by Peter Hart
Captain Henry Birch Reynardson, 1st Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry
Stunned by the shell fire, the Turkish outposts were overwhelmed. Next morning an aerial reconnaissance flight discovered that the Turks had cut and run. What happened next was simply amazing. With one brigade swiftly embarked aboard paddle steamers, Townshend and his staff aboard the Espiegle, accompanied by the other sloops Clio and Odin, set off up the Tigris in hot pursuit of the Turks. Mile after mile, the ramshackle convoy sailed up the narrowing uncharted river, bypassing obstacles and risking mines or deadly ambush. Perhaps the Turks could, or should, have done more to punish his daring, but Townshend gave them no time to think. He harried them mercilessly. Even when the sloops ran out of water beneath their keels, he merely transferred his retinue to the shallow-draught gunboats and launches to continue the chase with a mere hundred or so men. Only colossal chutzpah carried them through.
My first idea was to wait until my leading brigade should arrive in ships, as the probability was that the Turkish troops at Amara would defend the town. Indeed I felt certain that they would fight, and that it would be ridiculous to attempt to take the place with the armed tug Shaitan, with a 3-pounder gun and some ten hands as a crew, and the Comet, a small paddle-wheel river steamer, armed with a 12-pounder and a total crew of fifteen seamen and British soldiers doing work of marines. Captain Nunn was anxious that I should go on and chance it – as is the way with sailors. But I said emphatically, ‘No, I won’t do anything foolish. I must unite some troops before attacking, for there is sure to be a defence!’ But, after waiting for about an hour, I told Nunn that after all I would go on and chance it. I told him to send the Shaitan about 2 miles ahead as an advanced guard; and we followed with the Comet, Shaitan, and Lewis Pelly, armed tug-boats, and three 4.7 guns towed in horse boats. At 1.30 pm I was alongside the customs house at Amara, where the Turkish commander in the Battle at Qurna, Halim Bey, the Governor of Amara, Aziz Bey, three or four colonels and some thirty or forty officers came on board to surrender. A whole battalion of the Turkish pompiers from Constantinople sent off word that they were ready to surrender at the barracks; so I told Nunn to send one of his naval officers. Accordingly he sent a lieutenant with the coxswain of the boat and a British soldier from the Dorsets, who, I think, was acting as a marine. These three received the surrender of the battalion and marched them down to the quay and on board one of the big iron lighters there, as I wanted them in the lighter and anchored in mid stream under our guns! It must be remembered that I had only about twenty-five British sailors and soldiers with me. To keep up appearances, I made a scene with the Governor, who said he had no supplies available. I spoke of the 15,000 troops close on my heels with a fleet of ships.6
Major General Sir Charles Townshend, Headquarters, 6th Indian Division
Before the Turks had a chance to realise what was happening, it was too late. The follow-up infantry arrived just in time to consolidate the gains, on the morning of 4 June.
In the next phase in these endlessly extended operations, Nixon despatched Gorringe with the 12th Indian Division to fight their way along the convoluted channels of the Euphrates to secure the town of Nasiriyah. After some incredible logistical difficulties and some stiff fighting, they managed to eject the Turks from their positions on 24 July 1915. With both Amara on the Tigris and Nasiriyah on the Euphrates now taken, almost all the Basra vilayet was secure while, far behind the lines, the Arabistan oil fields were back in action and all was well. Yet Nixon was still not satisfied, this time pointing to the concentration of Turks gathering at the town of Kut al-Amara, some 120 miles beyond Amara at the confluence of the Tigris and the Shatt-al-Hai Canal, which led across to the Euphrates. The same old arguments were deployed: if only they could capture Kut all would be well, the Basra vilayet would be safe and the oil fields secured. This, however, was nonsense as an advance to Kut would achieve little more than elongate what was already a severely over-stretched line of communications. Kut only had any significance if it was to be used to launch an attack right up the Tigris to Baghdad: that, indeed, was Nixon’s real objective, in sharp contrast to the far more pragmatic inclinations of Austen Chamberlain.
The Turks were digging defensive positions on both banks of the Tigris some eight miles south of Kut and Townshend was faced with a difficult task. The shortage of river transport was having a terrible effect on the whole supply and reinforcements chain stretching right back to Basra, which was itself still in chaos. The problems were obvious but intractable. The main problem was the Tigris. Plagued by strong currents and winding like a corkscrew, the river was only navigable through a narrow channel, even though it was up to 150 yards wide. Townshend asked for more troops, more munitions, more transport. Nixon’s reply was terse: he was told to ‘cut his coat according to his cloth’.7
Slowly the troops of the 6th Indian Division advanced up the Tigris, some taken in shuttles aboard river transports, but many having to march far more miles than was good for them across inhospitable terrain in the blazing sun. After concentrating at Sheikh Sa’ad, they made a feint attack on the main Turkish defences of the Es Sinn trench lines on the west bank, before assaulting on the east bank on 28 September 1915. This was carefully planned by Townshend in his trademark style, using the cover of night to switch his forces by pontoon bridge across the river and then launch a complex combination of fixing and flanking attacks. It did not go entirely according to plan but, after a hard-fought battle, the Turks fell back beyond Kut. This time the Turks retired in relatively good order as the British river boats could no longer charge ahead, given the worsening navigational conditions on the Tigris. In the event, Townshend entered Kut on 29 September 1915.
Nixon had no intention of stopping as thoughts of capturing Baghdad filled his mind. Townshend was ordered to pursue the Turks. He, however, had a very different perception, as he was to confide to his diary on 3 October.
The Army Commander does not seem to realise the weakness and danger of his line of communications. We are now some 380 miles from the sea and we have only two weak divisions, including my own, in the country. There is my division to do the fighting and Gorringe’s to hold the line of communications from Kut to the sea. Thus there is no possible support to give me if I receive a check.8
Major General Sir Charles Townshend, Headquarters, 6th Indian Division
Chamberlain was also concerned about further advances to Baghdad, but Nixon simply brushed his objections aside. Confusion blossomed between London and Delhi. Worried by the dangerous situation at Gallipoli and desperate for success over the Turks, the War Office in London allowed itself to be reassured that there were indeed enough troops and means of river transport in Mesopotamia to make the capture of Baghdad perfectly feasible. On 23 October, permission was granted for a further advance. Townshend remained unconvinced.
I was determined to carry out the operation if it could possibly be done, and it was my plain and simple duty to carry out the orders of my superior to the best of my ability, although his orders were against my better judgement. Personally, I had no doubts in my mind as to the extreme gravity of the results of this advance – an offensive undertaken with insufficient forces, and not only that, but an offensive undertaken in a secondary theatre of the war, where our strategy should have been to have remained on the defensive with minimum forces sufficient for that purpose. All my study indicated disaster to me.9
Major General Sir Charles Townshend, Headquarters, 6th Indian Division
Townshend felt any further advance was unwise without at least two divisions to make the advance and a third to hold the lines of communication. He was also well aware of the increasing navigational difficulties for his flotillas in the shallows of the Tigris above Kut. But no one was listening and Townshend had little choice but to obey orders.
The next Turkish defensive positions were located close to the Ctesiphon Arch, the remnants of a huge palace from the heyday of Parthian civilisation. At the Bat
tle of Ctesiphon, fought on 22 November, Townshend faced a roughly equal number of entrenched Turks well dug in on both sides of the Tigris. He again chose to attack on the east bank, trying to pin the Turks with a frontal attack while his flanking column manoeuvred around. But things did not go according to plan: the Turks stood firm; even when their first line of trenches was over-run, they stuck fast in the second line. It was a real soldiers’ battle, devoid of tactical sophistication, with both sides launching frontal attacks across the open flat desert and both suffering severe casualties. For two days the fighting continued, then suddenly the Turks withdrew. But this time there was no question of a British pursuit. Townshend’s force had suffered some 4,600 casualties and his men could do no more. Ctesiphon was a truly Pyrrhic victory. Townshend had won the battle, but in doing so he had destroyed the fighting capability of the 6th Indian Division. He had no reserves; advance was impossible yet his men could not stay perched out in the open desert. Retreat was the only option.
Once it was confirmed that the Turks were not in headlong retreat and had not retired far, Townshend ordered the withdrawal to commence on the night of 25 November. The retreat was difficult in the extreme. The exhausted troops had a long way to march under the burning sun and their accompanying boats were constantly running aground. All the while the Arabs sniped around the columns. Not far behind them were the Turks; once they realised that the British were retreating, they soon launched a pursuit.
The total inadequacy of the transport facilities showed up in the evacuation of the wounded. From start to finish this was a disaster: everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
I was standing on the bridge in the evening when the Medjidieh arrived. She had two steel barges without any protection against the rain, as far as I remember. I saw that she was absolutely packed, and the barges, too, with men. The barges were slipped, and the Medjidieh was brought alongside the Varela. When she was about 300 or 400 yards off it looked as if she was festooned with ropes. The stench when she was close was quite definite, and I found that what I mistook for ropes were dried stalactites of human faeces. The patients were so huddled and crowded together on the ship that they could not perform the offices of nature clear of the edge of the ship. A certain number of men were standing and kneeling on the immediate perimeter of the ship. Then we found a mass of men huddled up anyhow – some with blankets, some without. They were lying in a pool of dysentery about 30 feet square. They were covered with dysentery and dejecta generally from head to foot. With regard to the first man I examined, I put my hand into his trousers and I thought that he had a haemorrhage. His trousers were full almost to the waist with something warm and slimy. I took my hand out, and thought it was a blood clot. It was dysentery. The man had a fractured thigh, and his thigh was perforated in five or six places. He had apparently been writhing about the deck of the ship. Many cases were almost as bad.10
Major Robert Markham Carter, Indian Medical Service, SS Varela
The scandal triggered by this suffering was so great that a full-scale inquiry was later ordered into its circumstances by the British government.
Behind the wounded, Townshend’s exhausted troops finally reached Kut on 3 December 1915. Nixon decided that Townshend should stand and fight. From 7 December the Turks besieged the British lines, which lay across the loop in the river that contained Kut. For the second time in his life the eyes of the Empire were on Townshend: would he succeed as he had at Chitral in 1895, or would Kut fall? In December the Turks launched a speculative series of attacks which were repulsed with heavy losses, after which they settled down to siege operations with the intention of starving the British out. On 28 December, the bulk of the Turkish forces began marching past Kut, leaving just enough behind to lock in Townshend, and moved down to occupy defensive lines in front of Sheikh Sa’ad.
Hitherto, Townshend had performed well during the Mesopotamian Campaign in 1915, but his conduct and judgement during the siege was poor.
Townshend is a hopeless incapable dreamer and ass – vain as a peacock and full of military history comparisons, but as a practical soldier one’s grandmother would be as good. Sometimes one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry at his incapacity! He never goes near his men or rarely – never goes near the front line of trenches and sees things for himself. But he is not the only rotter – there are several in high places. I tell you honestly, although it sounds conceited for me to say it, but I can say it to you, I am the best man in this force of the senior Generals and what I suggest is accepted at once. It is not saying much though, but there are amongst the seniors an awful set of incompetents.11
Major General Charles Meliss, VC, Headquarters, 30th Indian Brigade
This wonderful quote calls to mind Arthur Conan Doyle’s marvellous comic creation Brigadier Gerard and his firm conviction that he was the finest soldier, swordsman and horseman in the whole of Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Yet the ebulliently confident Meliss was certainly not alone in criticising Townshend’s conduct during the siege. His tactical position was dire, but he appeared to be in no doubt that – as at Chitral twenty years before – he would be relieved. All told, there were 14,500 British and Indian troops and dependants in Kut, with some 6,000 Arab civilian inhabitants who had been allowed to stay for humanitarian reasons and who also needed to be fed. Stupidly, no proper search had been undertaken by Tonwshend’s staff at the commencement of the siege to determine the food stocks at Kut and thereby maximise the period they could resist. At first there was an abundance of confidence.
Luckily there was lots of food. In addition to our full ration the men found in the village hundreds of chickens, lots of ghee and flour, and hundreds of tons of barley lying about. I have never seen men eat like it, but they had hardly had a decent meal since the 21st November and had had the devil of a time in addition. Leckie, our wonderful quartermaster, had found two cases of stout (ownerless?!) on the town front and put them in a safe place, i.e. our Mess! We had also some brown sherry and best of all [they] sent us four hams by mistake for bully beef: we ate them up and ‘Regretted the error’! We were all very cheery and pleased with ourselves and put Christmas or early January as the outside by which time a big force would arrive from India, we should join up and drive the enemy back up the river again.12
Major Ernest Walker, Indian Medical Service, attached to 120th Rajputana Infantry
On 7 December Townshend claimed he had enough food to last for only sixty days, that is, until early February 1916. Somewhat perversely, he decided to adopt the contrary positions of both keeping his men on full rations and demanding immediate relief from Nixon.
With Townshend bottled up in Kut, the Indian and British governments were unified at last in their response to operations in Mesopotamia. Divisions were now despatched that, had they arrived earlier, would surely have allowed the advance to continue the last few miles from Ctesiphon to Baghdad. Still smarting from the final humiliating evacuation from Gallipoli in January 1916, the British were desperate to prevent another disaster at the hands of the Turks, with a consequent loss of prestige across the Muslim world. A new Tigris Corps began to form in Mesopotamia under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Fenton Aylmer, VC, although it was matched by the Turkish divisions arriving from Gallipoli.
The relief operations that followed had some similarities with the earlier phases of the campaign. The British were confident, but they still lacked sufficient river transport or a robust enough supply chain to maintain operations some 200 miles from their rudimentary base at Basra. They were also short of artillery suitable for trench warfare conditions. Above all, they were in a hurry this time, with the pressing necessity to relieve Kut. There was, however, one real difference: many of the Turkish troops that they faced had acquired an ominous proficiency in defensive operations on the battlefields of Gallipoli that would serve them well in the Tigris campaigns. They also had a competent leader in the German officer assigned to take command of them, Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz,
who may have been seventy-two but who would prove to have one last effective campaign in his old bones.
The British attacks of January and February 1916 had a depressing similarity. The underlying characteristic was urgency: Aylmer was aware of the dangers of attacking up the Tigris before he was ready, but he was being pressurised by both Townshend and Nixon to make haste. The result was disaster. The Turks had amassed equal and opposite forces along a series of strong defensive positions at Sheikh Sa’ad, Sanniyat and Es Sinn. These layers of concealed trenches left Aylmer very little room for manoeuvre as they were carefully sited to leave a gap of just a mile or so between the river and the flooded marshlands on either side. Frontal attacks across flat open ground with inadequate artillery preparation against experienced and determined opponents was a recipe for disaster. At the Battle of Sheikh Sa’ad on 7 January, the Battle of Wadi on 13 January and the climactic Battle of Hanna on 21 January, the British and Indian troops went through hell. Early on Aylmer realised that he was in deep trouble.