Western Ottoman Empire showing the travels of Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War, from his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent.
Legend for the author's travels for the years 1915, 1916, 1917, and 1918.
"Colonel von Kress called me to one side and asked me if I was disposed to dynamite the chief pumping station of the English pipe line, supposed to be situated in the vicinity of the enemy trenches and headquarters at Sheik-Zowaiid. Naturally, in spite of a complete ignorance as to the whereabouts of Sheik-Zowaiid, I expressed myself as being in complete accord with his wishes. Insofar as the date of the sally was concerned, however, instead of starting out in five or six days accompanied by a squadron, as the Colonel had suggested, I left the next morning with a half-dozen picked lancers and my orderlies, Mustapha and Tasim Chavush.The first stage of our journey was across some thirty kilometers of desert to Beer-Shenek, the last well in the desert. The remaining forty-five kilometers, across a waterless waste with which we were totally unacquainted, we were to cross by night with no other guide than the pole-star."
Rafael de Nogales was a Venezuelan mercenary and officer in the Ottoman Army who had been Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia. In 1916 he served under German General von der Goltz in Mesopotamia. In January, 1917 he was in Palestine where he heard the news that the British had advanced 'beyond El-Arrisch and were at the gates of the city of Gaza.' While helping to prepare for the defense of Gaza, de Nogales a Catholic, found time to visit the ruins of Herod's Palace, the Convent of the Prophet Elias, and other sites. The author's timeline of his mission is off by several days, as he returns in time for the beginning of the Battle of Gaza on March 26 having, by his own account, set out the previous morning.
Four Years Beneath the Crescent by Rafael De Nogales, page 318, copyright © 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1926
1917-03-22, 1917, March, Arabia, Palestine de Nogales
