Word: meinertzhagen
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...main instruments of modern war were available to other regional commanders of World War I, but Allenby alone, according to the author, had the administrative imagination to employ them in symphony. To orchestrate his strategy, he assembled a staff of geniuses-men like T. E. Lawrence, Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, Lieut. Colonel Archibald Wavell. Allenby offered these men responsibilities that few other generals of the age dared to delegate, but at the same time he dominated the scene with what Lawrence described as "a mind like the prow of the Mauretania-there is so much weight behind it that it does...
...Reward for Services. The mind and the method functioned faultlessly in Palestine. Meinertzhagen cunningly contrived a leak of false information that led the Turks to shift troops from Beersheba for the defense of Gaza. Where upon Allenby easily captured Beersheba, and with it a vast system of wells containing the water he required for a desert war. A similar but more elaborate ruse, involving 15,000 dummy horses and a secret concentration of 35,000 troops and 385 siege guns, set up what was probably the greatest Allied victory of World War I. The siege guns tore...
...Allow me to recall only two of the early adventures of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, D.S.O., featured in your July 2 issue as the world's leading bird-lice catcher...
...Colonel Meinertzhagen was the man who fooled Franz von Papen in Palestine [during World War I], exposing himself to a chase by German cavalry and losing a saddlebag full of carefully prepared misleading information about General Allenby's plans. Meinertzhagen, moreover, is the only living European . . . who has entered the hallowed and mysterious cave of Machpelah* in the tomb of the patriarchs at Hebron...
...Allenby's 1917 offensive, Meinertzhagen was the first staff officer to enter Hebron, from where all the native notables had fled. Looking for some secular or religious dignitary, Meinertzhagen came into the deserted mosque and found a door open, leading into vast, dimly lit souterrains. After a look at the enormous stone cenotaphs buried in dust, the colonel . . . left and finally found a rabbi, from whom to take the town over. Later on, when Meinertzhagen discussed his experience with [Father Hugues] Vincent, the famous Dominican archeologist, it became clear that he had actually been in the mausoleum...