Books

  Alan Smith's Allenby's Gunners tells the story of artillery in the highly successful World War I Sinai and Palestine campaigns. Following Gallipoli and the reconstitution of the AIF, a shortage of Australian gunners saw British Territorial artillery allotted to the Australian Light Horse and New Zealand Mounted Rifle brigades. It was a relationship that would prove highly successful and Allenby's Gunners provides a detailed and colorful description of the artillery war, cavalry and infantry operations from the first battles of Romani and Rafa, through the tough actions of Gaza, the Palestine desert, Jordan Valley and Amman to the capture of Jerusalem. The story concludes with the superb victory of Megiddo and the taking of Damascus until the theater armistice of 1918. Smith Covers the trials and triumphs of the gunners as they honed their art in one of the most difficult battlefield environments of the war. The desert proved hostile and unrelenting, testing the gunners, t...