by N S Nash
I was ordered to ride on and find a watering place, which I did; but the Turks still pressed in our rear, and we had to shove on without watering. I managed to water Don Juan (his much loved horse) however and gave him three of my six biscuits; we pushed on, the horses showing signs of fatigue. At 1800 hrs it was dreadfully cold and dark. The BGRA, the staff captain and I rode at the head of the Division. The orders were seventy paces to the minute with compass directing. We took it in turns of half hours. The strain was very severe. We’d had no food, except a sandwich for breakfast, for twenty-four hours, violent exercise under exhausting conditions.
There was no marked road, merely the occasional hoof mark to indicate that at some time, someone, or at least an animal, had passed that way before. The darkness, the cumulative effect of loss of sleep over several nights, the responsibility for guiding the entire force and now the extreme cold all added to the mix.
Mousley wrote that, ‘I shall never forget that night. A halt was suggested but our Napoleonic general drove us on. Again, as we learned subsequently, he saved us. That night the Turkish Army, reinforced, was trying to outmarch us.’
The 6th Division objective that night was a featureless place called Shadi. The ground locally was scarred with nullahs (watercourses or ravines) and there was but only one single track to bypass them. In one place a narrow stone bridge crossed a very deep nullah and here there was a scene of wildest confusion. Camels were being thrashed across, kicking mules hauled army carts and this caused a block as wheeled vehicles found difficulty – a bottleneck was created. Several vehicles overturned. Eventually the Division, a column 5 miles long, found its way over the bridge and the sappers blew it when the last man was safely across. The force bivouacked for what was left of the night and tried to sleep.
Mousley recalled the intensity of the cold but he did not sleep, as he was kept busy by his BGRA (Brigadier General, Royal Artillery). Several senior and experienced officers told him that, that day, he ‘had witnessed one of the most brilliant episodes possible in war where perfect judgment and first-rate discipline alone enabled us to smash the sting of the pursuit and to continue a retreat exactly as it is done on manoeuvres.’167
48. Captain E.O. Mousley RFA. He survived captivity to write The Secrets of a Kuttite.
As Mousley indicated, Mesopotamia has a climate that produces extremes of hot and cold, both of which are life threatening. The Viceroy was also well aware of this and, writing to Sir Thomas Holderness on 21 October 1914, Lord Hardinge had said:
when some weeks ago I enquired of the Commander-in-chief whether proper provision had been made for warm clothing for the troops, he told me that he was relying on private charity for this. I told him at once that I could not possibly agree to our troops being dependent for warm clothing upon private charity and I insisted upon the troops being properly clad at the expense of the Government. It is far better to have warm men in the field than men dying of pneumonia in the hospitals. It is the cheapest course in the long run.
This is an illuminating insight into the thought process of General Sir Beauchamp Duff. However, despite this interjection by Hardinge, Duff did not respond and eighteen months later, the Army was still short of blankets and clothing.
At 0400 hrs on 2 December, the trek was re-continued. Men and beasts were utterly spent. Many mules were shot as their strength gave out. The guns could move only very slowly as their teams were spent, unwatered and unfed. The painful procession wound on its way and at about 1400 hrs it halted for two and a half hours so that the stragglers could catch up. The hope was that Kut would be reached that day, but Townshend decided to halt 5 miles north of Kut because he anticipated an opposed entry to the town.
As the sun set on 2 December, its dying rays could be seen shining on the distant roofs. The pace of the column was now reduced to 1 mile in the hour and so Kut was half a day’s march away.
The tired men and beasts of 6th Division rested. Some bread was delivered from Kut and Mousley shared his ration with Don Juan. The horses were tethered close together to share their body warmth; the men sought shelter from the unforgiving and persistent wind. Mousley wrote at some length about that time, saying:
No one who has not sampled it for himself can credit the intense cold of such a Mesopotamian night. I have registered the cold of Oberhopf, where 20 feet of snow and icicles 40 feet high rendered every wood impassable. I have boated on the west coast of Scotland where the wind from Satan’s antipodes cuts through coat and flesh and bone. I have felt the cold from the glaciers of New Zealand but I have never felt cold to equal that 2 December of the retreat. Perhaps hunger and extreme exhaustion help the cold.168
At 0500 hrs the final leg of the journey was started, entry to Kut was not opposed and by 0730 hrs on 3 December, the vanguard entered the filthy, odorous, ill-favoured town of Kut. It was described by Barker as ‘the most vile and unsanitary of all the places occupied by the British in Mesopotamia, and about the only alleviating features were the date plantations and a few gardens north-west and south-east’169 of the hovels huddled in the bend of the river. Kut was not an attractive place to visit and certainly not the place for an extended stay.
The Mesopotamia Commission quite correctly recognised the exceptional skill and fortitude of Townshend’s force, and summarised the retreat to Kut in these words:
The Turks had ample time to prepare a strong position at Ctesiphon; but had it not been for the reinforcements, which reached them before our attack took place, it appears clear that they would have been defeated. The British Force had the utmost confidence in their leader, and the manner in which they fought did not indicate any loss of morale.
Notwithstanding the deficiencies of medical equipment and of transport all the wounded were evacuated and all prisoners taken to Kut. This was a remarkable military achievement, carried out during a hazardous retreat against overwhelming odds and with lines of communication threatened and at times cut by marauding Arabs. Great credit is due to the medical officers for their devoted work in thus evacuating their wounded, but many of those so moved suffered terribly as the two prepared steamers could only accommodate a small proportion of them. The remainder had to be put in any craft that was available and so hurriedly that, as on other occasions when vessels carrying up animals were utilised, there was not time to clear them of their accumulation of filth and dung.
General Townshend and his force in these exceptionally trying circumstances fully maintained their previous splendid reputation, and if for the first time defeat instead of victory attended their efforts, this was due to the exceptional difficulty of the military task imposed upon them, for the numerical odds and adverse conditions with which they had to contend were too much even for their fighting superiority.170
Chitral Charlie’s reputation was vastly enhanced by these words, which were penned when he was, nominally, a ‘prisoner of war’.
Nixon, now back at Basra, but feeling unwell, received a telegram from Chamberlain, the Secretary of State, on 4 December. It was terse and read, ‘On arrival wounded at Basra. Please telegraph urgently particulars and progress.’ The request for urgency fell on deaf ears because a reply was not sent until 7 December. On that date, and purporting to come from Nixon, the reply read:
Wounded satisfactorily disposed of. Many likely to recover in country, comfortably placed in hospitals at Amara and Basra. Those for invaliding are being placed direct on two hospital ships that were ready at Basra on arrival of riverboats. General condition of wounded very satisfactory. Medical arrangements under circumstances of considerable difficulty worked splendidly.171
This travesty of the truth was a replay of the misinformation disseminated after the battle for Kut. The MC asserted that it was unable to discover who had drafted this seriously misleading and untruthful telegram. However, two staff officers asserted to the Commission that the draft was in the handwriting of Surgeon General Hathaway – although he did not initial the telegram as the initiator. Hathaway, in e
vidence, later admitted that he ‘had assisted in the framing’ of the telegram.
When called to explain this blatant corruption of the facts in this telegram Nixon, Hathaway and Cowper all assured the MC ‘that it was not despatched with the object of misrepresenting the state of things.’ Nixon went as far as to say that, at the time the telegram was sent, his ‘thankfulness was great at having got the wounded down safely under circumstances of great difficulty without letting them be exposed to mutilation [by the Arabs].’172 That is all very glib and just so much nonsense.
There is enough circumstantial evidence to lay this squalid matter at the door of Hathaway. He was motivated to put a brave face on a disaster that was his responsibility and his fingerprints were on the draft telegram. Nixon may, or may not, have known about the telegram but he was fully aware of the medical debacle because he witnessed it, at Ctesiphon, and had commented upon it.
Cowper had an interest in preserving the standing of Nixon’s headquarters. That was understandable, misguided and wrong. The significant casualty was the veracity of all three generals and, in addition, Hathaway’s reputation was irredeemably and correctly damaged. The whole business was symptomatic of an integrity gap in Indian Expeditionary Force ‘D’, and the gap started at the top. The MC took a very dim view and wrote:
It is very difficult to accept these explanations [from Nixon, Hathaway and Cowper] for whatever may have been the motive for so wording the despatch, the effect was to conceal from the authorities outside Mesopotamia the real facts as to the medical breakdown in November, gravely to mislead the Secretary of State, and through him Parliament and the public and to deceive all into a state of false security in view of future operations.
If the full facts had been frankly reported, immediately after the battle of Ctesiphon, it would have been possible for the authorities to make strong efforts to remove or mitigate many of the defects before the next fighting took place. But this was not done, with the result that for the wounded the horrors in January 1916 equalled or even exceeded the horrors of Ctesiphon in November 1915.173
In Basra, the wounded were being given belated professional care, but to the north, the remnants of the 6th Division had girded its corporate loins and moved into the next uncomfortable phase of the campaign. The expectations of the 6th Division as it marched into Kut were not unreasonable: a cup of hot char and a wad, a cooked breakfast, pretty nurses, mail from home, newspapers, a decent bed raised off the desert floor, a bath and a shave in hot water. A cold beer would be the icing on the Mesopotamian cake. Soldiers are stoic fellows and ask for very little; it is just as well, because Kut offered none of the above.
This was no home from home.
It smelt appalling because Kut had no drainage system; no attempt had been made at sanitation. The whole place was indescribably filthy, owing to the insanitary habits of the inhabitants and the accumulations of refuse and filth on the thoroughfares, the riverbanks and the immediate confines of the town. Colonel Hehir, the senior medical officer, told the MC that it was the most insanitary place that the British force had occupied in Mesopotamia. Given the state of Basra, Kurnah and Amarah, that meant Kut really did plumb the depths.
However, what Kut did have to offer the new arrivals, and in abundance, was many hours of digging.
Chapter notes
152 Moberly, F.J., The Campaign in Mesopotamia, Vol. 2, p.107.
153 Colonel H.G. Thompson DSO, interviewed by Braddon, 1968, The Siege, p.101.
154 Braddon, R., p.103.
155 Nunn, W., Tigris Gunboats, p.179.
156 In the event, both officers were admitted to the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).
157 Mant, E.J., recorded by Braddon in The Siege, p.109.
158 Mousley, E.O., The Secrets of a Kuttite, p.14.
159 Ibid.
160 Townshend, C.V.F., My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p.194.
161 Harden was awarded the DSO and Gray the DSM for their gallantry.
162 Nunn, W., Tigris Gunboats, pp.184–5.
163 Lieutenant Colonel J. McConville to Braddon, as reported in The Siege, p.110.
164 Kipling, R., The Young British Soldier.
165 Mousley, E.O., The Secrets of a Kuttite, p.15.
166 Moberly, T.F., The Campaign in Mesopotamia at p.123 specified that Turkish losses were 748. It may be that the lower figure was Turkish dead.
167 Mousley, E.O., The Secrets of a Kuttite, p.19.
168 Ibid, p.21.
169 Barker, A.J., The Neglected War, p.115.
170 MC Report, pp.29–30.
171 Ibid, p.31.
172 Ibid, p.77.
173 Ibid, p.78.
Chapter 11
The Siege – Early Days, December 1915
‘Every great operation of war is unique. … There is no surer road to disaster than to imitate the plans of bygone heroes and fit them to novel situations.’
(W.S. Churchill, Marlborough, 1933–38)
Despite the retreat to Kut, in those early days of December 1915 Hardinge still remained overly optimistic – that was, once he had got over his brief, initial feelings of disappointment at the unravelling of his great plan.
His underlying optimism was manifest in three ways. First, most importantly, he did not abandon his aspiration to take Baghdad, although he could not carry the India Office with him, which directed Townshend to remain on the defensive.174
Secondly, he also discounted all the reports of Turkish reinforcements as being ‘unnecessarily pessimistic’, and on that basis took issue with General Duff’s advice that two more divisions from England were needed in Mesopotamia to counter an ever-strengthening foe. He said:
to divert our troops from the decisive point in Flanders is to play the game of Germany and, in my humble opinion, this policy has been too often pursued during the present war to the great advantage of the enemy.175
Duff did not readily concede and summed up his position by saying that although the war could not be won in any of the minor theatres, it could still be lost. He further emphasised that the disposition of British forces was the function of His Majesty’s Government, not that of Simla. Notwithstanding that firm position, he went on to counter-argue that in order to allow HMG to focus on the principal theatre of operations in France, ‘I think we should take on ourselves a responsibility which does not rightly belong to us.’176 Duff’s convoluted thought process, illustrated here, speaks volumes.
49. Plan of the 6th Division’s stronghold of Kut. (Prepared by the historical section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. Ordnance Survey 1924)
The third of Hardinge’s positions was that his confidence in Nixon remained strong. Hardinge did concede that Nixon ‘may have made a mistake as a result of faulty intelligence but he is not a fool.’177 The reality was that the intelligence was sound, Nixon was a fool to ignore it and the appraisal of Nixon’s merit, by Hardinge, is open to challenge.
Relations between Hardinge and Chamberlain were now being adversely affected by the Viceroy’s resentment of any suggestion made by his superior, Chamberlain, in the India Office. Chamberlain did not share the Viceroy’s high opinion of Nixon and advised the Prime Minister, Asquith, that his ‘confidence in Nixon’s judgment is seriously shaken by his complete miscalculation as to the changes in Baghdad.’ He added that Kitchener (War Minister) also thought that Nixon should be replaced.178
There was no meeting of the minds away from the battlefield. Political command and control of the theatre was fuzzy at best and, in the case of Hardinge, dangerous. He had an enviable track record as a pragmatic and effective administrator; the appointment of the Viceroy was not lightly bestowed, but the management of a military campaign was proving to be challenging new ground for him to plough.
On 3 December 1915, Chamberlain wrote to Hardinge and urged him to send someone to review the medical arrangements and report on the health of the troops. ‘I beg you,’ he warned, ‘not to be content with easy assurances … we shall have no defe
nce if all that is possible is not done.’179
Notwithstanding the undoubted experience and diplomatic skills of Hardinge, in mid-December he wrote foolishly that Ctesiphon was, ‘a blessing in disguise’. It had given the Expeditionary Force the opportunity to inflict ‘a good beating upon the Turks. Present talk that Townshend was trapped at Kut was total nonsense.’ He went on to explain to Sir Percy Cox that:
when the Commander-in-Chief and the General Staff talk of the relief of Townshend, I simply ridicule the idea that he should want relief, for with his 9,000 men he is supposed to be surrounded by 10,000 Turks and can break through whenever he chooses. It is really like one man surrounding another.180
Thus spoke the Viceroy, giving a view so divorced from reality as to be absurd. He was many miles from the theatre of operations and depended on Nixon for information. One can only presume that he had been fed, in army parlance, ‘duff gen’, and had based his opinions on entirely false premises.
The position of 6th Division in Kut was not good and getting worse. By 4 December, the Turks were intent on throwing a cordon around the town but, as yet, the encirclement was incomplete. Townshend still had the opportunity to evacuate to the south and he did, briefly, consider withdrawing further to the line of Es Sinn. He rejected that because he realised, not only did the defences there face the ‘wrong way’, but also, with massive forces at his disposal, Nureddin could outflank him. As the Turkish build-up developed and the Turkish commander moved 45,000 men into the area, breaking out became a diminishing option for Townshend. By 7 December, the investment was complete, the opportunity to break out had been missed and siege conditions now prevailed.
* * *
Charles Townshend had made his name and earned his nickname in 1895 right up on the North-West Frontier of India. There he commanded a small fort and withstood a large enemy force for forty-nine days before being relieved. His plight, and that of his garrison, attracted headlines all around the world, and the relief of Chitrál had a political impact that outweighed its military significance.