Edmund Allenby was the British field marshal whose victorious campaign in the Middle East during the First World War shattered the Ottoman Empire and made him one of the most successful Allied commanders of the war. Born in Nottinghamshire, he was commissioned into the cavalry and saw service in southern Africa before the great conflict that would define his career.
On the Western Front he commanded with mixed results amid the grinding stalemate of the trenches, and after a costly battle at Arras in 1917 he was transferred to command the Egyptian Expeditionary Force — a move that proved the making of his reputation.
In Palestine, Allenby revitalized a stalled campaign with energy and bold maneuver. In late 1917 he broke the Turkish lines and captured Jerusalem, entering the holy city humbly on foot as a gesture of respect — a victory that thrilled the war-weary Allied public. He worked alongside the Arab forces of the revolt, famously associated with T. E. Lawrence, who harried the Turkish flank.
His masterstroke came in 1918 at the Battle of Megiddo, where a brilliantly executed combination of deception, cavalry, and air power destroyed the Ottoman armies and drove on to take Damascus and Aleppo, knocking Turkey out of the war. Rewarded with a peerage, Allenby served afterward as Britain's high commissioner in Egypt during a turbulent period before retiring. He died in 1936.