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The Battle of Palmyra (1 July 1941) was part of the Allied invasion of Syria during the Syria-Lebanon campaign in World War II. British mechanized cavalry and an Arab Legion desert patrol broke up a Vichy French mobile column northeast of the city of Palmyra. They captured four officers and 60 men, which provoked the surrender of the Vichy garrison at Palmyra. ==Background== In 1941 the Vichy French had substantial forces in the region and had allowed their air bases to be used as staging posts by the Germans to send aircraft to take part in the Anglo-Iraqi War. They had also allowed the Germans to use the railway system to send arms and ammunition to Iraq.〔Compton Mackenzie, p. 107〕 On 8 June 1941 the Allies had launched two northerly attacks from Palestine and Trans-Jordan into Lebanon and Syria to prevent any further interference to Allied interests in the region. By late June Damascus had been taken and the Allied campaign commander, Henry Maitland Wilson was ready to launch two further thrusts, this time from western Iraq to complete the capture of Syria. An expanded Brigade group called ''Habforce'' had during the Anglo-Iraqi war advanced across the desert from Trans-Jordan to relieve the British garrison at RAF Habbaniya on the Euphrates River and had then assisted in the taking of Baghdad. This force was now pulled back to the remote part of Iraq near the Trans-Jordan and Syrian borders. It was tasked with advancing northwest to defeat the Vichy French garrison at Palmyra and secure the oil pipeline from Haditha in Iraq to Tripoli on the Lebanon coast. ''Habforce'' was well suited to the task in the desert because of the inclusion in its strength of the battalion-sized Arab Legion Mechanised Regiment, which was made up exclusively of desert-dwelling Bedouin soldiers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Palmyra」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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