page_title: Tell El Kebir
section_title: First World War
hierarchical_section_title: Tell El Kebir / First World War
caption_attribution_description: English: British and Indian officers of the 18th Lancers (Indian Army) at Tel el Kebir on arrival from France in April
context_page_description: Tell El Kebir is 110 km north-north-east of Cairo and 75 kilometres south of Port Said on the edge of the Egyptian desert at the altitude of 29 m. Administratively, it is a part of the Ismailia Governorate.
  In the ancient times the city of On mentioned in Genesis 41:45 was identified by some as located south-west of the mound, which according to the Egyptian legend was the first place where cotton was cultivated.
  The location is famous for the Battle of Tell El Kebir which was fought in 1882 between the Egyptian army led by Ahmed 'Urabi and the British military. The ancient ruins of On were fortified into an entrenched camp by the Egyptian troops
context_section_description: During the Gallipoli landings and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign of the First World War, Tell El Kebir was a training centre for the First Australian Imperial Force reinforcements, No 2 Australian Stationary Hospital, and also a site of a large prisoner of war camp. Some 40,000 Australians camped in a small tent city at Tell El Kebir of six miles in length. A military railway was eventually constructed to take troops from the camp to their vessels in Alexandria and elsewhere for embarkation to Gallipoli landings.
  
  The Tell El Kebir village was described by an Australian soldier in 1916 as 
  
  a very dirty little place with a few dirty shops in it
  The Allied War Memorial Cemetery is situated about 175 metres east of the railway station and the Ismailia Canal. The War Memorial Cemetery was used from June 1915 to July 1920, and was enlarged after the Armistice many graves were transferred in from other temporary interment sites. The camp was converted for use as a holding camp for refugees fleeing the Russian Civil War from what used to be southern Russian Empire.
caption: British and Indian officers of the 18th King George's Own Lancers at  Tel el Kebir on arrival from France in April 1918.
exif: {}