by N S Nash
At the time Townshend was a captain in the Indian Army, aged thirty-four. Ambitious to a degree that set him apart from his fellows he had, nevertheless, demonstrated ample leadership skills and personal courage. He was an officer who could reasonably expect further advancement.
His appointment as a Companion of the Bath (CB) in 1895 changed his life forever. The CB award was almost without precedent to an officer of his rank and service. He became a national celebrity, dined with the great and the good and was feted wherever he went.
It all went to his head.
It fed his unhealthy conceit and fuelled the driving ambition that completely dominated his life. In the next twenty years he advanced from captain to major general. He was a middle piece officer who was judged by his superiors to be competent but not quite as talented as he thought he was.
Charles Townshend’s undoubted scholarship in military history, strategy and tactics should have been factors in his advancement, but a propensity to lecture his seniors on these topics did not win him many friends. Nor did the persistent way he sidestepped the military chain of command to press his demands for new appointments and, by inference, promotion. Thus far in the campaign he had performed in an exemplary manner, and the withdrawal to Kut was, in its way, a minor military masterpiece. For Charles Townshend, the scene was set and he recorded in his diary that, ‘I intend to defend Kut, as I did Chitrál.’
These were brave words; however, there was a vast difference between the two situations. In the first, ill-armed and uncoordinated tribesmen had besieged the fort at Chitrál. Food there was rationed but starvation level was never reached. Casualties among the defenders numbered about fifty, most of which were incurred on the first day. Two British relief columns, although opposed, brushed aside their adversaries in order to lift the siege.
The second case was different; a very large, well-coordinated army besieged Kut. The quality of that opposition and the magnitude of its forces make any parallels drawn with Chitrál valueless, other than the mindset of the commander. The quote that heads this chapter underscores that very point.
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The man on the Clapham omnibus had been told of the triumphant march of the 6th Division and had basked in its successes. The capitulation of Baghdad was thought to be inevitable and so public expectation was high. When British forces ‘retired’ (a much more acceptable word than ‘retreated’) from Ctesiphon, it came as a shock and a scapegoat was urgently needed. Lord Crewe, speaking in the House of Lords on 8 December, said:
The early capture of Baghdad would have been a great stroke from the military and political point of view … it was a complete error to suppose that this was a rash military adventure undertaken by General Townshend on his own initiative. The advance to Baghdad was contemplated some months ago … a sufficient force had been collected to carry out the whole operation, the whole proceedings having been thought out by the Commander-in-Chief, General Nixon.181
There was no mention of the fact that HMG and the Indian Government had both endorsed Nixon’s plans. Although ownership of the strategy was not entirely that of Nixon, he was, nevertheless, being carefully eased into the firing line. It reflected no credit on the great panjandrums of Whitehall.
The upside of the debacle of the siege situation was that it finally dawned upon both governments that the campaign in Mesopotamia could no longer be run ‘on the cheap’. India scraped together two infantry brigades and three batteries of artillery and, by mid-December, they were on the high seas heading for the Gulf. The War Office ordered the diversion of two divisions, previously promised to Egypt and France, to Basra. Hardinge asked London to provide a third division and for river transport – this latter request was about a year too late; the lead-time to design, build and despatch the ships was not far short of a year.
The perceived advantage of holding Kut was control of the Tigris and of the Shatt-al-Hai. The thinking was that the British sitting in Kut prevented the Turks from using either river to attack Basra or Nasariyeh. Although the rivers were under British control, the reality was that Kut could easily be outflanked in the vast deserts that surrounded the town.
Kut was originally intended only as a staging post and supply point; accordingly, only sparse defences around the town had been built after its capture. The current situation called for comprehensive defence works, so Townshend’s men had to start from scratch.
The neck of the bend was about 1,700 yards wide and it was this line to which most assets were directed. At the eastern extremity of that line was a mud-walled building dignified with the appellation ‘Fort’. It was incorporated into the defence plan and from the fort to the river, on the west, a line of trenches was constructed. The depth of the entrenched camp from the first line to the loop in the river was 3,200 yards.
The men were utterly exhausted when they arrived at Kut on the morning of 3 December; many simply lay down and slept. As a result, it was twenty-four hours before a start could be made on building defences. It was backbreaking work but the imminent arrival of the Turks was a strong motivation to dig and lay out as much barbed wire as was available.
The map on page 127 shows that on the right bank (looking downstream) was Woolpress Village, in which was located a liquorice factory. The benefit of holding this position was that possession of both banks controlled all movement of river traffic. That said, the Turks’ riverine assets were very sparse indeed and a thrust downriver was unlikely. In December, the Tigris was about 300 yards wide and sufficiently shallow that it could be waded. At the same time, the Hai River was a dry watercourse and of no navigable use.
The decision to occupy Woolpress Village was uncharacteristic of Townshend, but he was probably influenced by the presence there of a large stock of grain. Barker said that, ‘Coming from such a brilliant tactician this seems an odd conclusion. The factory was on the ‘wrong’ side of the river and while it was necessary to hold it until the grain had been removed, it is difficult to understand why it otherwise had any advantage over many other areas on the right bank.’182
The weakness of the 6th Division’s position was that its front line was critical. If the garrison failed to defend that first line it would be driven further into the ‘loop’, into an area about 800 yards wide by a similar measurement deep. It would then be exposed to close-range, all-round fire. Those first-line defensive trenches would also impede the obvious axis for any exit in force that Townshend might undertake. At this early stage Townshend was anxious to maintain bridges across the river so that he had an option to sally out and conduct ‘an active defence’.
To Townshend’s credit, he was fully aware of ‘the fate which in history is generally reserved for the force that shuts itself up in an entrenched camp or fortified place. … If the relieving army is unable to reach the besieged force military history offers hardly any examples of the self-deliverance of an army once invested.’183
The Turks, on the other hand, had all manner of advantages, and not least of these was the very favourable ground for defence against any British relieving force. On the left bank, from Sannaiyat to Hanna, 25 miles downriver, there was only a narrow strip of land between the Tigris and very extensive marshland. This was the ground that Townshend turned to his advantage when he took Kut in September. See the map on page 147.
On the right bank, the ground was broken by old irrigation ditches, dried-up watercourses and further marshland. The Es Sinn banks taken by the British would be much more heavily populated and reinforced to face a second assault. In dry weather this was difficult going, but in the wet season it was impossible. When the Tigris broke its banks, as it had done every spring for thousands of years, the flood covered tens of thousands of square miles of desert. These floods were the most effective form of defence and any attack on the forces surrounding Kut had to be initiated before the anticipated flood.
Elsewhere, the expedition to the Dardanelles was failing in its aim and the Turks were inflicting frightful casualties on the B
ritish, French, Australian and New Zealand armies, which had barely got off the beaches. Losses at sea had also been heavy and the writing was firmly on the wall. A retirement from the Dardanelles might resolve one issue but would free a multitude of battle-hardened Turks who could, and almost certainly would, be redeployed to Mesopotamia. It was a worrying prospect.
It could be argued that in a siege situation it is the attackers who are at a disadvantage because delay gives relieving forces more time to achieve their aim. However, in this case, as in so many over recorded military history, the Turks had at hand a potent weapon.
It was – hunger.
The inevitable, forthcoming spring floods were a strategic bonus.
The first of these had engendered any number of generals to burst forth. For example, ‘The General achieves the most who tries to destroy the enemy army more by hunger than by force of arms,’ opined the Emperor Maurice in AD 600.184 He was not alone in that view, and 200 years earlier, Flavius Vegetius Renatus had commented that, ‘Famine makes greater havoc in an army than the enemy and is more terrible than the sword.’185 There is any number of similar quotations but the point does not need to be laboured.
Townshend, from his studies, was fully aware of the starvation issue and surprisingly he did not do what would have been prudent and expected of him. He did not measure his food stocks and nor did he calculate, accurately, the endurance of his command. The key word there is ‘accurately’. This oversight was to have serious consequences.
Townshend reported, on 4 December, that the parade state showed that within the confines of Kut there were 10,398 combatants, of which 1,505 were the Cavalry Brigade. There was little that the Brigade could contribute and there was insufficient fodder for its horses and so, sensibly, Townshend sent it back to Basra. That left 8,893 defenders; 7,411 of these were infantry. Townshend’s calculation was that there were 2,700 yards of trench that had to be manned and defended, and at ‘the scale of three to five men per running yard’186 he was undermanned. Defence of Woolpress Village would absorb one infantry battalion and the town had to be garrisoned in order to control the indigenous population.
Later, when Colonel Hehir gave evidence to the Mesopotamia Commission, he provided a comprehensive summary of the population of Kut on 8 December. Hehir’s numbers differ from Townshend’s, but this was just a snapshot and the status and strength of the population varied on a daily basis as people were wounded or died.
Effectives
British officers
206
British rank and file
2,276
Indian officers
153
Indian rank and file
6,941
Followers (about)
3,500
Total
13,076
Sick and wounded
British officers
12
British rank and file
258
Indian officers
22
Indian rank and file
1,176
Followers
42
Total
1, 510
Military ration strength 14, 586
Civilians
Men
1,538
Women and children
3,803
Woolpress Village
504
Mahiellah (boat) men
316
Coolies
64
Total
6,225187
The figures above do not include Turkish prisoners and wounded, conservatively estimated at about 1,500. Thus there were a total of over 22,000 people, of one status or another, penned into the unsavoury salient formed by the Tigris. In addition there were 1,000 horses, 2,000 mules and ponies, and 100 bullocks.188
The cavalry brigade had decamped, but nevertheless 1,000 horses remained. This seems to be a high figure, but it has to be presumed that these were, in the main, pack animals that towed guns and carts. Officers’ mounts, say 200, were included in this number.
Men and beasts – all had to be fed and watered.
Townshend had no illusions about the resident Arabs, many of whom were openly hostile. They were a fifth column in his midst and one that, almost certainly, had concealed weapons. His first thoughts were to expel the lot. Sir Percy Scott urged restraint, pointing out that women and children would perish in the desert, either at the hands of other barbarous Arabs or from starvation. On the basis that ‘there was easily enough food for the 700 householders to last about three months’, Townshend relented and only ejected non-householders. However, he took twenty hostages as surety for good behaviour from the balance. Today, such an act would be condemned. Similarly, some might not approve of the trial of twelve men, by a military court, caught in the act of looting. They were shot – pour encourager les autres.189 War and death at Kut was all around.
The ‘Kuttites’, as they now termed themselves, settled down and waited to be relieved. Sniping and persistent shelling was the order of the day and Turkish musketry skills soon started to exact a price from those foolish enough to expose any part of their person. Edward Mousley recalled December 1915 when he wrote:
To get from [our] dugout to the town we had to cross a shell-swept zone. Every few yards there was a splash of smoke and flame. This was, of course, at the beginning of the siege. Our dugouts were near several brick kilns, themselves sufficient target without our gun flashes. We had a battery of 18-pounders on one side, 5-inch on the other and howitzers behind. So we came in for all the ranging. It was out of the question to leave any cooking utensils above ground, for they were certain to be perforated within minutes.
General Mellis, breathing fire and bluntly expressing encouragement, was a regular visitor to the first line, which was not his area of responsibility as he commanded the ‘main force’ that was held to the rear and poised to reinforce any part of the first line that was threatened. His robust personality and personal courage were an example and his soldiers would have followed him to the ends of the earth. Townshend, whose visits to the front were infrequent, reached out to his soldiers by means of his communiqués. These documents have to be read in the context of the setting but, since then, have been the subjects of considerable analysis. His first one was straightforward and ran as follows:
I intend to defend Kut-al-Amara and not retire any further. Reinforcements are being sent at once to relieve us. The honour of our Mother Country and the Empire demands that we all work, heart and soul, in the defence of this place. We must dig in deep and dig quickly and then the enemy shells will do little damage. We have ample food and ammunition, but commanding officers must husband the ammunition and not throw it away uselessly. The way you have managed to retire some 80 or 90 miles under the very noses of the Turks is nothing short of splendid and speaks eloquently for the courage and discipline of this force.
Field Marshal von der Goltz, the 72-year-old German, had by now taken his place in Mesopotamia, accompanied by a cadre of his staff officers. The Kuttites faced a particularly adept and ruthless opponent. Christmas beckoned, but from 7 December the cantonment was subjected to constant artillery fire and casualties started to mount. The encirclement was complete, as the Turks sealed off Kut with its 35th Division. Hard on its heel were the 38th, 45th and 51st divisions. At a conservative estimate, that was 45,000 men, possibly more. The British had to defeat this host if the 6th Division was to be saved.
Nureddin wrote to Townshend, pointing out that the British position was hopeless and that surrender would save many lives. He added that exposing the civilian population to danger was counter to the customs of war. Townshend replied, courteously, rejecting the offer, but did point out that Nureddin’s German comrades were expert practitioners in the matter of involving civilians in military affairs and that the reputation of von der Goltz preceded him.
The following day, news was received that the Cavalry Brigade had reached the safety of Ali al-Gharbi and that 28
th Infantry Brigade had been despatched to join them there. So far so good, but the MC commented:
In anticipation of the arrival of two divisions from overseas Sir Fenton Aylmer [previously] the Adjutant General of the Indian Army was sent to take command of a force designated as the ‘Tigris Corps’ in which were to be incorporated the two expected divisions, the troops located at Ali al-Gharbi and ultimately other reinforcements. The two divisions, the bulk of which was still on the high seas, were gradually arriving at Basra, but their piecemeal embarkation and disembarkation were very detrimental to their efficiency as fighting units; the whole organisation was upset by the methods of their transmission and disembarkation, and there was no time for their proper reorganisation before advancing. The available transport in Mesopotamia was not sufficient even to carry the men and ammunition to the front and it was in these disadvantaged circumstances that military operations commenced.
That extract re-states the longstanding deficiencies at Basra where, twelve months after the arrival of the Indian Army, there were still no port facilities and the gaping void in the transport inventory had not been filled.
Aylmer was an officer of the Royal Engineers and a capable and brave man. Charlie had been engaged in the same battle in which Lieutenant Fenton Aylmer RE won his Victoria Cross in November 1891. They were both members of the Hunza-Nagar Field Force attacking the fort at Nilt on the North-West Frontier.
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The minor Victorian wars of which Hunza-Nagar is typical are now, at best, footnotes to history but, nevertheless, they were vicious, uncompromising affairs. There was as little compassion on the frontier as there was in the Mesopotamian desert twenty-five years later.