine, 10 December 1918

Advertiser Account

Adelaide Advertiser, 22 December 1919, p.12

The following account of Surafend was published in the Adelaide Advertiser, 22 December 1919, at page 12.

THE SURAFEND INCIDENT.

A NEW ZEALAND ACCOUNT.

Wellington, December 19.

With reference to General Ryrie's cabled comment on the New Zealanders' responsibility for the Surafend incident, a New Zealand soldier protests against General Ryrie fastening the blame on the New Zealanders. He says General Ryrie should have protested to Lord Allenby on the day the latter called his men "a pack of cowards and murderers." If he thought the Australians were not blameworthy General Ryrie should, in fairness to them, have resigned, as the only course left to a soldier and a gentleman. The soldier says native pilferers made camp life unbearable. A New Zealand machine gunner felt his kit being pulled from under him at dead of night. He jumped up and was shot dead by a native who presumably escaped to a near-by village. This was the culminating point of the men's sufferings in the hands of the thieves. General Chaytor, commanding the Anzac Division at the time, was absent. The men formed a committee, which requested headquarters to take prompt action to avenge the New Zealander's death and stop the Bedouin thieving. Had headquarters told the committee what was being done to remedy matters all would have been well, but nothing happened and the men decided that the village must be burnt. Less than half the New Zealand Brigade participated in the reprisals. No arms were taken - only pick handles and sticks - the idea being to get the women and children out, thrash every male Arab, and, if necessary, hold the Sheiks to ransom until the murderer was given up. The news leaked out and instead of a few hundred colonials there were thousands of soldiers, representing Great Britain and the Antipodes. Some of the natives showed fight, and about 30 males were killed. The women and children were removed before the fight started. Some days later Lord Allenby had the division paraded and said, "There was a time when I was proud of you men of the Anzac Mounted Division. Today I think you are nothing but a lot of cowards and murderers."

Further Reading:

Citation: Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Advertiser Account

Posted by Project Leader at 12:01 AM EADT

Updated: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 11:29 PM EADT

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Sunday, 2 August 2009

Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Gullett Account
Topic: BatzP - Surafend

Surafend, the massacre

Palestine, 10 December 1918

Gullett Account

Surafend after the massacre

The following is extracted from the book written by HS Gullett called Sinai and Palestine, Chapter XLV, Aleppo and the Armistice Aleppo and the Armistice, pp. 787 - 791.

The Australians and New Zealanders in Gallipoli were shortly withdrawn. In their camps at Tripoli and on the Philistine plain the light horsemen waited, eager in the prospect of early return to Australia: But an unfortunate incident was destined to throw a shadow over the last days in Palestine of Anzac Mounted Division. Close to the camps of the three brigades in December was the native village of Surafend. All the Arabs of western Palestine were thieves by instinct, and those who dwelt close to the Jewish settlements were especially practised and daring. Throughout the campaign the British policy, as already noticed, was to treat these debased people west of the Jordan as devout Moslems, kin not only to the Arabs of the Hejaz but to the Mohammedans of India. And the Arabs, a crafty race, quick to discern British unwillingness to punish their misdeeds, exploited their licence to extreme limits.

They learned, also, that there was a disposition in the British Army to assume without justification that any looting and other similar offences practised by the troops against the natives had been committed by the Australians. Consequently, if the Arabs missed a sheep from their flocks, they were emphatic that a soldier in a big hat had been seen prowling in the neighbourhood. Seldom punished, they became very impudent in their thefts from all British camps, and at times ventured to murder. All troops may have suffered equally; but, while the British endured the outrages without active resentment, the Australians and New Zealanders burned with indignation, and again and again asked for retaliation, but without obtaining redress. After the armistice a few men of Anzac Mounted Division were shot by the Arabs, and the resentment in Chaytor's division became dangerously bitter.

The natives of Surafend were notorious for their petty thieving. Prompted, perhaps, by the knowledge that the Anzac camps would soon pass for ever from their midst, and emboldened by the immunity they enjoyed, they grew audacious in their pilfering. They were reinforced, too, by a body of nomad Bedouins camped close to their village. The Australians and New Zealanders, sleeping soundly, were a simple prey to the cunning, barefooted robbers, and night after night men lost property from their tents. One night a New Zealander of the machine-gun squadron was disturbed by an Arab pulling at a bag which served him as a pillow. Springing up in his shirt, he chased the native through the camp and out on to the sand-hills, shouting to the picquets on the horse lines as he ran. As he overtook the native, the man turned, shot him with a revolver through the body, and escaped. The New Zealander died as the picquets reached him. The camp was immediately aroused, and the New Zealanders, working with ominous deliberation, followed the footsteps of the Arab over the loose sand to Surafend. They then threw a strong cordon round the village and waited for morning, when the head men were summoned and ordered to surrender the murderer. The sheikhs were evasive, and pleaded ignorance. During the day the matter was taken up by the staff of the division, but at nightfall the demand of the men for justice was still unsatisfied.

Meanwhile they had resolutely maintained their guard about the village, and no Arab was allowed to leave. That which followed cannot be justified; but in fairness to the New Zealanders, who were the chief actors, and to the Australians who gave them hearty support, the spirit of the men at that time must be considered. They were the pioneers and the leaders in a long campaign. Theirs had been the heaviest sacrifice. The three brigades of Anzac Mounted Division had been for almost three years comrades in arms, and rarely had a body of men been bound together by such ties of common heroic endeavour and affection. From the Canal onward men had again and again proudly thrown away their lives to save their wounded from the enemy. Not once in the long advance had a hard-pressed isolated body ever signalled in vain for support. The war task was now completed and they, a band of sworn brothers tested in a hundred fights, were going home. To them the loss of a veteran comrade by foul murder, at the hands of a race they despised, was a crime which called for instant justice.

They were in no mood for delay. In their movement against Surafend, therefore, they felt that, while wreaking vengeance on the Arabs, they would at the same time work off their old feeling against the bias of the disciplinary branch of General Headquarters, and its studied omission to punish Arabs for crime. They were angry and bitter beyond sound reasoning. All day the New Zealanders quietly organised for their work in Surafend, and early in the night marched out many hundreds strong and surrounded the village. In close support and full sympathy were large bodies of Australians. Good or bad, the cause of the New Zealanders was theirs. Entering the village, the New Zealanders grimly passed out all the women and children, and then, armed chiefly with heavy sticks, fell upon the men and at the same time fired the houses. Many Arabs were killed, few escaped without injury; the village was demolished. The flames from the wretched houses lit up the countryside, and Allenby and his staff could not fail to see the conflagration and hear the shouts of the troops and the cries of their victims.

The Anzacs, having finished with Surafend, raided and burned the neighbouring nomad camp, and then went quietly back to their lines. In the morning all the disciplinary machinery of the army was as active as hitherto it had been tardy. General Headquarters demanded the men who had led the attack and had been guilty of the killing. The Anzacs stood firm; not a single individual could definitely be charged.

Allenby wasted no time in expressing his mind to the division The brigades were assembled on foot in hollow square, and the Commander-in-Chief addressed them in strong, and even, one might say, ill-considered language. He used terms which became his high position as little as the business at Surafend had been worthy of the great soldiers before him. The division fully expected strong disciplinary action for Surafend, and would have accepted it without resentment. But the independent manhood of the Anzacs could not accept personal abuse from the Commander-in-Chief. Allenby’s outburst left the division sore but unpunished. The affair had unfortunate consequences.

A strained situation continued until about the middle of 1919, when, after the suppression of the revolt in Egypt, the embarkation of the colonial forces was resumed. The Australians of the 2nd Light Horse Brigade and New Zealanders were on the eve of departure, yet the division had not been recognised by the Commander-in-Chief since the speech at Surafend. Allenby was then in control of the affairs of Egypt; he was visited by an Australian, who pointed out to him the unsatisfactory position which existed. He expressed surprise at hearing of the feeling engendered by his speech; the Surafend incident, he insisted, had deserved all that he said of it at the time; but it had not shaken, nor could anything shake, the deep admiration and even affection he felt for the Anzacs, nor could he adequately express his appreciation of their campaigning qualities and services. He issued at once a glowing and appreciative farewell order to the Australians, and at the same time wrote personally a tribute to their work in Palestine which is remarkable for its discernment of their distinctive qualities. This letter read as follows;-

''I knew the New South Wales Lancers and the Australian Horse well in the Boer War, and I was glad to meet some of my old friends of those days when the light horse came under my command just two years ago.

"When I took over command of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in July, 1917, the light horse were already veterans, tried and proved in many a fight. Since then, they have shared in the campaigns which achieved the destruction of the Turkish army and the conquest of Palestine and Syria, and throughout they have been in the thick of the fighting. I have found them eager in advance and staunch in defence. At Beersheba, a mounted charge by a light horse regiment, armed only with rifles, swept across the Turkish trenches and decided the day. Later, some of the regiments were armed with swords, which they used with great effect in the pursuit of last autumn.

"On foot, too, they have equally distinguished themselves as stubborn fighters. They have shown in dismounted action the dash and enterprise of the best type of light infantry.

"The Australian light horseman combines with a splendid physique a restless activity of mind. This mental quality renders him somewhat impatient of rigid and formal discipline, but it confers upon him the gift of adaptability, and this is the secret of much of his success mounted or on foot. In this dual r61e, on every variety of ground-mountain, plain, desert, swamp, or jungle the Australian light horseman has proved himself equal to the best.

"He has earned the gratitude of the Empire and the admiration of the world."

There, between their great Commander-in-Chief and the Australians and New Zealanders, the painful Surafend affair rested. It was characteristic of the strong temper and of the frailties of both. Both had erred in anger. The sincerity of Allenby's final words to them was never doubted by the troops. Surafend, however, should not be forgotten. Without making excuses for the Anzacs, it may be said that the affair arose out of the simple fact that British regular officers entrusted with Australian commands in Egypt and Palestine, with a few notable exceptions, too often failed to grasp the vital fact that the narrow traditional methods of handling the soldiers of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales are not by any absolute law also the way to handle young men of the dominions. There is in the young British peoples overseas a genius, strong and distinctive, which must be considered in war as in peace.

Further Reading:

Citation: Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Gullett Account

Posted by Project Leader at 12:01 AM EADT

Updated: Monday, 3 August 2009 7:33 PM EADT

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Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Briscoe Moore Account
Topic: BatzP - Surafend

Surafend, the massacre

Palestine, 10 December 1918

Briscoe Moore Account

Surafend, 1918

The following account of the New Zealand perspective of Surafend was written by Briscoe Moore, A., The Mounted Riflemen in Sinai and Palestine: The Story of New Zealand's Crusaders, Auckland, 1920, Chapter XX. pp. 169 - 172:

The Brigade remained in bivouac at Richon until a few days before Christmas, 1918. It was during this period that the trouble over the adjoining native village of Surafend occurred. It was a regrettable affair, but since various more or leas inaccurate accounts of it have appeared in the press it is well that the truth should be briefly told here. Mention has been made before of the treachery of the natives—our men had suffered under this without the opportunity of redress throughout the Campaign, and the feeling against them was here to come to a head with, tragic results.
Adjoining the bivouac of Richon was the village of Surafend, the natives of which indulged in constant thieving from the camps near them. One night a trooper of the New Zealand machine-gun squadron was awakened to find his kit-bag being dragged under the flap of his tent by some thief outside. He immediately arose and grappled with the native. The robber was armed with a revolver, with which he shot his assailant in the abdomen, the New Zealander shortly succumbing to a mortal wound. This outrage brought the resentment against the natives amongst the men of the Anzac Mounted Division to fever heat. Had some drastic steps been taken immediately by the authorities to bring the murderer to book further tragedy might have been averted. What was done evidently appeared insufficient to the men by the evening of the following day, so that their anger flamed into action and resulted in their taking matters into their own hands. This they did soon, after dark, when hundreds of men representing every unit in the Anzac Division, New Zealanders, Australians, and English Artillerymen, surrounded the village of Surafend. The native women and children were first put out of harm's way, and then the men, fired by hate of the people who had brought death to one of their number, entered the village, set fire to it, and clubbed the male inhabitants. A Bedouin camp situated nearby was treated in like manner, a total of thirty-eight natives being killed in vengeance for the murdered trooper.
As no evidence was forthcoming at the subsequent Court of Enquiry, the blame for this massacre could not be fixed on any individuals or section of men. As it had been to avenge the death of a New Zealander perhaps official suspicion tended to lie on the New Zealanders. The only comment that can be made in the absence of knowledge is that such a thing was inconsistent with their good record.
General Allenby paraded the entire Anzac Mounted Division, and in a short speech "told page them off." After stigmatising the men who held such a high record of achievement and honourable service in the field as murderers, he said with dramatic effect: "Once I was proud of you—I am proud of you no longer"—turned on his horse and galloped away.
Although the action of the men in thus dealing drastically with affairs themselves is morally inexcusable, it cannot be too strongly stressed that the blame for the occurrence of this regrettable incident lay, in the first instance, upon the British authorities.
The British administration all through the campaign had been weak where the natives were concerned, and had pandered to them too much. If their attitude had been different, one of firmness and punishment where it was often deserved, the natives, who have no respect for anything but the "big stick," despite anything that humanitarians may say to the contrary, would never have dared to take the liberties with the troops that they came to consider almost their right, and this tragedy would not have occurred.
The writer is aware that some readers will think the inclusion of this incident in an account like this tactless on his part, as being one of the things best left unsaid. It has been included with the idea of giving the truth to the public, who can judge for themselves rather than form their opinions from accounts distorted by bias which have appeared or may appear in the press.

While in this bivouac the Canterbury Regiment received orders to leave for a destination unknown. Horses and saddlery were handed in, and the Regiment left, with the good wishes of their comrades, to form part of the garrison of Gallipoli. Canterbury left Richon in the middle of November, before the Surafend incident, and then, shortly before Christmas, the remainder of the Brigade trekked down to Rafa and went into camp close to the scene of the historic action there.

Further Reading:

Citation: Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Briscoe Moore Account

Posted by Project Leader at 12:01 AM EADT

Updated: Sunday, 9 August 2009 11:47 PM EADT

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Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal Account
Topic: BatzP - Surafend

Surafend, the massacre

Palestine, 10 December 1918

Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal Account about Lowry

DAPM Anzac Mtd Division Report, 10 December 1918

The following is a transcription of an account about the death of Leslie Lowry and the subsequent investigation of the murder. The report is extracted from Appendix 1, Assistant Provost Marshal, ANZAC Mounted Division War Diary, December 1918.

Anzac Mounted Division
Appendix I to the War Diary,
11 December 1918.

Ref No 65779 Trooper Lowry LT shot by supposed Bedouin in the vicinity of the 1st New Zealand Machine Gun Squadron.

At about 01830 on the 10th December 1918 I received information of the shooting of a New Zealand Soldier by the name 65779 Trooper Lowry by a man suspected as being a Bedouin. I immediately gathered up all available Police, and in company with Lieutenant Trennaman, 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment, together with eight (8) of his Troop, we hurried away in the direction of the 1st New Zealand Machine Gun Lines, where the murder was committed. On arrival there I met Captain WC Cobb of the 1st New Zealand Machine Gun Squadron, and 11/978 Corporal Carr CH of the 1st New Zealand Machine Gun Squadron, the latter being the chief witness in the case. After hearing the circumstances of the case we proceeded in the direction where foot prints were showing. We followed up the foot prints right up to within 100 yards of the Village of Surafend. After this no traces of the foot prints were observed, in consequence of the culprit having crossed the road leading to the Village, but we proceeded onwards to the place, where we halted in order to place my Picquets, composed of men furnished by Lieutenant Trennaman, so that the place would be well surrounded, the carrying out of the search being entrusted to members of my Police. Prior to the search major Montifiore APM PL of C was on the scene and I interviewed him and informed him of what had occured. I then got my Police to carry out their duties, but previous to my bringing them to the spot I had them all paraded and cautioned each and every one of my Police that no unjust carryings on against the caste and feelings of the People of the Village were to be enacted, their duty being purely to search the inhabitants and not violate or destoy, or to commit an act likely to bring about crime on themselves, the main object being to trace the culprit or any suspected person who was responsible for the murder of the Soldier.

At 0930 on the 10th December 1918 the Police commenced to search the Village and found no trace whatsoever of the culprit, or even any other individual suspected of the crime. The only material clue was that of a Native Cap (similar to headgear worn by Bedouins) which was picked up by a mate of the deceased, and handed to me by Captain Cobb. This was found on the scene where the Soldier was shot and killed.

Later in the afternoon I sent Lieutenant Fyfe to obtain footprint imprssions made of plaster of Paris, which he has done. The specimens taken are those of the man's left foot.

Captain AM
DAPM Anzac Mtd Division. [Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal, Anzac Mounted Division.]

Further Reading:

Citation: Surafend, the massacre, Palestine, 10 December 1918, Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal Account about Lowry

Posted by Project Leader at 12:01 AM EADT

Updated: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 11:27 PM EADT