Remembering a Veteran: Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, Royal Fusiliers

 

Richard Meinertzhagen

Col. Richard Meinertzhagen CBE DSO (1878-1967) was a Harrovian, like Winston Churchill, and one of the swashbuckling characters Churchill admired. A soldier, intelligence officer and ornithologist, he had a prominent military career in Africa and the Middle East. Meinertzhagen has come in for criticism over the years, most recently by revisionist historians. 

The Soldier

Early in the Great War, Meinertzhagen was posted to the intelligence staff of the British Indian Expeditionary Force. His map-making skills were much valued and recognized, though his assessments of the strength of the German Schutztruppe and other contributions to the conduct of the Battle of Tanga and the Battle of Kilimanjaro were a complete miss.  From January 1915 through August 1916, Meinertzhagen served as chief of British military intelligence for the East Africa theatre at Nairobi. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in February 1916.  In November of that year General J.C. Smuts ordered him invalided to England.

After recovering, in 1917, he was transferred to Gaza and later  credited himself with the famous “Haversack Ruse.” [Article Here.] During the Sinai and Palestine Campaign, according him, he let a haversack containing false British battle plans fall into Ottoman military hands, resulting in a British victory in the Battle of Beersheba and Gaza. As an intelligence officer and advisor to Allenby, Meinertzhagen played a key role in the capture of Jerusalem in December 1917.

From the spring of 1918 until August, he commuted between England and France, delivering lectures on intelligence to groups of officers – then was assigned full-time to France at GHQ. After the armistice, he attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and was Edmund Allenby's chief political officer, involved in the creation of the Palestine Mandate, which eventually led to the creation of the state of Israel.

Some biographers trumpeted his achievements; later ones call him a fraud and a charlatan and accused him of lying to enhance his reputation, especially in his multi-volume diary.

Erroneously presumed to be Jewish because of his staunch pro-Zionist views, Meinertzhagen in 1921 was appointed by Churchill as military adviser to the Middle East Department, which Churchill organized to administer British occupied areas of the former Ottoman Empire. He took a diffident attitude toward his fellow Harrow Old Boy, saying Churchill fancied himself the Duke of Marlborough and “had to be managed,” which he claimed he knew how to do. He would sometimes shoot from the hip, drawing a rebuke from his boss:

Please caution Colonel Meinertzhagen that he is not to express to the War Office opinions in regard to military matters contrary to my policy. Yesterday the Secretary of State for War told me that Colonel Meinertzhagen was quite agreeable to the removal of the armoured cars from Trans-Jordania. I have definitely forbidden this, and it is wrong for any officer in the department to give to other departments opinions contrary to my decisions. 

The Serious Ornithologist Somewhere in Africa, 1915

​Advisor and supporter

The pro-Zionist Meinertzhagen nursed a mutual dislike for the pro-Arab Lawrence, but the two were alike in making enemies by challenging the status quo among the military and officialdom. He was a brave and valiant officer who often gave Churchill sound advice, such as avoiding support for the post-World War I Greek invasion of Smyrna (modern-day Izmir), Turkey in May 1919:

In reviewing our position in Mesopotamia it is impossible to blind ourselves to the whole political and military problem in the Near East. The solution seems to lie in the following proposal: Mustafa​ [Kemal, the Turkish leader]​ knows our difficulties at home, in Mesopotamia and in Constantinople. He is more than alive to Greek political ferment and military impotence. It is of no use attempting to throw dust in his eyes on thes​e​ accounts. I submit that we, hand in hand with the French, should at once get into touch with him and entirely repudiate the Greek occupation ​of Smyrna.

​Palestine and Trans-Jordan

Meinertzhagen was solidly behind Churchill on the concept of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. There Britain ran a League of Nations mandate following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Norman Rose offers an accurate summary of the little-recognized “first partition of Palestine.” This was undertaken by Churchill, with the support of Meinertzhagen, in 1921:

[Prime Minister] Lloyd George, however, was in no mood to relinquish any British gains from the war. And once it became clear that Britain was in Palestine (and Iraq) to stay, Churchill applied himself to the consolidation of British rule in those areas with all the energy and vision of which he was capable. At the time, he was under tremendous pressure to revise Britain’s Zionist commitment. An anti-Zionist campaign, laced with strong doses of anti-semitism, was underway in the press, Parliament, and government. Richard Meinertzhagen detected a distinct “hebrewphobe” atmosphere emanating from the Colonial Office, while Churchill admitted to his friend, Chaim Weizmann, the Zionist leader, that nine-tenths of the British officials in Palestine were anti-Zionist.

Churchill’s axe fell as heavily upon Palestine as elsewhere. At Cairo, he set up the emirate of Transjordan. As he later elaborated, “the Emir Abdullah is in Trans-jordan where I put him one Sunday afternoon.” This was the first partition of mandatory Palestine. But Churchill was faithful to Britain’s Zionist obligation, anchored in the vague phrases of Balfour’s declaration. To the Arabs, he defended Britain’s Zionist oriented policy. He made it abundantly clear that “we cannot abandon to Arab fanaticism Jewish efforts.”

In the Second World War, Meinertzhagen, was recalled to the colors, serving mainly as what is known as a "public affairs" officer.

[In researching this article, I've found that Richard Meinertzhagen, created a lot of enemies in his life. There is a flood of published accusations that he was a liar, scientific fraudster, fantasist, glory-seeker, bully, forger, and murderer.  I don't have time to research all the accusations and, as far as I can tell, what's included in this article is well-supported. MH]

Sources: The Churchill Project of Hillsdale College, December 2015; WikiCommons