The Surafend Affair

[Terry Denham]

Gentlemen

This thread has been under observation for some time and it is now breaching the rules of the Forum.

Following complaints from some members the last post has been deleted as being solely concerned with contemporary politics and offensive to many.

Please return to the original WW1 related topic which started the thread.

[paul guthrie]

You are right Terry, it was mine & I apologize.

[John_Hartley]

This thread has been under observation for some time and it is now breaching the rules of the Forum.

In that case, can I thank the moderators for their tolerance over recent days.

I am aware that I was the first to respond to Ian's post and immediately made a modern day comparison.

It is an area of the world which continues to suffer from military action and in which I have a varied interest. To illustrate the point, I can do little better than quote from Jim O'Brien's article in the April "Stand To":-

"....to illustrate the dangers in the region, in July 1920 near Hillah, some 60 miles from Baghdad, a column made up of two squadrons of the Scinde Horse, 39th Battery RFA, three companies of 2nd Bn Manchester Regt and one company of 32nd Sikh Pioneers was badly cut up by Arabs. Losses included 3 officers and 131 Other ranks of the Manchester Regiment killed."

[Terry Denham]

Thank you to both Paul and John for their last postings.

All threads are monitored and any that could potentially go off track are usually flagged up to all moderators. However, there is no reason to intervene provided the posters stick to the Forum rules.

On this occasion the WW1 connection did get a little tenuous at times and the discussion did eventually cross the line. That said, Paul has apologised and that is the end of the matter.

[Guest stevenbec]

Can I offer my apologies also.

This is to close to home for me as I can still feel the heat from being in the soldiers position the day before this may of happened.

But never acted on the impulse, but felt like I would have liked to to avenge the things done to me.

Purhaps because none of my mates were killed stopped me/us from doing the same thing to the locals.

And then again they had weapons and that may have ment my death like the Yanks in Iraq now.

S.B

[Guest Nigel999]

Things had not changed concerning theft etc in WW2..My Dad spent most of his war in North Africa /Palestine etc...and it was an unwritten rule..catch someone stealing..hammer them , simple as that. At one time at least...any intruders into the ordnance depot at Tel el kebir were to be shot on sight..The simple fact remains..from what is known , that the soldiers at Surafend had been grievously provoked ..they took their revenge...in the same position I would most likely have done the same. I see no reason to condem them....People should not murder their mates or steal from them....would never have happened otherwise. As for moral high mindedness about such things....all very well when you can afford to have them...A very different kettle of fish if its suddenly your own well being under threat .

[John_Hartley]

Nigel999

The moderators have asked us to maintain discussion strictly to the WW1-related part of this thread. It is impossible for me to respond to your post without drawing a wider context. As such, my moral high mindness and I will remain silent, in spite of the obvious provocation.

Have a nice day

John

[Terry Denham]

Thank you, John.

[michaeldr]

I hesitate to get into this topic since it is clear that mere proximity to a battlefield confers no expertise whatsoever, and WWI Palestine is not my ‘front-line’

However the following comments may be useful to someone as background information

Sarafand was a major British base throughout its mandate in Palestine until 1948 and it remains a large military depot to this very day. To get back to WWI however.

Palestine at the time in question was truly a devastated country. Indeed, the Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse could not have done a better job on either the land or the local population. The Ottoman Turks conscripted not only able bodied men and boys but also draught animals and as often as not their owners [to be their handlers]. They took not only forage crops to supply their army but also any barbed wire or irrigation piping which a farmer might have had. Olive–oil was an important element in the local economy however the country was practically deforested to supply the wood burning engines of the Turkish railways. Foreign nationals who refused Turkish nationality [usually Jews of Russian (enemy-alien) citizenship] were deported; they were the lucky ones. Those who were left, Arab or Jew, had little or nothing to survive on. And on top of all this, in 1915 there was a plague of locusts!

R. Skilbeck Smith a subaltern in the 10th (Irish) Division wrote in his memoirs:

“Nowhere, either in Egypt or India, have I seen such awful dwelling places as the unspeakable filthy huts of these peasants. And the inhabitants reproduced in face and figure the squalor of their abodes. Nine out of ten were obviously suffering from some or other form of sickness or other, and chronic eye diseases seemed to be the common lot. Only in certain parts of Oman, along the infrequent maritime villages, have I seen negroes and Arabs living under conditions as bad, perhaps slightly worse than those prevailing under the oppressive rule of the Turk.” [R Skilbeck Smith ‘Subaltern in Macedonia and Judea 1916-1917’ London 1930, as quoted by B. J. Kedar]

None of this excuses any crimes, however, it is clear that the local population was reduced to extreme measures in order to merely survive and one occupier [be he Anatolian or European] may, to the occupied, have looked very much like another.

Food for thought?

Michael D.R.

[Guest stevenbec]

Mate,

I think you are right in want you say. The local's where in bad trouble when the Allied forces arrived in there area and how much help to them was limited at that stage as most of our own soldiers had limited food and such untill things became more settled.

That there were misunderstandings on both sides of the fence is shown in all records and as you state does never condone what was done either by them or us.

But to understand why they did it, either them or us is to say there are two sides of any story.

In Bosnia we in one hand gave out sweets and such to kids in one town while outside the town we were sniped at by there fathers. During an accident when a fuel truck turned over we were interested in getting the men out and seeing to there heath but all the locals wanted to do was steal the fuel from the truck. In that case after guns were put in my face I let them take what ever they wanted.

Such is war.

S.B

[Alan Lines]

I agree that it's very hard to judge given that most of us have no real idea what it was like for the troops serving there. Some things we know though were that the men were living in poor conditions a long way from home, missing loved ones, had mates killed, most were probably unwell etc. etc. On top of all this and a lot more they were having stuff stolen and given the way these men were brought up to feel about foreigners I find it hard to condemn their actions.

[TerryK]

I would like to re-opwn this thread, but not to discuss the rights and wrongs of what happened at Surafend in December 1918. I am writing the history of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade in WW1, and the brigade's involvement at Surafend is undisputed. I wish to hear from anyone who has access to primary sources that address the sequence of events from the death of Trooper Leslie Lowrie on the night of the 9th until the attack on the following night, and its consequences. I am particularly interested in establishing what nationalities besides the New Zealanders took part, and in the exact number of casualties. I have reviewed quite a few secondary sources, and the Report of the 2nd LH Brigade's Court of Inquiry (which seems to have been designed solely to establish that no Australians from the brigade took part in the attack), but the reports of the inquiries convened by the NZMR Bde and the 1st LH Bde have not yet surfaced. Please do not reply if you wish to re-litigate the moral issues attendant on the incident. Thank you.

[ianw]

Terry - Quite agree .When I first opened this thread , I was looking for additional information. The thread developed predictably but not too many additional hard facts emerged. You might want to post more detail on your researches to date ?

[TerryK]

My research to date reveals the following sequence of events.

During the evening of 9 December 1918, Trooper Leslie Lowry was sleeping in his tent in the New Zealand Machine Gun Squadron lines near the Ayun Kara battlefield. He awoke to find someone trying to pull his kit bag, which he was using as a pillow, out of the tent. Lowry leapt to his feet and chased the thief through the camp and into the sand hills, calling for help as he ran. As he caught up with the thief, the man turned and shot him. Lowry was found lying in the sand, bleeding from a bullet wound to the chest. He died just as a doctor arrived, having said nothing. No witness actually saw the fatal shot fired, or saw the murderer run into the nearby village of Surafend. However, tracks were reportedly found from the murder scene to Surafend.

The men of Lowry’s unit, probably assisted by other New Zealanders and Australians, immediately threw a cordon around the village to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. They did not enter the village that night – they simply stabilised the situation and waited for ‘the heads’ to launch an immediate criminal investigation. But nothing happened: no military policemen arrived to conduct a crime scene investigation, no witnesses were interviewed, and no senior officer arrived to take charge.

The next morning, Chaytor sent an officer to GHQ to register his growing concern, and another to take command of the cordon. The men there were angry and frustrated, but they continued to wait for something to be done. The only response to Chaytor’s plea was a peremptory order from GHQ to remove the cordon around Surafend immediately. Chaytor tried to overturn this decision, but failed. When the cordon was removed in the afternoon, a steady stream of Arabs immediately left the village.

That evening, the men took matters into their own hands. A soldier of a neighbouring Australian Light Horse Regiment stated afterwards that New Zealanders appeared in their tent lines looking for support. Another source describes a secret meeting in the sand dunes at 7 p.m., where an anonymous Australian light horseman quietly presented the action plan to the men present.

Two hundred men, armed with pick handles, bayonets or iron strips wrapped in puttees or sacks, quietly encircled the village at 8 p.m. One New Zealand witness claimed that British artillerymen from the Ayrshire Battery carrying horse traces (heavy harness chains encased in leather) also took part.

Most accounts state that the village headman was then given one last chance to hand over the murderer. When the murderer failed to appear, the next part of the plan was carried out. The old men, women and children in the village were woken and taken out of harm’s way, and the village was ransacked, probably in an attempt to find Lowry's stolen kit bag. Any Arab men remaining in the huts were subjected to ‘a sound thrashing’. A Bedouin camp next door to the village received the same treatment. Within 45 minutes, the village and the camp were burning to the ground, and between 30 and 40 Arab men had been beaten to death or badly injured. There is no evidence to suggest that anything more than a severe beating of the adult men was intended. Most sources attribute the high death toll to the resistance put up by the inhabitants of the village. Suggestions that some of the men were castrated and thrown down a well are unsubstantiated.

The fires were seen by men in the 2nd LH Brigade, whose camp site overlooked the village, and reported to NZMR Brigade Headquarters. The Auckland and Wellington regiments were both ordered to send a squadron, and the Machine Gun Squadron to send a troop, ‘to preserve order in the village.’ They found Australian MPs and the Richon le Zion picquet already there. Lieutenant Lord gave evidence that, when he arrived at the village soon after 8.45 p.m., he encountered ‘a large body of troops coming away from the village. There was no rifle shooting at that time and I saw Bedouin women, children and old men sitting together near a hedge. They were quiet and nobody was interfering with them.’ Lord did not enter the village, as it was ‘burning furiously’, and, as there were no more troops in the vicinity, he returned to camp. The other New Zealanders cordoned the village and patrolled the perimeter, but no attempt was made to put out the fire. They withdrew at 10 p.m., ‘all being quiet.’ The old men, women and children moved back into the ruins of their homes and began to mourn their dead.

The next morning, GHQ at last took action – but against the raiders, not the Arabs who had allegedly harboured Lowry’s killer. Each brigade in the Anzac Mounted Division immediately convened a Court of Inquiry, but the men closed ranks and professed ignorance of the whole thing. No offenders could be identified by Arab survivors or by anyone else.

Chaytor was furious, although his anger must have been tempered by the knowledge that, had his pleas for action during the daylight hours before the raid been answered, the attack would not have happened. With no offenders to blame, Chaytor turned his anger on the officers of the New Zealand brigade. It was clear to Chaytor that the regimental officers had failed in their duty for not stopping the attack once it had begun. ‘The singular inaction of almost all officers can only be due to a very grave lack of knowledge of their duties and responsibilities, or to a deliberate neglect of their duty.’ Strangely, the only punishment that he imposed was to ban leave for all officers. No one was ever court-martialled for Surafend.

Many of the accounts written after Surafend blame others for the attack. Harry Porter, a New Zealand veteran, stated that the Australians attacked Surafend. Only a few New Zealanders – ‘the harder cases, say half a dozen’ – took part. Gullett lays the blame squarely on the New Zealanders, who he says were the ‘chief actors’, supported by the Australians. The Report of the Court of Inquiry conducted in the 2nd LH Brigade amounts to little more than a denial of any involvement by the men of that brigade. One New Zealander thought that the ‘skilled organising suggested that some of the old hands were involved. But I know in my mind that the tried veterans who had battled so far for so long, would not have gone to this length. The killing was the work of some unblooded gang that had never been under fire. I feel as certain of this as if I’d seen the whole affair.’ The British Army rebuilt the village, and, in 1922, the governments of New Zealand and Australia reimbursed the British Army the sums of £858.11.5 and £515.2.9 respectively.

I invite readers to comment on my understanding of the events at Surafend. If you think I have got something wrong, please say so and include your source. Thank you.

[ianw]

Many thanks Terry. From my reading of your information , it would seem likely that the murderer would have left the village immediately the cordon was removed. I agree that higher authorities should have acted to defuse the situation earlier and that the officers should have acted to enforce discipline.

[armourersergeant]

Terry,

I can not answer to the facts etc of this but I canm say I found the reading of the facts you have written easy to digest and understand. It is a topic I now know alot more about

regards

Arm

[truthergw]

My research to date reveals the following sequence of events.

.......

I invite readers to comment on my understanding of the events at Surafend. If you think I have got something wrong, please say so and include your source. Thank you.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Because my area of interest is the western front, I had never heard of this incident. Thank you for what I feel is a factual and neutrally presented account . This tragic affair provides us with an example of why military discipline can seem very harsh. Soldiers require a very firm hand on the reins, whether they are in the line or out of it. It also underlines the fact that eyewitness accounts should not always be treated as gospel. There is much food for thought here. Thanks again for your lucid account.

[Captain Dave]

Terry, most of your primary source (from memory) seems to be drawn from Pugsleys book 'On the Fringe of Hell" I also read this and also looked up the offical NZ History of the incident, but not a lot seemed to be discussed in it except for the rights and wrongs of the action.

One point I need to make is that the incident was precipitated by the soldiers acting independantly, it was not in any way organised by the officers or NCOs of the unit.

As an aside, I am due to attend a presentation next week on the NZ Mtd Rifles in WW1, if you have any questions regarding further sources etc, I am more that happy to relay them to the presenter as questions. Just flick me off an e mail.

Regards

Dave

[TerryK]

Dave

Actually only a little of what I wrote is from 'On the Fringe of Hell'. Most is drawn from primary sources, including the 2nd LH Brigade report and comments by men who were in the vicinity at the time - many of which Pugsley presumably also used for his book. I have seen nothing to suggest that officers and NCOs were involved, but your statement begs the question: how do you KNOW they weren't?

Lastly, who is giving the NZMR presentation next week?

Terry

[Geoff S]

Terry,

Have you read Chapter xxxvii, December, 1918 pages 224 to 231 of a book called 'Morale' A Story of Australian Light Horsemen' by George Berrie published in 1949? (i.e. 6th ALHA)

It gives an additional insight into the Surafend incident. It backs up the fact about the whole Div being punished, even though some regiments were obviously absent (CMR & 7th ALHR), as I mentioned in the PM I sent you tonight.

It is an interesting account because it includes an Arab perspective of his escape from the beatings by dressing-up as a woman.

Also the author mentions that the Div. General wanted the New Zealand regiment brought closer to him to face his public tirade after the incident.

Perhaps the General 'probably' felt he knew where the primary source of the incident had stemmed from?

Cheers

Geoff S

[Ozzie]

Having read all the above posts and peoples views on the matter, it strikes me that some have not taken into consideration the state of mind that the soldiers may have been in at the time. Wanting to go home, the years of war, seeing their fellow man blasted to hell and more. Is this where they snapped, but still had enough decency to remove the women, children and elderly. In other words they had been pushed to the edge and they retailliated? It reminds me of an account where, on the Western Front, of a platoon who had been in the front line for some time, getting the **** blown out of them. They were ordered to advance. Rushing a pillbox, the men saw their LT (I think) blown to pieces in front of them. As one, the men became enraged and took the pill box. Not calling for the enemy to surrender, they threw grenades in and decimated about fifty men.

It is war and soldiers are put under stresses that those who have not been in the same situation, and let's face it, none of us has, not the conditions of 1914-1919, can ever understand. We may think we can but unless you were there, how can you judge the men of WW1.

I am sure that there were instances of "uncivilised" fighting, pillage, rape and murder, committed during the war by all the countries fighting, by men who under normal circumstances would be regarded as fine and upstanding humans. War can bring the beast out in the best of men.

Of course any one today would not condone any action such as that described, I am just trying to understand it and remembering that a series of circumstances led up to it. I am waiting to see if any more primary evidence is unearthed to give more insight into this.

Regards

Kim

[Captain Dave]

Apparantly some chap who has written an official history of the Mtd Rifles, I shall dig up the details and come back to you.

[TerryK]

If the presentation is in Waiouru on the 28th, I am the chap concerned!

[Captain Dave]

Ha! Then pretty pointless asking you questions to give yourself. I look forward to meeting you.

[TerryK]

This has all been very useful. I think I am edging ever-closer to the edge between what is fact and what is rumour. We will never know the full story. I do not intend making a big deal of Surafend in my book. After all, it was the work of a few hours. When compared with the length of the campaign fought by the Anzacs, it is a tiny moment, and one that has attracted more attention than it really merits. A small mistake, ugly as it was, should not be allowed to detract excessively from the great achievements of our forebears. Should any more primary sources come to light, I would appreciate a quick message. Otherise, come Xmas 2005, I will settle on what I already know and move on. I have an impatient publisher!

Thank you all.