'Military Lessons of the Arab Rebellion in Palestine 1936' [‎83r] (170/294)

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To use another simile, experience in Palestine shov/ed that once a
start is made in using troops for police duties a snowball is set rolling
which soon gets beyond control, and as more reinforcements pour in so
are more and more soldiers apt to be diverted to these tasks. This con
tinual bolstering up of a Police Force v/hich can no longer maintain law
and order only leads to postponing further and further the change over to
military control, and may result in so great a dispersal of troops as to
ruin the commander*s initial plan for the assumption of military control.
The answer of course is that once the situation has become so bad that
the police cannot carry on without using soldiers on police duties, then
the time has come for militaiy control. With military control the troops
and the police will come under the same commander, and will be used on the
duties most suited to their particular characteristics. To mix them
together on precisely the same tasks must obviously be uneconomical and
unsatisfactory. Unfortunately however such good intentions were not
always easy to put into practice, particularly when the civil government
remained in supreme control, and perhaps a brief survey of developments
in 1936 will best illustrate the point.
The first month of rebellion was a period of rioting in which fire
arms were seldom used on either side: the burden of this period naturally
bore heaviest on the police - and chiefly on the British Police - and
when the strain began to tell requests were made for relief by troops in
order to gain the police much-needed rest. On the 13th May therefore
troops took over the duty of convoying motor traffic on the main roads,
and on the 19th May some 100 odd soldiers were diverted to relieve police
from guarding public buildings, power stations, telephone exchanges
etc. At the time there were only three infantry battalions in the
country and these added tasks left only 30^ of the garrison free for
offensive duties. A week later further requests from the civil authori
ties led the Force Commander to address the following message to all
areas:-
" Can Area Commanders do anything to assist the police, who are very
tired, at once by relieving them of certain duties temporarily ?
In answer to this message further reliefs were effected. On ceroain
days the entire v/ork of some rural police stations was undertaken by
_ . _ _ 1 -nn r,r*nls
replaced police in the duty of enforcing curfew hours in towns, so ^er
escorts were put on the front seats of Jewish lorries and buses, an in
certain cases all night patrolling between police stations wao carrie ou
w 4 -v.t c waa nof. pnmicrh. and soon afterwards selected
soldiers, military guards were mounted on other police stations, parols
All this reinforcement did not however seem to nm-u