Map of the 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.
". . . as the months passed, the subterranean rumblings of Revolution in the vast Empire of the Czars sounded louder and more menacing; and on the horizon, sown with shadows and lightning, the dark silhouettes of Lenin, Kaledin, Trotsky, and Skoropadky waxed more distinct. Finally, the formal and definite order for the Russian evacuation of the Caucasus was published. Our Second Army raised camp in order to go to the province of Aleppo, which was to serve henceforth as their base and zone of operations, in the event of a disembarkation or formal advance of the English by way of the Euphrates.This was the state of affairs, when, toward the middle of January [1918], we lined up in front of the Mardin Gate to receive Nihat Pasha, the new General of the Second Army."
Excerpt from the memoir of Rafael de Nogales, a Venezuelan mercenary and officer in the Ottoman Army. The Bolshevik Revolution took place in November, 1917, bringing to power Vladimir Lenin, determined to end Russia's involvement in the war. In January, 1918, Leon Trotsky was negotiating peace with the Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk. The Russians had defeated the Ottoman Empire in the Caucasus Mountains in the Battle of Sarikamish at the beginning of the war, and advanced into eastern Turkey in the following years. At the beginning of 1918, Allied, primarily British, forces were advancing northwards along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in Mesopotamia, and along the Mediterranean coast in Palestine and Syria. The Mardin Gate is in Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey.
Four Years Beneath the Crescent by Rafael De Nogales, page 394, copyright © 1926, by Charles Scribner's Sons, publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, publication date: 1926
1918-01-27, 1918, January, Aleppo, Euphrates, Ottoman Empire