The Codebreakers: The True Story Of The Secret Intelligence Team That Changed The Course Of The First World War - Plot & Excerpts
Not only were much-needed troops and supplies – funnelled up the Suez Canal from the Indian Ocean – crossing the Mediterranean in order to reach the killing fields of the Western Front, they were also going the other way to join the forces engaged in desert warfare. The British were attempting to bring the Ottoman Empire to its knees by driving the Turks out of Palestine and completing the conquest of Mesopotamia (Iraq). Malcolm Hay’s codebreakers in London, and their associates in the Middle East, provided invaluable and, at times, decisive assistance, both strategically and tactically. One of MI1(b)’s priorities was to help reverse the disastrous failure of the British Indian army, known as D Force, in Mesopotamia. D Force was the creation of the India Office, which ran the subcontinent and its military policy. It resented any interference from London, and was engaged in a fractious rivalry with the administrations in Cairo and Khartoum. It saw the German-sponsored jihad – an attempt to rouse the Muslim masses living in the British Empire that was backed by the Turks and combined propaganda, sabotage and guerrilla warfare – as a grave threat to the Raj, and decided a show of strength was required to neuter it.
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