Late on 3 August 1916 an Ottoman force with German and Austrian support, which had marched across the Sinai desert to strike at the Suez Canal, moved against the British positions at Romani, some 35 km east of the canal. Through 4 August the Australian light horse of Major General Harry Chauvel's Anzac Mounted Division held it off in the dunes until reinforcements arrived, and before dawn on 5 August they counterattacked. The attackers retreated with heavy losses, about 4,000 of them taken prisoner, and the Ottoman threat to the canal was over.
Across the Sinai
After the Allied evacuation of Gallipoli, Ottoman forces were free to try for the Suez Canal again, and in July 1916 a combined Ottoman, German and Austrian force marched across the Sinai. The ANZAC Memorial in Sydney dates the battle that followed at Romani, about 35 km east of the canal, from 3 to 5 August 1916. The Long, Long Trail, Chris Baker's reference site on the British Army in the war, describes it as the Ottoman 3rd (Anatolian) Division with a German group of machine gun, mortar and heavy and anti-aircraft artillery units, which left the Beersheba area on 9 July.1
The British defending the canal had moved their line forward into the desert and pushed a railway east to Romani, where the 52nd (Lowland) Division held the defenses. The Anzac Mounted Division, formed in Egypt in March 1916 under Chauvel, patrolled the dunes; it included the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Australian Light Horse Brigades and the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade. According to the Long, Long Trail, the British commander, Major General Sir Herbert Lawrence, chose to wait for the attack, expecting the enemy infantry to struggle in the soft sand south of Romani.2
In the dunes
Late on 3 August Ottoman units followed the 2nd Light Horse Brigade as it pulled back from its daily patrol, and in the early hours of 4 August they attacked. At first only the 1st Light Horse Brigade was in position, and outnumbered it was forced back. Through the day mounted and infantry reinforcements arrived, and a line was stabilized around a great dune known as Mount Royston, while the New Zealand and 5th Mounted Brigades drove the Ottoman left back. The Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne recalls Chauvel riding back and forth between his brigades under fire.3
By the evening the attackers were exhausted, short of ammunition and stuck in the dunes. Before dawn on 5 August the 1st and 2nd Light Horse Brigades attacked on foot with fixed bayonets; resistance collapsed and large numbers of prisoners were taken, and the 3rd Light Horse Brigade set off in pursuit.4
A victory not followed up
The Australian War Memorial puts Allied casualties at about 1,100 and Ottoman casualties at around 4,000, with another 4,000 taken prisoner; the Long, Long Trail gives about 1,100 British casualties, mostly in the Anzac Mounted Division, and about 8,000 Ottoman losses including the 4,000 prisoners. The same site argues that the British infantry was too slow to be committed and that most of the attacking force got away, withdrawing in the following days to El Arish.5
Even so, Romani ended the Ottoman threat to the Suez Canal and opened the British advance out of Egypt and into Palestine. The light horse went on to fight at Magdhaba in December 1916 and on into Palestine. Many of its men had served at Gallipoli, told in our article on the Gallipoli campaign.6
Also on this day
- 1644: Battle of Freiburg. Near Freiburg im Breisgau, a French army under Condé and Turenne attacked the entrenched Bavarian army of Franz von Mercy over several days in the Thirty Years' War.
