by N S Nash
At 1100 hrs, Hamilton’s Norfolks, 110th Light Infantry, 7th Rajputs and 120th Infantry effected a secure lodgement in the second line. He could go no further but had to face an enemy refreshed and revitalised by the injection of fresh troops.
These reinforcements saved the day for Nureddin.
Officerless Indian troops started to stream back from the second Turkish line to the VP and a withdrawal was in process, although no orders to that effect had been issued. Townshend could see that ‘panic’ was knocking on the door and wanted to join his friend ‘despair’. Townshend rounded up every officer he could get hold of, and that included Nixon’s Chief of Staff, Kemble. This ad hoc group, of mainly staff officers, revolvers drawn, stemmed the rearward movement with a mixture of good humour, cajolery and, in some cases, the threat of death. The informal retreat was stopped. Common sense was restored and soldiers who had seen what Arabs did to isolated individuals realised that it was probably safer to be on the battlefield in the company of one’s comrades than to be alone, out in the desert. Death at the hands of Arab women was not to be contemplated.
40. Lance Corporal John Boggis, R. Norfolk Regt, Townshend’s batman.
41. The Great Arch at Ctesiphon. (E.O. Mousley)
The next crisis was shortage of ammunition; the normal process of resupply by companies had broken down as Norfolks, Gurkhas, West Kents and Punjabis fought alongside each other. The colour sergeants were willing, but unable, to get ammunition forward to anything they could identify as their company. Volunteers ran back over the ground, so expensively bought in blood and pain earlier in the day, to the mule lines where terrified animals carried on their backs panniers of SMLE .303in ammunition. The ammunition boxes were firmly sealed, watertight, and opening them with a bayonet slowed down the distribution of the copper-jacketed rounds, all neatly packed in clips of five and cotton bandoliers of a hundred. ‘Who’ll say no to a bunch of fives?’ was one of the cries reported by Colonel W.S. Spackman, emerging from the melee.
The rate of fire being brought down on Turkish trenches increased as the ammunition was put to its designed purpose as units were formed from scratch; sound training paid off and order was restored. The conflict ebbed and flowed and these Turkish troops were a different proposition to the enemy encountered at Amara, Kurnah and Kut. They were tenacious, courageous and well led. It must have occurred to Townshend that he may have bitten off rather more than he could chew. Nevertheless, he maintained control as he moved bodies of his troops to best advantage and set artillery tasks. On several occasions as the fighting rolled around him, he drew his revolver.
Operations did not cease as night fell on 22/23 November and the Turks made a series of forays that jangled the nerves, prevented sleep but did not achieve any gains. The following day, the fighting resumed, with troops of both sides exhausted. It was a long, savage day with neither side yielding ground but taking casualties – Townshend was confident that he had had the better of the exchanges and fully expected Nureddin to withdraw. It was a forlorn hope and the killing continued.
The medical teams were faced with a massive task. There were British/Indian wounded spread out over a wide area and all of them had yet to be carried, by one means or another, to the river as the first stage in their journey.
According to the Turkish account the general situation and the condition of their force at nightfall — exhausted and reduced by casualties heavier than those of the British — occasioned Turkish headquarters grave anxiety. The whole of their first line of defence, laboriously constructed during the previous months, had been lost; and the only fresh troops available were the remaining two battalions of the 51st Division, which were then being hurried forward from the Diyala River.145
42. The Battle of Ctesiphon (2). (Map by The Historical section of the Committee for Imperial Defence. Ordnance Survey 1924)
The sun set on the evening of 23 November. Men slept fitfully and dreamt of home. At about 0200 hrs on 24 November, the Turkish firing died away. The battlefield was silent, save the cries of the wounded British, Indian and Turk. When dawn broke on 24 November and the British ‘stood to’, it was clear that the Turks had stolen away in the night in a very professional manner and quite undetected. The Turks had gone and the field was Townshend’s.
He had won a victory, albeit a pyrrhic victory, because his division had been destroyed. He had incurred losses of 4,511 and his brigades were down to battalion strength. Briefly, Hoghton’s brigade was only 700 strong, Delamain’s about 1,000, and Hamilton’s 900, at best. Wilfred Nunn was specific on the matter of officer casualties. He recorded them as being ‘130 British officers (out of 317), 111 Indian officers (out of 255). He estimated rank and file casualties at 4,200. Turkish losses were 9,500 including deserters.’146
On the 24th, the first ship to leave was HMS Butterfly, which carried away General Sir John Nixon and his staff! But not until Nixon, quite correctly shocked by what he had seen, had sent a telegram to General Hathaway saying, ‘I see no possible excuse for what I am forced to look on as the most indifferent work done in the collection of the wounded.’147
Trenches that on the previous day were fought over with great ferocity were now ‘full and spewing over with dead. Piles of Turkish corpses, dyed yellow with lyddite, lay everywhere.’148 In the irrigation ditches the water ran red. Wounded men drowned in this ghastly desert. The sand was littered with wounded who had frozen overnight, but now groaned with thirst as the sun climbed high in the sky.
Lines of the hated unsprung carts jolted load after load of bleeding men to the riverbank at Lajj, where the steamers were moored. The 10- to 14-mile journey to Lajj would take three or four hours of aggravated pain even before the misery of a ten to fourteen-day voyage in a river steamer or an attached, facility-free barge could commence. This was all much the same as the evacuation of the wounded from Kut – the same problems but of a much greater magnitude.
Briefly, Townshend weighed up the options open to him and then he sent a message to his formations, saying that he would resume operations on the morrow, which must have been read with utter incredulity. His brigadiers were aghast – there was only one realistic option open to the 6th Division, and at this point Townshend had not grasped it. The Turks were consolidating beyond the Diyala and being massively reinforced. The brigade commanders made their views known and Townshend was obliged to think again.
43. The men in this photograph are smiling, but at other times and places, wounded men suffered badly as they were carried from the battlefield in the unloved army transport cart, pictured above. (Dr G. Bulger; original photo by Harry Weaver)
He decided that the remnants of his division would withdraw during the night of 24/25 November and reform at Azizieh. This was an interesting decision because, on the way upriver, Townshend had fortified Azizieh to a degree that had brought a rebuke from Nixon for his profligate use of defence stores, and especially barbed wire. Later, and before the 6th Division moved further upriver to its engagement at Ctesiphon, Azizieh was defortified and its use as a defensive position was greatly reduced. This was now Townshend’s preferred site at which to give battle to his pursuers.
* * *
Albert Maynard was a soldier on HMS Butterfly, and many years later, he alleged that their ship was attacked during its passage to Basra and taken by a band of Arabs. Nixon, the GOC-in-C, was in the ignominious position of being obliged to bargain with his assailants. He bought the freedom of the ship, crew and passengers and all were sworn to secrecy, on pain of death.
This story appeared on the Internet and it was mentioned in Chitrál Charlie, published in 2010. The story has not been corroborated and reference to it cannot now be found. Maynard is long since dead but his story is just credible as a single ship was very vulnerable to attack. However, see page 114.
* * *
That was an intriguing historical cul-de-sac; and so to return to Ctesiphon. Townshend demonstrated what a skilled soldier he was as he managed the silent and uno
pposed withdrawal from Ctesiphon. The reality is that this was not a tactical withdrawal but a full-blown retreat.
The wounded had somehow been squeezed on to river craft of some sort or another and were now making their ponderous and very slow passage back downriver. Colonel Hehir was now filling the appointment of Principal Medical Officer of the 6th Division. However, it was beyond even his powers of invention and innovation to provide efficient and caring treatment for his wounded. Later, those who had not faced his medical dilemmas did not appreciate the Colonel’s ‘make and mend’ solutions forced on him on the battlefield. Major R. Markham Carter FRCS IMS, the doctor in charge of the hospital ship Varela, was at Basra waiting to receive those wounded, and in a graphic description of the day, he recorded:
I was standing on the bridge in the evening when Mejidieh arrived … as the ship with two barges came up to us I saw that she was absolutely packed and the barges were too, with men … there was no protection from the rain. The barges were slipped and the Mejidieh was brought alongside … When she was about three or four hundred 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 crowded and huddled together on this ship that they could not perform the offices of nature clear of the ship’s edge and the whole of the ship’s side was covered. This is then what I saw. 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 and some without. With regards to the first man I examined … he was covered in dysentery, his thigh was fractured, perforated in five or six places. He had been apparently writhing about the deck of the ship. Many cases were almost as bad. There were cases of terribly bad bedsores. In my report I described mercilessly to the Government of India how I found men with their limbs splinted with wood strips from Johnny Walker whisky boxes, bhoosa (compressed hay) wire and that sort of thing.149
44. The river steamer Medjidieh. (Photo by Major General H.H. Rich CB)
Markham Carter complained about the facilities available to him and he was told that he had been given all there was ‘as laid down in regulations’. More significantly, two of the most senior officers in the theatre, Major Generals Cowper150 and Hathaway, sent for him. He was advised in the strongest terms that if he did not ‘shut up’ and keep quiet he would lose his command because he was ‘an interfering faddist’.151 The MC would revisit this event some months later.
Chapter notes
139 The Daily Telegraph, 24 November 1915.
140 MC Report, p.18.
141 Townshend, C.V.F., My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p.161.
142 Acting Brigadier General S.H. Climo had assumed command of 17th Brigade when Dobbie was evacuated, injured, just before the Battle of Kurnah. He was an officer of 24th Punjabis and promoted acting Brigadier General. Now he commanded 30th Brigade. See Townshend, C.V.F., p.173.
143 Ibid, p.175.
144 Braddon, R., The Siege, p.95.
145 Moberly, F.J., The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914–1918, Vols. 1–4, p.90.
146 Nunn, W., Tigris Gunboats, p.175.
147 MC Report, p.76.
148 Thompson, Colonel H.G. DSO, interviewed by Braddon, 1968.
149 MC Report, p.76.
150 Major General Maitland Cowper CB CIE (1860–1932).
151 Barker, A.J., The Neglected War, p.107.
Chapter 10
The Retreat to Kut
‘To know when to retreat and to dare to do it.’
(The Duke of Wellington, when asked for his opinion on the best test of greatness in a general, William Fraser, Words on Wellington, 1889)
The Iron Duke would, no doubt, have endorsed Townshend’s decision to leave the field at Ctesiphon to the Turks. It was never about winning control of a worthless expanse of desert but about destroying Nureddin’s force in order to open the way to the ultimate goal – Baghdad. Townshend had taken that patch of worthless desert but had failed in his aim or, to be more accurate, the aim of his superior, the ever ambitious Nixon. In addition, the aspiration of Hardinge to be ‘Pasha of Baghdad’ was going to have to be put firmly on ‘hold’.
In textbook fashion, the 6th Division withdrew from its captured positions, at 2030 hrs on the night of 24/25 November 1915, and it turned its face southward. There was no noise, no lights. The withdrawal was accomplished with a clean break and, in the cold night air, some of the men strode, while others limped or shuffled across the unforgiving desert. The column of marching men could not stray too far from the river, which was, as ever, its water source. Nunn’s remaining ships kept pace with the column as many anxious glances over the shoulder were made. The realisation had dawned that the initiative had slipped from British hands and that, now, the 6th Division was no longer the aggressor.
It was the quarry, the fox – and the hounds were in full cry.
Townshend, having changed his mind, wired to Nixon that he intended to stay at Lajj, ‘until I have eaten up my supplies.’ He added that he would then move onto Azizieh and wait for the arrival of his second division, which he assumed would be sent on to him. From here he would launch another strike on Baghdad. His wire also included some patronising remarks that probably irked Nixon – but that was no doubt the aim. He did not explain what he thought Nureddin’s masses would do while his division masticated. Nor did he explain how he intended to confront an estimated enemy at four-division strength of, say, 48,000 men in an unsuitable place like Lajj, or for that matter, Azizieh, with the badly battered remnant of 6th Division. All of that made this business of ‘eating up supplies’ seem surreal.
45. The route of Townshend’s retreat to Kut. (A.J. Barker)
Nixon did not support Townshend’s decision to retire and said so in a wire that read:
I do not like your proposed retirement on Lajj for military reasons. … You should, of course, prepare a fortified position at Lajj on which to retire in case of necessity and to cover your advanced base but for military reasons I do not consider retirement desirable at present.152
Nixon did not specify the ‘military reasons’ but Townshend rode the rebuke and, anyway, it was too late because 6th Division was already en route for Lajj.
The map on page 108 illustrates the sinuous nature of the Upper Tigris and explains, in part, why it took so long for the wounded to reach relative civilisation in Basra. The 6th Division’s contested journey was to be an epic in itself. Townshend rode with the rearguard; his head on his chest. Colonel Thompson observed that, ‘those who watched him were reminded irresistibly of Napoleon on his retreat from Moscow.’153
That first staging post at Lajj was about 10 miles south of the blood-soaked field at Ctesiphon. Lajj was neither ‘fish nor fowl’. It was a village of no strategic importance, just a dot on the map. It was not far enough from Ctesiphon to provide significant distance between the two adversaries, it provided no obviously defendable position, nor did it reduce the line of communication by any significant amount.
It was an odd decision.
* * *
Braddon argued that, ‘From the age of twenty-three to fifty-four, Townshend’s diaries, cables and letters had revealed a man of ruthless consistency. But, from the moment his convalescence had begun in India, consistency had vanished.’154
This latest decision to ‘eat up supplies’ was irrational, as had been the beating of the dog and the need for fresh clothes. Another indicator was his position on an advance to Ctesiphon. This had varied from outright opposition to complete acquiescence, and his initial decision to resume operations on 25 November then rescinded. In total, all these incidents point to Townshend’s behaviour being less than entirely normal. But, in late November 1915, thousands of troops had complete faith in their ‘Charlie’.
Townshend retained the affection of his men until the end of his life; he worked at being a ‘soldier’s officer’. This is a status all of
ficers aspire to, and the usual device to achieve the aim is approachability. The general who chats to his soldiers, makes them laugh and is seen to care for them, even superficially, will achieve the accolade of ‘soldier’s officer’. It is fallacious to say that soldiers ‘love’ their general. It is more accurate to say that they ‘admire and respect’ him. This was the case with Townshend, but his officers were less convinced. They were in much closer proximity and could see the man, warts and all.
Braddon canvassed the views of Townshend’s officers, and their opinions varied. ‘A bit frenchified,’ said one. ‘A bit of a ladies’ man,’ opined another. ‘A thruster, you know, the sort of chap that will ride too far ahead and destroy the scent for the hounds and drive the Master mad.’ These are less than complimentary: ‘A man who would rather go to the theatre than a shooting party’ is almost damning, given the social mores of his contemporaries. Finally, ‘The only real general in the Indian Army; but not exactly a gentleman.’
That last judgment would have cut Townshend to the very quick as he entertained strong aspirations not only to gentility but also of nobility. His ambition to be Lord Townshend was unabated, although the marriage of the 6th Marquess in 1905 had been a blow. But the union was childless and Charlie was still the heir and busting to don ermine – as 7th Marquess.
* * *
Townshend’s stay at Lajj was very short-lived because aerial reconnaissance revealed that Nureddin’s advance guard of 12,000 infantry and 400 cavalry were on their way from Ctesiphon and within 3½ miles. Further massive reinforcement was on its way. Chitrál Charlie urged his division to its feet and the retreat south was continued.
Townshend’s force was accompanied by a miscellaneous but mostly unwieldy collection of barges, lighters and other river craft. The water was shallow and there were sand banks aplenty. The continuous need to refloat components of this flotilla took time and if one ship blocked the main stream then all behind had to heave to. It was a frustrating and tiring business. It was particularly fraught for the mariners, with Nureddin at their heels and aggressive, armed Arabs lining the riverbank. These Arabs had now thrown in their lot with the Turks and, like wolves, they stalked Nunn and his ships.