The Battle of Megiddo was fought from September 19 to 21, 1918 and was the final victory in British General Edmund Allenby's conquest of Palestine during World War I. Pushing through the Jezreel Valley from the west, his forces overthrew the Turkish troops present in the valley and on the banks of the Jordan. It is also in this valley that, according to the Apocalypse, the battle of Armageddon will take place.
Unlike many of the offensives of the First World War, the human cost of the maneuvers carried out by Allenby was relatively low, prefiguring by the speed of action the Blitzkrieg of the Second World War. Upon being made Viscount, Allenby took the name of this battle, becoming the first Viscount Allenby of Megiddo.
Location
The Turks have three armies:the XIIIth, the VIIth and the IVth, commanded by the German general Liman von Sanders. Its 44,000 soldiers hold a long front line running from the hinterland, slightly north of Jaffa, on the Mediterranean coast, to the Jordan Valley. They were, however, demoralized by disease and desertion, and short of supplies, mainly because Arab forces, under British liaison officer T.E Lawrence, cut the Hejaz railway line through which the supplies. Allenby has 69,000 troops.
Offensive
Allenby launches a diversionary attack against Turkish forces in the Jordan Valley, but he actually plans to strike on the coast. Concentrations of soldiers and supply depots were thus camouflaged in this sector and camps were built. Allenby plans to send his forces to the coast (some 35,000 men and 350 artillery pieces) against the Turkish defenders (8,000 men and 130 artillery pieces), then turn them eastwards, thus cutting off the north of the line of retreat of the VII and XIII Turkish Armies.
The British offensive begins at 4:30 a.m. Allenby's artillery opens fire on a front of about 100 km. The barrage is followed by an attack along the Mediterranean coast, which quickly breaks through the overstretched Turkish line. This gap is exploited by the mounted troops of the desert, who advance north towards Megiddo and then turn east over the Jordan. British planes bombing Turkish railways and headquarters thus destroying their lines of communication. Troops arriving from the desert advanced 110 km in three days before consolidating their positions.
Djerad Pasha's Turkish Eighth Army was virtually annihilated in the enveloping attack, and Mustafa Kemal's VII Army attempted to retreat to the east. Both armies are harassed by British aircraft. The retreat turns into a rout and 25,000 Turkish soldiers are taken prisoner. The Fourth Turkish Army, posted in the Jordan Valley, begins a retreat north towards Damascus, but General Allenby's victory is indisputable, and no Turkish force worthy of the name can stop its advance towards Damascus.
Operation
Taking advantage of their recent and brilliant victory, the British enter Damascus on September 30 and take nearly 20,000 prisoners there. Beirut fell the following day and Aleppo, 300 km to the north, on October 26. The British troops are led by the 3rd Australian Light Mounted Troops, preceded by Arab guerrilla troops. The latter, in response to Turkish atrocities committed against rebellious Arab villages, took few or no prisoners:on September 27 and 28, nearly 15,000 Turks (and some Germans and Austrians) were massacred to the last.