Armistice Day: Centenary

Lord Cope of Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 5th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, this debate is quite rightly focused on the 11 November Armistice, which silenced the guns on the Western Front of the “Great War for Civilisation”, as it is called on the reverse of the war medal. But we should not forget that that was not the only front. Three other armistices were signed in the preceding weeks of 1918, with Bulgaria on 30 September, Austria-Hungary on 3 November, and the Ottoman Empire on 30 October, ending hostilities on the Turkish front the following day.

My father was a wartime soldier in the Royal Artillery in the First World War, first in France and Belgium, until he was wounded at Passchendaele, and after a hospital in France and convalescence in England he was sent to join the so-called Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine under General Allenby. He therefore served on both the Western and Turkish fronts.

In 1914, we British had underestimated the Turkish forces, but we had learned our lesson the hard way. Our naval attempt to force the Dardanelles was thwarted, with great loss. The increasingly desperate attempt over months to advance at Gallipoli was defeated, also with terrible loss of life. The first advance in Mesopotamia led to a humiliating surrender at Kut. Later we recovered the ground, but we did not get all that much further in Mesopotamia.

In trying to advance up the coast of Palestine from Egypt we lost the first two battles of Gaza, right at the start. By then, 1917, we certainly did not underestimate the quality or fighting spirit of the Turkish army, nor the skill and leadership of its commanders, including Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk—the founder of secular Turkey—and German generals such as von Sanders.

General Allenby’s army was skilfully led and, in a war of manoeuvre and surprise, it won the Third Battle of Gaza, and then went on to capture Jerusalem in December 1917. Once his army had been reinforced with Indian and Empire troops to replace those withdrawn for the Western Front, he pressed on again and won the Battle of Megiddo in the following year.

The Plain of Jezreel had seen two great battles before in history. In 609 BC, the Bible tells us that the Egyptians won a major battle at Megiddo in their war with the Babylonians. Almost a millennium before that, the hieroglyphs at Luxor tell us that in the first Battle of Megiddo, in around 1457 BC, the Egyptians crushed the Canaanite forces on much the same ground in an epic battle. It is through these great ancient battles that Har Megiddo is known to us as Armageddon. In 1918, Allenby’s crushing victory at Megiddo enabled him to capture Damascus, then Beirut and Aleppo; so, with our armies on the edge of Turkey itself, it led to the Armistice of 31 October. It also led to the ennoblement of Viscount Allenby of Megiddo. Many of us remember Michael, the third Viscount, who made such a valuable contribution to the Cross Benches.

The slaughter on the Turkish front was not perhaps on the same industrial scale as that on the Western Front, but it was huge. Many of the troops involved came from Britain’s loyal Empire, in particular from the wider India—as it was then defined—and from Australia and New Zealand. We should not forget this theatre of the Great War. It led to the long-predicted end of the Ottoman Empire. My father’s letters home at the time reflect his relief at having survived the war—and of course I share that sentiment.

The armistices, including that on the Western Front, were phrased as temporary truces, which fortunately were extended. The final tragedy of the Great War was the peace conference; the powerful speech just now of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, explains why. The emotions and political pressures involved were inevitably huge. Wavell, then an officer on Allenby’s staff but later field marshal, commented at the time:

“After the war to end all wars they seem to have”,


made a,

“‘Peace to end Peace’”.


That is how things turned out, both in Europe and in the Middle East. It is a message to us, as the noble and gallant Lord said, that we must not forget.