Battle of Haifa

01The ride to the sea

In September 1918 the British broke the Ottoman front in Palestine at the battle of Megiddo and sent their cavalry north. The 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade was made up of regiments raised and paid for by Indian princely states. On 23 September its Jodhpur and Mysore Lancers were ordered to take the port of Haifa, held by an Ottoman and German rearguard with machine guns and artillery on the slopes of Mount Carmel and along the Kishon river.

02Lances against machine guns

The Mysore Lancers climbed the slopes of Carmel to silence the guns there, while the Jodhpur Lancers charged across the plain at the machine guns by the river. The ground was soft and the fire heavy. Major Dalpat Singh Shekhawat, leading the Jodhpur squadrons, was mortally wounded, and Captain Aman Singh Jodha took command. The lancers rode over the gun positions and into the town. British accounts of the campaign singled out the charge for praise.

Dynasty · 13th century–1949 CERathores of MarwarRao Siha’s clan came into the desert in the thirteenth century; Rao Jodha built Mehrangarh in 1459. In the war after 1679 the Rathores, led by Durgadas, saved their infant king from Aurangzeb and fought for him for nearly thirty years.Read →

03Teen Murti

Dalpat Singh was awarded the Military Cross and is remembered as the hero of Haifa. In New Delhi the Teen Murti memorial, three bronze lancers of Jodhpur, Mysore and Hyderabad, honours the brigade, and in 2018 the crossing in front of it was renamed Teen Murti Haifa Chowk. Indian soldiers who fell in the campaign lie in the war cemetery at Haifa, and the Indian Army marks 23 September as Haifa Day.