Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Arnold Lealand Siviour (1897-1918)
_{3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment, 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade – Abu Tellul (Palestine)}

The Judea Hills may have been walked on by Jesus Christ, but a more God-forsaken piece of ground never existed, at least as far as the horsemen occupying the heights around the Wadi el Auja in the summer of 1918 were concerned. Even the local Arabs deserted the place in the summer, the heat was unbearable and along the flats leading to the River Jordan, the mosquitoes could carry a man away.

It was on account of General Allenby, that the 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment was there.

The 3rd Light Horse Regiment was raised in Adelaide on 17 August 1914. Although most of its recruits were enlisted in South Australia, one of the regiment’s three squadrons was composed of Tasmanians and was raised and trained in Hobart. The two components sailed from their home ports in late October 1914 and arrived in Egypt in the second week of December. Here, they joined the 1st and 2nd Regiments to form the 1st Light Horse Brigade.

The 1st Light Horse Brigade deployed to Gallipoli without its horses and landed there on 12 May 1915, joining the New Zealand and Australian Division. The 3rd Light Horse played a defensive role throughout the campaign and was in reserve when its sister regiments attacked as part of the August offensive. It left Gallipoli on 14 December 1915.

Back in Egypt, the 3rd Light Horse joined the ANZAC Mounted Division. Between January and May 1916, the regiment was deployed to protect the Nile valley from bands of pro-Turkish Senussi Arabs. On 18 May, as part of its parent brigade, it joined the forces defending the Suez Canal. The 1st Light Horse Brigade played a significant role in turning back the Turkish advance on the canal at the battle of Romani on 4 August. In ensuing days the regiments of the brigade participated in the immediate follow-up of the defeated Turks but were soon withdrawn to rest.

The 3rd Light Horse rejoined the Allied advance across the Sinai in November and was subsequently involved in the fighting to secure the Turkish outposts on the Palestine frontier - Maghdaba on 23 December 1916 and Rafa on 9 January 1917. A stint of protective duty along the line of communications through the Sinai followed. The 3rd’s next major engagement was the abortive second battle of Gaza on 19 April. Gaza finally fell on 7 November, after a wide outflanking move via Beersheba, in which the 1st Light Horse Brigade played a part.

With the capture of Gaza, the Turkish position in southern Palestine collapsed. The 3rd Light Horse Regiment participated in the advance to Jaffa that followed and was then committed to operations to clear and occupy the west bank of the Jordan River.

After the capture of Jerusalem in December 1917 the British Prime Minister, Mr Lloyd George was most eager for the Allies to direct their blows, not at Germany direct on the apparently impenetrable Western Front, but at her “props” in the Balkans or the Middle East. His adviser, General Wilson, while chief of the Joint Allied Staff at Versailles, secured the Supreme War Council’s conditional approval of an offensive in Palestine.

In March 1918 the great German “Michael” offensive in France put an end to all plans for any action in Palestine. 60,000 men had to be sent from Palestine to France and the new commander of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, General Allenby, had to reconstruct all his British divisions. Two new cavalry divisions, the 4th and 5th were formed and the Australian Mounted Division was reorganised so as to become more completely Australian.

Meanwhile, Allenby had begun his active co-operation with the Arabs. They were then harassing the Turkish garrison at Ma’an, sixty miles south of the Dead Sea, on the pilgrims’ railway. He decided to destroy that railway where it passed along the high plateau east of the Jordan, at the squalid Arab town of Amman (once the flourishing Greco-Roman colony of Philadelphia).

Though generally unsuccessful, the raids east of the Jordan had one result intended by Allenby. The new German commander, Liman von Sanders, had his attention attracted to the inland flank, whereas Allenby intended, when the time was ripe, to break through near the sea. After an unsuccessful effort on 11 April to improve the position there, the front was quiet throughout the summer while Allenby reorganised his divisions.

During these most trying months the malarial Jordan valley over 1000 feet below sea level and its vital bridgeheads were held with as few troops as possible. To reduce numbers, mounted troops were used and as the British and Indian cavalry were then reorganising, this task fell mainly on Lieutenant General Harry Chauvel’s Anzac troops of the Desert Mounted Corps. For the Light Horse, despite full measures against malaria, this was the hardest service in the war. (Bean CEW, ANZAC to Amiens Chapter 28 - The last campaign in Palestine)

Natives had warned the  British that during the summer the lower reaches of the  Jordan valley were uninhabitable. At the approach of the hot months, even the nomad  Arabs fled to the hills and every resident of  Jericho,  except the very poor, evacuated the village as soon as the winter season with its profit-giving pilgrims and tourists was over.  But it was plain that the possession of the lower valley was essential to the success of any future offensive on a great scale.

Summer came down swiftly on the Jordan valley. In the last week of April, when the troops had moved upon Gilead, the sun was hot but tolerable. A week later,  when they returned from those bracing heights,  the heat was terrific; the valley was already deep in fine dust; flies swarmed by day, and mosquitoes made sleep difficult at night.

“A sweltering hot day,” runs one of Chauvel’s diary entries for 10 May, “little doing except the flies.”  Each day the temperature rose and under the constant heavy traffic necessary for the maintenance of so many mounted brigades, the dust became deeper and finer. As the horsemen and drivers sought new tracks the plain over many square miles became flooded with a deep bed of light powdered clay that rose in the still, heavy atmosphere and loomed in a cloud over the whole valley.  For weeks at a stretch, the shade temperature was rarely below 100 degrees Fahrenheit and occasionally rose to 125 degrees.

Had the air been light, the heat alone would have been a menace to health. But the southern end of the great gorge lies 1,290 feet below sea-level, and 4,000 feet below the mountains overshadowing it on either side. Blinded and choked by the dust, with rifles and tools almost too hot to touch, harassed by flies and mosquitoes and a  strange plague of stinging scorpions,  great black spiders,  snakes,  and other venomous creatures, insect or reptile, which seemed in keeping with that infernal region, the troops were weighed down with a  sense of physical oppression due to the abnormal weight of the atmosphere and its excessive moisture.

Rations reached the lines in regular supply, but in a condition that would have revolted any men but soldiers on active service. The bread was dry and unpalatable as chaff;  the beef, heated and reheated in its tins, came out like so much string and oil. The men's  “bivvy” sheets gave little shelter from the fierce sun by day,  and the heat and insects made sleep almost impossible at night.   And upon this threshold of hell, the men were called upon not only to hold their line against an aggressive enemy, elated with his recent successes but had for many weeks to engage in severe physical labour. (Gullet HS, The AIF in Sinai and Palestine, 1914-1918- Chapter 37 Summer in the Jordan Valley)

It was into the middle of this fiery cauldron that Trooper Arnold Siviour arrived on 4 July 1918, fresh from the Light Horse Training Brigade in Egypt.

Arnold Lealand Siviour was born on 30 December 1897 at Red Hill, South Australia, the son of Thomas Moses Siviour and Adelaide Lavinia Siviour (born Masters). Thomas was the brother of Edward Albert Masters. At the outbreak of war, Arnold had been too young to enlist and was exempted from Militia service due to the isolation of his home at Red Hill.

For a youth of 19, having one uncle killed in France and another still fighting on the Western Front, the prospect of leaving home on such a quest for adventure must have seemed too hard to resist, particularly when you added to it the romance of the Australian Light Horseman with his slouch hat adorned with the feather of an emu.

His mother having passed away in 1909 Arnold needed only to convince his father to sign his enlistment papers. Arnold enlisted in the AIF on 1 May 1917 as a member of the 31st Reinforcement Group for the 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment.  Two weeks later he arrived at Seymour for his initial training. Training as a Light Horseman was hard and seemed to take forever but he was eventually scheduled to leave for Egypt on 2 November. Three days before he was due to depart however he was bundled off to the Army’s Isolation Camp at Ascot Vale with Mumps.

In the second half of 1915, there was a nation-wide epidemic of cerebrospinal meningitis. Even today Meningitis has a high mortality rate if left untreated but has a good recovery rate if treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics.  While in 1915 antibiotics had still to be developed, a serum was available that had proved reasonably successful but a supply of the serum was seriously delayed due to its having missed the last mail ship from the United States.

One reason for the rapid global spread of the disease is believed to have been associated with the mobilisation of the world’s military and the social disruption that occurred as a result. Meningitis moved quickly through the troops undergoing training. By the end of August, the total deaths in Melbourne had reached 70.

An Isolation Camp was established at Ascot Vale to quarantine soldiers who had been exposed but who had not necessarily contracted the disease. Often whole units would be in isolation at Ascot Vale for 3 weeks at a time.

Even what today is a relatively mild illness; in 1917 an outbreak of Mumps in the close confinement of a military barracks would have been a serious setback. For Arnold though his time in the Isolation Camp meant that he and many of the other members of the 31st Reinforcements missed the departure of their troopship. They finally departed on the SS Ormonde on 7 March 1918 eventually arriving in Egypt on 4 April.

The reinforcements were immediately moved to the Isolation Camp at Moascar. In addition to the measures already taken prior to embarkation, the camp was set up to screen those soldiers arriving in Egypt as reinforcements to ensure that after having been crowded together for long periods, no infectious diseases were spread among the otherwise healthy troops. Most soldiers stayed about three weeks in the camp and if no illness appeared the soldier was then passed on to the training unit.

Other soldiers who had contracted an illness stayed longer until fit and for Arnold, it was going to be another delay. On 29 April Arnold presented with new symptoms. He was admitted to the No 1 Stationary Hospital in Ismalia with Rubella finally joining the Light Horse Training unit in late May. On 4 July 1918 Arnold along, with 44 other reinforcements, finally joined the 3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment in the Judea Hills in Palestine.

The 3rd Light Horse Regiment was part of the 1st Australian Light Horse Brigade which in early June had relieved the 4th Australian Light Horse Brigade in the hills to the north of the Wadi el Aujah. The 3rd Light Horse Regiment was manning several fortified fixed posts on the hill known as Abu Tellul with their area of responsibility split by the ravine cut into the hill by an unnamed tributary of the Wadi Mekur. The area was dotted with these fixed posts identified by names beginning with a common letter to indicate their general location. The posts at Abu Tellul, known as the ‘V’ Posts ran in a line from south-west to north-east along the ridge and were named in order Vaux, View, Vale, Vyse and Vance.

While the posts were considered to be fortified the reality was that the fortifications were hardly more than piles of rocks and sandbags that provided no shelter from the baking sun. The posts faced towards the north-west, the expected direction from which an enemy would come. At their backs was the ravine with their support line on the opposite ridge.

The daily routine was always the same. With the sun rising behind them at 0400 the troops would be roused in silence at 0330 and ‘stand to arms’ until 0430, dawn being the most likely time for an attack. The rest of the day would be spent on work parties improving defences or providing resupply of ammunition, water and rations.

The Auckland Mounted Refiles had occupied the area before the Australians and their unit history provides a good description of life at the posts.

“Mosquitoes, scorpions, and snakes seemed to increase with the summer, which dragged wearily on. ‘Jacko’ sometimes raised sufficient energy to throw over a few shells, and the British gunners, more through politeness than anything else, threw a few back – at least so it seemed to the men on the horse lines or in the trenches facing north. Fortunately for the well-being of higher officers, a lively paper-war was proceeding over small matters that could affect the winning of the war, but for the rank and file there was little mental stimulus, and that is a sad state of things to happen in the Jordan valley when summer heat saps the system. True the Regiment had to find daily a working party for trench defences—but digging is not a mental stimulus when the shade temperature is 110 degrees and the air seems devoid of oxygen.” (Nicol CG, The Story of Two Campaigns)

At the height of summer the grim, still atmosphere, bearing always its dense cloud of dust, seemed to the exhausted troops to possess a sinister note of doom. Perhaps it was fortunate for the men that their front line was usually active, and that there was so much manual labour to occupy the troops in support. From both sides of the river, the enemy persistently shelled the advanced positions, as well as the headquarters in their rear, and so kept the British alert and active. With that amazing spirit that sustains troops in the grimmest situations, the Light Horsemen faced the ordeal with a brave show of good humour. They took a sporting interest in each fresh ‘record’ temperature, in the dust as it became deeper and more blinding, and in the ‘willy-willies’, always in sight, sometimes rising in vast, dense columns to the height of the ranges on either side of the gorge. Stings from scorpions, extremely painful and necessitating medical treatment, was the subject of infinite jest. Championship combats between rival scorpions and black spiders would be surrounded and cheered by scores of dusty men behind the lines. (Gullet HS, The AIF in Sinai and Palestine, 1914-1918 – Chapter 37 Summer in the Jordan Valley)            

Despite the heat, the dust, the spiders and the snakes were always the threat of an attack by the enemy which was not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’.  An attack was expected, and it was known that a determined enemy could penetrate between the flanking posts into the valley between the two hills. The Light Horse leaders, however, were confident that the posts would hold out even though surrounded, and the 1st Brigade, holding the bastion, would then overwhelm the enemy with its reserve regiment.

It was always expected that it would be the Turks attacking but when it came the main thrust proved to be from the German battalions of the Asia Corps with the Turks supporting them on their right and left flanks. (Bean CEW, ANZAC to Amiens – Chapter 28 The last campaign in Palestine)

The temperature at midnight on 3 July was as oppressive as ever and even at the posts on the ridges the mosquitoes buzzed and bit and sucked their feed of blood leaving behind the organisms that spread malaria through the Jordan Valley. With its monotonous routine of sentry changes, the night dragged on.

At 0130 Major A Wick, Officer Commanding the squadron holding Vale, View and Vaux Posts reported to the Commanding Officer, Lt Col G J Bell, that movement of an apparently large body of troops could be heard in the front of Vale and View Posts at an estimated distance of 1,000 yards. The Commanding Officer immediately got in touch with the supporting artillery and asked for a barrage to be brought to bear on the point of the reported enemy movement.

At 0215 the batteries opened fire and after a few minutes of bombardment, when the guns suddenly ceased firing, words of command given in German could be heard distinctly in front of Vale Post. The artillery fire compelled the enemy to deploy and View Post reported movement in their front in the direction of Vaux Post. At 0245 the Commanding Officer reported the situation to Brigade Headquarters and advised them that in his opinion an attack was pending.

At 0230 the enemy opened an intense bombardment on the whole line of the 3rd Light Horse front trenches and also on their back area and at 0315 the regiment’s headquarters was moved to a position already prepared on the forward side of the ravine known as Tellul Left.

At 0330 the enemy attacked Vale Post in very strong force, in numbers that eventually proved to be over 1,000. Vale Post held by a single troop was unable to check the onrush of a force that outnumbered them by at least 50 to 1. In the darkness the enemy was able to pass along the low ground between Vale and View Posts and between Vale and Vyse Posts.

At 0430 Major Wick reported to the Regimental Headquarters that the enemy had succeeded in drawing a wedge between his View and Vale Posts. The reserve squadron was brought out to the posts on Tellul Left, the prepared second line, and the situation was reported to Brigade Headquarters. Lt Col Bell was advised that a squadron from the 1st Light Horse Regiment which was held in reserve, was being sent for his disposal and also a squadron was being sent to assist the 2nd Light Horse on Tellul Right.

When the enemy had broken through to the right and left of Vale Post the troops were withdrawn to their prepared second line post. Machine guns brought to bear on the enemy’s flanks as they tried to come between the posts compelled them to divert their line of advance and relieve the pressure against Tellul Left, but the enemy succeeded in occupying for a time a post on Tellul Right.

As dawn broke on 14 July a furious and determined attack was made against both View and Vaux Posts which were defended most gallantly. The steadfastness of the garrisons and the manner in which they withstood repeated onslaughts from an enemy in superior numbers and at the same time having to endure an intense bombardment from the enemy’s artillery was commended by the Commanding Officer.

At 0530 a vigorous counter-attack by the 1st Light Horse Regiment on Tellul Right ejected the enemy from that part of the line. This attack being followed up with great dash drove the enemy back with heavy casualties and at 0600 the whole of the line was re-established and the enemy’s attack completely broken.

Strong concentration of the enemy in front of and to the left of Vaux Post was reported at 0545 and the Wellington Mounted Rifles were ordered out of reserve to deal with the situation and attacked the enemy on his right flank.

At the same time, very accurate shooting by the supporting artillery compelled a breakdown in the enemy’s concentration. By 0730 the enemy was everywhere withdrawing and the accuracy of the Australian machine guns and Hotchkiss Rifles was causing many casualties.

Prisoners captured by the brigade were 10 German officers and 348 other ranks, plus 7 Turkish Officers and 60 other ranks. All were from the force that broke through Vale Post before daybreak but on account of the steadfastness of the men on their flanks they were unable to effect a withdrawal when the Australians counter-attacked. (3rd Australian Light Horse Regiment War Diary, 14 July 1918.)

Despite the strength of the enemy attack the Brigade suffered only two deaths in what the British authorities declined to call a battle but officially referred to as the “Affair at Abu Tellul”. Lieutenant William Kelly and Trooper Arnold Siviour were buried in a small graveyard on the Jordan Plain below the foothills where the Wadi Auja breaks from the Judea Hills. Their remains were later exhumed and transferred to the Jerusalem War Cemetery.

Despite its lack of identity the battle at Abu Tellul marked the beginning of the end of the campaign in Palestine. The attack proved to be the peak of a growing distrust between the Germans and their Turkish allies. For some time the Turks believed that Germany had withdrawn many of its forces from the Middle East to bolster its Armies on the Western Front. This distrust showed in the Turks’ lack of enthusiasm. The Germans, of course, blamed the Turks for the loss at Abu Tellul.

This German enterprise had been part of a plan to drive the British from the Jordan valley; the Turks failed to support it, and the German catastrophe had strong reactions in the Turkish Army and among the inhabitants of Palestine.

At dawn on 19 September, after a bombardment from air and ground, Allenby’s infantry broke the Turkish line at its coastal end. By 8 a.m. the cavalry of the Desert Mounted Corps, commanded by Chauvel, was picking its way over the old trenches and through barbed wire cleared by its advanced parties, while the infantry wheeled north-east towards the hills to attack Tul Keram and other positions.

By the end of October, the Germans and the Turks had been routed. The Turks signed an armistice on 30 October marking the end of the war in the Middle East.

Arnold Lealand SIVIOUR was born on 30th December, 1897 in Red Hill, South Australia

His parents were Thomas Moses SIVIOUR and Adelaide Lavinia MASTERS