Conclusion

Summary

In August 1932, Field Marshal Lord Allenby, formerly the commander in chief of the EEF, spoke to members of the British Legion in Portmadoc, Wales. Many of the Welsh Legionaries in the small crowd had served with him in Palestine.¹ Others had likely been with the Welsh Regiment or the Royal Welch Fusiliers in Macedonia and Mesopotamia. Fourteen years after the war had ended, he informed the gathering, he still heard and was often pulled into ‘disputes as to which theatre of operations, which front or field of war, was the scene of worst hardship. France, Palestine, Salonika, Dardanelles, Mesopotamia, or elsewhere.’ On the day, Allenby was in no mood to put one campaign above the others. All had suffered equally. ‘From what I saw of war; in Flanders, France, Palestine, and Syria’, he told the Legionaries, ‘and from what I know, from others, on other fields; I am assured that, whether in East or West, or Sea or Land; from the ice and snow of Northern Russia, to the torrid heat of East and Central Africa there was nothing to choose’.² His speech, in any case, was meant to impress upon the crowd of ex-servicemen the folly of war and the need to learn from past mistakes at a time when the world political situation was deteriorating and disillusionment with the war, focused overwhelmingly on the horrors of the trenches of France and Flanders, was perhaps at its height.