Homesick Crusaders: Propaganda and Troop Morale in the Palestine Campaign, 1917

Abstract

Abstract On 9 December 1917 British and Dominion forces captured Jerusalem from the Turks; two days later, heading a solemn procession, General Edmund Allenby—chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF)— entered the city on foot. In London, Punch published a memorable illustration which epitomized the great achievement: captioned ‘The Last Crusade’, it showed Richard Coeur de Lion looking down towards the Holy City and nodding contentedly, ‘My dream comes true!’(seeFig.12).Punch, it seemed, spoke for many. The allusion to the campaign in Palestine as the ‘new’ or the ‘last’ Crusade was common both during and after the War, with numerous books offering their own variation on the theme: Khaki Crusaders (1919), Temporary Crusaders (1919), The Modern Crusaders (1920), The Last Crusade (1920), With Allenby’s Crusaders (1923), and so forth. A recent title like Anthony Bruce’s The Last Crusade: The Palestine Campaign in the First World War (2003) indicates that the analogy has yet to be exhausted.