Northern Palestine from Palestine and Syria with Routes through Mesopotamia and Babylonia and with the Island of Cyprus by Karl Baedeker
Northern PalestineScale 1:700,000
"It should be stated, however, that from the 20th to the 22d [of September, 1918], none of the orders from the Army Group, forwarded through the Fourth Army, had reached the Eighth Army and that the leader of the Eighth Army therefore did not attach to the Tiberias front the extreme importance for the general situation that the Army Group did. . . .On the early morning of September 23d, the Asia Corps effected the crossing of the Jordan without much loss. The staffs of the 16th and 19th Divisions however were captured on the west bank by British cavalry. Turkish soldiers went over to the enemy in crowds as soon as fired upon, or bombarded by British fliers. Most of them had thrown away their arms. It was another consequence of the fatal order of headquarters of the Eighth Army."
On September 19, 1918 British General Edmund Allenby attacked Turkish forces in Palestine, advancing along the Mediterranean coast rather than inland where Arab forces working with T. E. Lawrence — Lawrence of Arabia — had staged raids on Daraa, the Hejaz Railroad, and communications. Djevad Pasha, Commander of the Turkish Eighth Army, took the feint for the offensive and gave 'the fatal order' for his forces to cross to the east bank of the Jordan River, away, that is, from a position where it could have supported the Turkish Seventh and Eighth Armies' retreat before the British offensive. The Arabs and Royal Air Force continued strikes on communications infrastructure, isolating Turkish commanders.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, pp. 291 and 292, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
1918-09-23, 1918, September, 1918-09-20, 1918-09-21, 1918-09-22, Jordan, Jordan River, northern Palestine
