Chapter 6
The Capture of Kut
‘The most essential quality of a general is firmness of character and the resolution to conquer at any price.’
(Napoleon, Gourgaud, Journal inédit de 1815 à 1818, Vol. 11, 1816)
It will assist the reader at this stage to provide a simplistic summary of the geography of that part of Mesopotamia covered by this book. First, one should place the right hand flat on a table, palm downwards, all fingers extended. On this basis, ‘the wrist is the Persian Gulf; the vein running up the back of the hand is the Shatt al-Arab – running past Abadan to Basra; the little finger is the Karun River – at its tip Ahwaz and oil; the thumb is the Euphrates – at its tip is Nasariyeh. The junction of the thumb and first finger is Kurnah; the first finger is the Tigris – at its first joint Amara and at its tip Kut–al-Amara. Running sluggishly down from the tip of that first finger, is the shallow Shatt-al-Hai.’78
By June 1915, Nixon controlled the wrist and the back of the hand (Abadan and Basra), the little finger (Ahwaz and its oil), the junction of the first finger and thumb (Kurnah) and the first finger as far as the first joint (Amara). The Turks held the tip of the first finger (Kut–al-Amara) and the tip of the thumb (Nasariyeh).
With Amara secured and now occupied by 17th Brigade, Nixon turned his sights to the west and, specifically, to the Shatt-al-Hai, which is an apology for a river. It is very wide but far too shallow to allow the passage of any significant vessel; indeed for seven months of the year it is unnavigable, but nevertheless it runs from Kut to near Nasariyeh.
Nixon obviously thought that the Turks, who were unable to sail down the Tigris to Kurnah and Basra, might just see the Shatt-al-Hai as presenting a passage to that town and, from there, threaten Basra. That all seemed to be unlikely but, nevertheless, in order to thwart that possibility he gave orders to the GOC 12th Indian Division to take Nasariyeh, located 68 miles west of Kurnah. The Indian Government approved this excursion, as did Chamberlain, in London, who would have been hard-pressed to forbid it.
Townshend had his name in lights and there can be no doubt as to his bold, inventive and practical soldierly skills. The successes thus far were, predominantly, Townshend’s. At this time he was the most successful general on the Allied side and far more newsworthy than his fellows who were bogged down in the trenches of Flanders and Gallipoli.79 Nixon wallowed in the reflected glory of his subordinate and cast such common sense as he had to the winds.
He had done little to improve the berthing arrangements in Basra and nothing to bring the medical support to a level commensurate with likely casualties. Hardinge and Duff had given him his head and he was deaf to Townshend’s plea to release those of his soldiers who were now carrying out line of communication defensive duties. Relations between the two generals cooled but remained strictly professional.
Sight must not be lost of the fact that this campaign was being fought ‘on the cheap’. The IG had starved its army for a decade or more and Sir William Meyer,80 the civil servant appointed as Finance Member of the IG, could not allocate funds that did not exist. The parsimony of the IG was coming home to haunt it.
23. Pack animals being moved upstream. (Dr G. Bulger. Original photo by Harry Weaver)
Townshend intended to establish a firm base at Amara on the right bank overlooking the town and, to this end, he asked for six months’ reserve of food and ammunition. Nixon sheltered behind the Indian Army regulations and declined. This caused Townshend uncharacteristically to burst into print and he lucidly addressed his ire to Nixon’s Chief of Staff (who was the same rank),81 saying among other things, ‘I do not think that regulations should come into the question.’82 This illustrates the curious manner in which, although Nixon prosecuted the campaign aggressively, he was nevertheless unable or unwilling to provide Townshend with the means to do his bidding. He wholeheartedly supported his staff, who seemed to be incapable of recognising that the situation the force faced was quite unlike anything for which the ‘regulations’ had been written. Eventually the desired supplies were located at Amara, but only after a protracted bureaucratic battle.
Nixon had a number of shortcomings; perhaps one of the most significant was that he never solved the problem of river transport. From that flowed all manner of crises. It was a task given to him on appointment and although he had made requests for more ships, it was only on 10 July 1915, eight months after the invasion, that he got around to asking the IG to provide six paddle steamers, three stern wheelers, eight tugs and forty-three barges. This points to a significant gap in the transport inventory that Nixon and his staff had recognised, albeit belatedly. However, despite the serious impact the transport deficiency had upon his logistic capacity, he did not adapt his master plan to take Baghdad.
The river transport requested by Nixon did not exist and the Mesopotamia Commission Report (at page 19) observed:
The additional transport asked for was sanctioned after lengthy correspondence but the execution of the order under any circumstances would have taken from eight to ten months before completion, and the ships would then have had to be conveyed whether under their own steam or piecemeal to Basra. Under no circumstances would they have been available till towards the middle of 1916.
Townshend’s 18th Brigade lost its sappers, miners and supporting field artillery, all of which were now moved to the command of General Gorringe to support the attack on Nasariyeh, where there was a Turkish concentration, and so Nixon’s fears were justified. Access to the objective was by way of the Euphrates River and the very shallow Lake Hammar. In fiercely oppressive heat, on 25 July, Major General Gorringe,83 aided by a flotilla of small boats, attacked and took his objective – and 950 prisoners. British casualties were 553 all ranks, but there was much sickness in addition.84 The Indian Army Medical Service was kept fully occupied.
24. Austen Chamberlain, Secretary of State for India, 1915–1917.
Ignoring the practical problems that confronted it, and as success piled on success, the IG’s ambition knew few bounds – it really was all just too easy. Hardinge sent a telegram to Austen Chamberlain on 27 July, which read: ‘Now that Nasariyeh has been occupied the occupation of Kut-al-Amara is considered, by us, to be a strategic necessity.’85 Chamberlain demurred initially but, when furnished with the details of Nixon’s military arrangements, he gave his assent. This followed the usual pattern of London balking initially at a request but then, belatedly, conceding and giving permission.
Wilfred Nunn noted that it was 112 river miles from Basra to Amara and a further 152 river miles from Amara to Kut. Ctesiphon, on the outskirts of Baghdad, is about 170 miles above Kut, ‘on the river upon which we were depending for our supplies and ammunition, as we had no railway.’86
To ‘fast forward’ ninety-two years to 2007, when Major Chris Hunter RLC found himself fighting a different war but in the same place (modern spelling Al-Amara), he wrote:
As I climb out of the warrior, I am blinded by the brilliant sun. The stench of rotting garbage and crap is all too familiar now, but it still makes me want to puke. It’s just like being in the back streets of Basra. I’m beginning to wonder whether every city in this country smells of shit or they just saved the best ones for us. Among the two-storey flat-roofed buildings and palm-lined boulevards I can feel the blue touchpaper and the whole place is going to explode any second.
This is supposed to be the location of the Garden of Eden and to those that live there I’m sure Al-Amara is the most wonderful place on earth. But as far as I am concerned, this collection of flyblown hovels in the middle of nowhere is one of the most violent shit-reeking slums I’ve ever visited. Burnt-out cars, festering rubbish and piles of brick and rubble litter every street. Centuries-old buildings have been destroyed by insurgent mortar and RPG fire. Al-Amara is a city in ruins and the people who live here don’t give a damn.
It is difficult to imagine the extreme squalor that faced Townshend in this, his latest prize. The 6th Division now spent from 3 June until mid-September, about ten weeks, encamped outside Amara. Townshend did not want his troops to be billeted in this health-threatening place, and of necessity a tented barracks sprang up. For the soldiers this was not by any means a holiday; quite the reverse, it was an uncomfortable, miserable and very boring existence. It generated physical and mental illness.
The rate of physical sickness had risen to alarming proportions and was no respecter of rank. The soldiers who had not succumbed to ‘fever’ reacted to their surroundings in different ways. Their lifestyle gave rise to extreme boredom, anxiety, restlessness and frayed tempers, although it was reported in the Press, specifically The Times, that ‘some efforts were made to alleviate their circumstances with the provision of mosquito nets, ice, mineral waters and fresh vegetables.’
That was quite untrue.
It was the work of an early twentieth-century, cynical, spin doctor – the reality was very much removed. At 0500 hrs in Mesopotamia it was already too hot to sleep. For those who ventured out, sunstroke and heatstroke were common occurrences. The mercury habitually exceeded 110°F and often reached 116°F. In one period from 7 to 28 July 1917, the temperature did not fall below 116°F in the shade. The climate was lethal, and 423 British and fifty-nine Indian troops died of heatstroke.87 William Bird, a soldier in that most excellent battalion, the 2nd Dorsets, alleged in a letter that he had experienced ‘127°F in the shade’.
The Tigris water was unclean, but it was the only source and so dysentery and paratyphoid cases multiplied. Men lay all day on ‘beds’ with rushes used as mattresses. Any exertion was hazardous, as the following demonstrates:
I remember very vividly a burial party. We started out for the cemetery, about a mile away, at about 6.00 am. Before we had gone half the distance a man went down with heatstroke and was carried back, limp and twitching to hospital.
As the corpse was lowered into the grave, one of the men on the ropes stumbled forward and fell limply into the grave on top of the dead body. As we fell in to march back, another man went down. Luckily, we had brought a spare stretcher and with one man on this and the other on the stretcher on which the dead man had been carried to the grave, we returned.
We had buried one man, and lost three others over the job.88
The impact of all of this on Force levels is evident. Townshend’s division was evaporating. Townshend recorded that, within ten days of taking the town, about 1,200 of his men ‘were on the sick list.’ Townshend undertook a reconnaissance north of Amara and he soon, thereafter, contracted a fever; he was rushed downriver to Basra and thence to Bombay, where he had time to recover, free from the attention of the flies. In a curiously un-soldierly letter to his wife, he wrote:
This is the first day my darling, I am up and dressed and I am now rapidly getting stronger. After the business at Amara, I was on a long reconnaissance all day along the road to Baghdad. No one looked after me to see that I had any food and I was too much taken up with my work to think of food, and so went empty all day under a blazing sun.89
Townshend was in command of that reconnaissance party; he decided where it went and where it would stop to eat, drink and water its horses. To suggest that he, an able bodied, fit soldier on active service should have had to be ‘looked after’ is complete nonsense. The tone of the letter is very revealing and this wimpish ‘poor me’ attitude would surface again in the future.
He was most fortunate in the priority treatment he received while he was ill. This was a service not available to his soldiers, who took their chances with the regimental medical officers, the enervating heat, poor diet, dirty water and those ‘bloody flies’.
Townshend was evacuated and treated in India. As he remarked in his book, ‘It was only my splendid constitution that pulled me through.’90 Many of his soldiers were not so fortunate. Cemeteries were being filled and his soldiers’ bones are there to this day. That letter to Townsend’s wife ended with:
I told you darling, that I only wanted my chance! You should have seen the British and Indian soldiers cheering me on as I stood on the Comet. I must have the gift of making men (I mean soldier men) love me and follow me. I have only known the 6th Division for six months and they’d storm the gates of hell if I told them to.
Townshend was heroically heterosexual. He was an averred and enthusiastic admirer of the female form – so it is curious that he needed to include the phrase in parentheses, and to his wife, of all people.
While in India, Townshend stayed with Hardinge as his guest and during that sojourn he wrote to his friend, General Sir James Wolfe-Murray.91 At the time, Wolfe-Murray was the professional head of the British Army and the propriety of a relatively junior officer writing in the following terms may be doubtful. Townshend wrote:
I believe I am to advance from Amarah to Kut-al-Amara92 directly I get back to my division, my headquarters being at Amarah. The question is where are we going to stop in Mesopotamia? I stayed with the Viceroy, but could not get anything out of him as regards our policy in Mesopotamia. … We have certainly not good enough troops to make certain [Townshend’s italics] of taking Baghdad, which I hear is being fortified, and guns of position are being mounted there.
We can take no risks of a defeat in the East. Imagine a retreat from Baghdad and a consequent instant rising of the Arabs of the whole country behind us, to say nothing of the certain rise in the case of the Persians and probably the Afghans in consequence, as the Amir is only keeping his country out of the war with difficulty. You can afford to have reverses in France and retreats, witness that from Mons to the Marne; you cannot do that sort of thing in the East and retain prestige.
Of our two divisions in Mesopotamia, mine, the 6th, is complete; the 12th Division (Gorringe) has no guns! Or divisional troops – and Nixon takes them from me and lends them to the latter when has to go anywhere.
I consider we ought to hold what we have got and not advance anymore – as long as we are held up, as we undoubtedly are, in the Dardanelles. All these offensive operations in secondary theatres are dreadful errors in strategy: the Dardanelles, Egypt, Mesopotamia and East Africa! I wonder and wonder at such expeditions being permitted in violation of the greatest of all the great fundamental principles of war, especially that of Economy of Force. Such violation is always punished in history.93
The letter goes on at greater length and becomes a gratuitous lesson in military strategy to a general vastly his superior, albeit not with the same grasp of military history. The letter concludes by mentioning the plaudits that he has received and the record he has established ‘in the way of pursuits’. Russell Braddon was no fan of Townshend and his book, The Siege, has a persistent, angry undertone. He commented very strongly on this letter, saying:
The letter was completely in character. It revealed a gift for strategic appreciation amounting almost to prescience. It revealed Townshend’s chronic tendency to criticise his superiors and his obsession with his own affairs to the exclusion of all others. It revealed his habitual lack of generosity to colleagues whom he praised only if they were of inferior rank to himself – his tendency to whine and his almost embarrassing immodesty.
Norman Dixon thought that the letter, and Braddon’s observations upon it, were sufficient evidence to include Townshend in his work on Military Psychology.94 This calls into question the depth of Dixon’s research into other subjects upon whom he passed judgment in his book.
Setting letter writing to one side and to return to the chronology: Townshend met with the Commander-in-Chief on 10 August. And the senior man was given an up-to-date, if shaded, briefing on the situation of 6th Indian Division. At his meeting with General Sir Beauchamp Duff, Townshend made the valid point that to take and hold Baghdad would require a corps of two full divisions. According to the GOC 6th Division, Duff replied, saying, ‘Not one inch, Townshend, shall you go beyond Kut unless I make you up to adequate strength.’95
Townshend was itching to put up the third star that would go with command of a corps. The ‘K’ that usually went with promotion to lieutenant general would be a very acceptable bonus. It had not occurred to Townshend that anyone else might be given the job – if indeed a job was created. As Townshend’s biographer, the author (who studied his man in some depth) believes Charlie’s overriding and dominant characteristic was his utterly unbridled and unattractive ambition. It shaped everything in his life and affected the way he related to all other people. He made it his business to cultivate his seniors and he used his association with them shamelessly. His soldiers were no more than a means to his ends and there is no recorded indication of his personal care for any of them.
Townshend started his journey back from India and at about the same time the MC noted:
On 15 August 1915 Surgeon General Hathaway made application to the Inspector General of Communications at Basra for a steamer to be set apart and fitted for the conveyance of sick and wounded or alternatively for a tug and two mahailas. The steamer and tug were refused on the ground that all were required for the movement of troops and supplies.96
Surgeon General Hathaway did not impress the need on General Nixon and he showed little foresight … his request on 15 August 1915 for an improvised steamer was not urged persistently or with sufficient emphasis.
Townshend returned to his duty and Nixon had briefed him that Suleiman Askeri Bey, who had commanded at Kurnah and Shaiba and suffered defeats in both places, had committed suicide – such was his shame. His successor was Nureddin (Nur-Ur-Din), a very capable soldier, who had taken a position astride the Tigris at Es Sinn. He was thought to be particularly strong on the right bank. His strength was estimated at about 10,000 men and thirty-two guns. There is no record of whether or not Nixon and Townshend discussed river transport at this meeting. If they did not, then they should have done so. If they did, then the conversation was unproductive.
Townshend concentrated his force at Ali Gharbi and took stock. In addition to his three-brigade division he had 6th Indian Cavalry Brigade, 10th Royal Field Artillery Brigade and two battalions of 30th Indian Brigade. All up he commanded 11,000 men and twenty-eight guns. The downside was that his riverine assets were, at best, barely adequate and he could not afford any losses. A wise man once said, ‘Victory is the beautiful, bright coloured flower. Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed.’97 In this case and, indeed, throughout the campaign, the ‘stem’ was weak, thin and vulnerable.
25. Nureddin Pasha.
Numerically the two sides were evenly matched, but the attackers were always the most at risk and never more so than in the flat, almost featureless desert around Kut. The Turkish forces that lay in wait for Townshend were the remnants of the 35th and 38th divisions that had been soundly beaten at Shaiba, Nasariyeh, Kurnah and Amara. Morale was low and lowered further by the same logistic weaknesses that faced the British. Medical support was minimal and resupply was just as dependent upon the Tigris. Nureddin’s riverine assets consisted only of those craft that had been upriver of Amara when it was taken. His soldiers were, in the main, conscripts with only minimal training.
Nureddin’s grandiose brief from Enver Pasha98 was to defeat Townshend and retake Basra. As we say today, ‘this was a big ask’. Taking one hurdle at a time, the Turkish commander had sensibly concentrated his force at Es Sinn. This is one of the few significant points on the Tigris north of Amara and distinguished by the easily defended and commanding ridges on the right bank.
Nureddin anchored both his formations on the river and incorporated the Suwaikiya, Suwada and Ataba marshes into his defence on the left bank (looking downstream). These marshes were lined with mines and in any depression punji99 stakes had been sown. Wire entanglements were extensive. Although Nureddin’s men dug in and created a formidable series of redoubts and trench systems on the left bank nevertheless, he had left two gaps that were revealed by aerial reconnaissance (see map on page 63).
Nureddin installed a boat bridge about 6 miles behind his lines to enable him to move forces from one bank to another. It would take any redeployed soldier, using the bridge, too long to join the fray, and from all accounts he had a second boat bridge linking his two front lines either side of the river. This is not shown on the map, although a ferry is marked.
Townshend, ever the faithful disciple of Napoleon, was always going to look for something other than a frontal assault. To this end he put together a complicated plan that was dependent upon all the component parts working in concert and in time, each with the other. He was pleased to describe this as a ‘turning attack’ and in simplistic terms it meant attacking the Turks from deep on their left flank whilst holding their right flank in position and unable to move.
An idiosyncrasy of Townshend’s was that he never referred to his formations as, say, ‘17th Brigade’; he much preferred to designate them as ‘columns’, ‘forces’ or ‘bodies’ (as in ‘Main Body’). Facing Nureddin at Es Sinn he promulgated his plan, and in this he split his division into three columns, thoughtfully entitled ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’. In command style this was very Napoleonic.
Brigadier General W.S. Delamain CB DSO would command Column ‘A’ – a mixed force composed of an enhanced battalion and three batteries of Maxim machine guns together with a company of sappers. It was his job to overrun and take the three redoubts between the Ataba and Suwada marshes. The Ataba Marsh is not named on the map above. It is that area below Suwaikieh and above Suwada.
26. The Battle of Kut. (C.V.F. Townshend)
Brigadier General C.I. Fry commanded Column ‘B’, or the ‘minimum force’, using Townshend’s nomenclature. He had his own 18th Brigade and his function was to ‘demonstrate’ on the left bank between the river and the Suwada Marsh in an effort to convince the Turks that this would be the axis for the main attack.
Column ‘C’ was the command of Brigadier General F.A. Hoghton and he had his own 17th Brigade, supplemented by two battalions from Delamain’s 16th Brigade and four machine guns. In addition he was furnished with two armoured cars and a cavalry component. His aim was to pass through the 300-yard gap between the Turkish north redoubt and the Ataba Marsh and, from there, spread mayhem in the Turkish rear.
27. Brigadier General Fry and staff officers of HQ 18 Brigade.
On the face of it, the plan was attractive, but unless Column ‘A’ could engage the redoubts from the front there was going to be a reduced chance of Hoghton being able to approach them from the rear. Once the troops were committed Townshend had no part to play.
The 6th (Poona) Division assembled at Sheikh Sa’ad, about 8 miles short of the busily digging Turks. The advance to this point had been up the right-hand bank; some of the troops travelled on the river but the bulk of the troops had marched in the blistering sun. The right-hand bank (British left) was Hobson’s choice because it was easier for ships to moor on that side of the river.
There was a pause for ten days to await the arrival of the divisional artillery. A river crossing was going to be the first phase of Townshend’s plan. In the interim, further aerial surveys were made by the very few intrepid airmen in the theatre. It was clear that on this right-hand bank the Turks had developed a defensive 2½-mile system along the line of an old, raised and abandoned canal. In the desert a 10-foot bank counts as ‘high ground’ and gives greatly improved line of sight. On the map this position is shown as ‘Es Sinn ridges’.
The British plans for the battle to come were inhibited by an extreme shortage of land transport. Townshend was 300 mules short of his requirement and the consequence was that all the available transport was, of necessity, allocated to the ‘main force’ on the left bank. Those 800 camels sent home by Barrett, in October 1914, were being sorely missed.
Townshend had no water carts and, furthermore, there were no arrangements in place to resupply drinking water.100 This was an unbelievable and reprehensible oversight that would have dire consequences for the men committed to long approach marches and violent action in temperatures of over 100°F. The only form of ambulance was the awful, inadequate, bone-shaking, mule-hauled army transport cart (ATC).
The MC later endorsed the Vincent-Bingley view on the subject of water, which said:
Water supply arrangements at the actual front were also far from satisfactory. The recent outbreak of cholera is attributed by sanitary experts to the failure to supply the troops with a sufficient amount of purified drinking water.
On 25 September, a telegram was received from General Sir Beauchamp Duff, the Commander-in-Chief, India. The telegram said, ‘No going beyond Kut–al-Amara.’ Townshend mused in his diary, ‘When was Sir Beauchamp Duff induced to change his mind; and who persuaded him to do so?’ Then, a man who can change his position so radically is just as likely to change it back.
For the soldiers who had been waiting in fearful anticipation, 27 September came as a relief as operations against Kut commenced. Column ‘C’, under Hoghton, put the ball in play by starting a forced march on the night of 27/28 September to outflank the Turkish line. ‘Darkness is the friend of the skilled infantryman,’ or so said Liddell Hart,101 but then he was not present on this particular night.
As dawn broke, the Turks saw a large body advancing on the right bank; it reached the Chahela Mounds and created a great cloud of dust. Tents were pitched to give the impression that this body was there to stay and this was the axis of the impending attack. Nureddin was now convinced that the British thrust would be up the right-hand bank and the dust cloud and tents served to reinforce his view. He thinned out his troops on the opposite bank and moved them across the river by means of a boat bridge (not shown on the map). On the left bank, Fry’s force was ‘demonstrating’ as planned. It reached Nukhailat village and dug in with its left wing on the river.
28. Brigadier General W.S. Delamain DSO. Photographed by Swain as Lieutenant General Sir Walter Delamain KCB KCMG DSO in about 1923.
The air component suffered and four aeroplanes were damaged, but the sole survivor provided invaluable, up-to-date intelligence throughout the battle.
The fog of war descended; Delamain was waiting to launch his attack but could not do so until Hoghton appeared over to his right, from the direction of the Ataba Marsh. Hoghton’s night march had eluded the enemy but the compass readings that had been provided were found to be in error. The effect was that Column ‘C’, instead of marching south of Ataba Marsh, marched around it. This added several miles to the journey for the heavily burdened soldiers, but more importantly, it took valuable time and exhausted the stock of telephone cable carried to ensure communication between the commanders.102
The sun was climbing into an azure sky before Delamain could see Hoghton in the far distance at about 0830 hrs. Delamain decided that delay was dangerous, so he initiated the attack. Hoghton, somewhat belatedly, joined in. Eventually, and after heavy casualties on both sides, the three positions were all taken. Kipling’s verse applied:
When first under fire and you’re wishful to duck
Don’t look or take heed of the man that is struck
Be thankful you’re living and trust to your luck
and march to your front like a soldier.103
The sun was now scorching. Hoghton’s men were utterly exhausted and so weak from thirst that many collapsed on the enemy position. A number of mules stampeded into the nearby marsh, seeking water, and were inextricably bogged down. They had to be shot in situ, the transport situation was exacerbated and the ‘stem’ was even weaker.104
Fry’s Column ‘B’ was facing stiff opposition and he needed help. He appealed to Delamain and, just before the sun set, his soldiers made an assault on the left flank of the Turkish position. The advance was over 1,000 yards of flat desert and it called for great courage and fitness to arrive at the enemy position and then take it at bayonet point. Napoleon once said, ‘The bayonet has always been the weapon of the brave and the chief tool of victory.’ It proved to be so on this day.
The cartoon overleaf, extolling the power of the bayonet and the aggression it generates, was published in Mr Punch’s History of the Great War in 1919.
As night fell, and the temperature with it, the wounded lay out in the open. The Turks still blocked the way to the river and water. The unwounded strove to bring in the wounded as Marsh Arabs were about, robbing, killing and mutilating any soldier they found in the dark. They were indiscriminate and murdered Turks with similar lack of compassion. The medical service, always fragile, had all but broken down and could not cope with the scale of the casualties, some of whom died of exhaustion in the biting cold that night.
Later, the Vincent-Bingley Report (which was incorporated into the MC Report) would note:
No satisfactory reason has been assigned for the failure to provide the ordinary form of land ambulance transport for these operations … but throughout the campaign the usual form of ambulance transport has been the army transport cart that is, a small springless cart made of wood and iron, drawn by mules or ponies, and ordinarily employed for the carriage of supplies. When the evidence of the suffering caused by this means of conveyance, particularly in cases of fracture and severe injury, is considered, it is difficult to avoid criticising the action of those responsible for this deficiency in severe language.105
29. Cartoon from Mr Punch’s History of the Great War.
The person responsible was Lieutenant General Sir John Nixon, the Corps Commander. He had decided that he would attend the battle, assuring Townshend that he was just a spectator but that he ‘would be available to deal with matters of policy.’ If there was any glory to be won at Kut, Nixon wanted to be on hand to reap his share. His reference to ‘policy’ is fatuous, because ‘ambulance policy’, which should have been at the top of his priority list, clearly was not. Townshend had no option but to accept Nixon’s presence, which served no practical purpose, and he could well have done without it.
Nixon was close enough to see for himself the suffering of his soldiers in the aftermath of this battle and to observe the breakdown of the logistic chain, such as it was. In any army over the last 500 years, the four prime requisites have been water, bread, bullets and bandages. In this case, at least two of these requisites were not available. Water replenishment was such a basic need that Townshend must be held responsible for its dreadful omission from his great plan. There is no evidence that Nixon drew any conclusions from that either.
Townshend called up his river flotilla and told it to try to force a passage to Kut under cover of darkness. The leading ship was Comet, commanded by Lieutenant Commander Cookson. Under heavy small-arms fire, Comet steamed upriver until it was halted by an underwater obstruction that turned out to be a thick chain strung across the river. Cookson, axe in hand, leapt into a ship’s dingy and, under fire, paddled to the mahaila that anchored one end of the chain. He boarded the mahaila but then he fell, riddled with bullets. He was later awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross. Most of his crew were dead or wounded and Comet drifted back downstream.
The Turks had started to withdraw from the right bank (looking downstream) the previous afternoon but mirages had obscured their movement from Townshend. Now using darkness as his cloak, Nureddin stole away and skilfully took away half of his guns with him.106 It was a very professional operation.
30. Lieutenant Commander E.C. Cookson VC DSO RN. (Photo Central Press)
As the sun rose on 29 September 1915, it revealed a bleak scene. The battlefield was silent save for the cries of the unrecovered wounded of both sides. The field belonged to Townshend; it was yet another victory. Access was now available to the river, and parched Indian and British soldiers were able to slake their raging thirst in the murky waters of the Tigris – the water tasted like champagne.
Townshend despatched his cavalry brigade in pursuit of the Turks but its performance was mediocre. When it caught up with the Turkish rearguard, the commander, Brigadier General Roberts, held back, ostensibly waiting for reinforcements. However, one of the reasons for the Brigade’s dilatatory performance was that the cavalry were Indian and they were not carrying with them their cooking pots. It was unconscionable that they would use Arab vessels in lieu. The Indian caste system in operation would show its face again a few weeks later.
Townshend took to the river, upon which the water level had fallen. The difficulties then encountered with shoal water and tight bends delayed his triumphal entry into Kut for two days. River traffic downstream was filled with the wounded. Townshend had estimated 6 per cent casualties; in fact, 6th Division suffered 12 per cent, or 1,229, of which only ninety-four were killed.107 This is a very small proportion of about 1:13. The Turkish losses were reported to be 1,700 killed and wounded and 1,289 taken prisoner.
Surgeon General Hathaway’s arrangements to care for these wounded men were wholly inadequate and some died of no more than neglect as they lay in their own excrement and blood during the interminable, agonising journey in open barges to Basra and what passed for a ‘hospital’ in this benighted land.
Chapter notes
78 Braddon, R., The Siege, p.49. Braddon’s book is an important source document because when he wrote it, in 1967, many of the participants were still alive and available for interview.
79 The Gallipoli peninsula was invaded on 26 April 1915 and eventually abandoned on 9 January 1916 after very heavy losses. The small populations of Australia and New Zealand lost proportionately more than Britain and India.
80 Sir William Meyer GCIE KCSI ICS (1860–1922). Served as Finance member of the Indian Government from 1914–18. He was appointed High Commissioner of India in September 1920 but died suddenly, in London, in October 1922.
81 Major General George Kemball CB DSO (later, Sir George KCMG CB DSO 1859–1941).
82 Letter from Townshend to Chief of Staff IEF‘D’, 6 June 1915.
83 Later, Lieutenant General Sir George Gorringe KCB KCMG DSO (1868–1945). He was described by Braddon (p.51) as ‘a big man, highly coloured, deeply tanned, officious and utterly without tact. He allowed nothing – not Turks, Nureddin (the Turkish Commander), counter-attacks, casualties, swamps, Marsh Arabs or deeply entrenched redoubts – to stop him.’
84 MC Report, p.18.
85 Ibid, p.18.
86 Nunn, W., Tigris Gunboats, p.195.
87 Major Harry Weaver diary.
88 Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Chronicles, Vol. XXIV 1914–1915 (published privately).
89 Sherson, E., Townshend of Chitrál and Kut, p.266.
90 Townshend C.V.F. My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p.77.
91 General Sir James Wolfe-Murray KCB (1853–1919). He had been a mentor of Townshend in India. He was appointed as Chief of the Imperial General Staff on 30 October 1914 but, in that post, he was described as ‘ineffectual’. He contributed nothing to public affairs and was overshadowed by Kitchener in the War Council. He carried some of the responsibility of the rapidly failing Dardanelles campaign and was dismissed from his post on 26 September 1915.
92 Kut-al-Amara (Townshend’s spelling); better known as Kut.
93 Townshend, C.V.F., My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p.84.
94 Dixon, N.E., On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, 1976.
95 Townshend, C.V.F. My Campaign in Mesopotamia. p86.
96 MC Report, p.57.
97 Churchill, W.S., The River War, 1899.
98 Enver Pasha (1881–1922) had two roles in the Turkish Government. He was War Minister and the Ottoman Commander-in-Chief. He was much influenced by the military training he had with the German Army although his performance as military commander was mixed. After the war, his credibility now severely damaged, he fled to Germany. Thereafter, he involved himself in Russian politics and was killed in 1922 fighting for the Basmachi Muslim movement against the Bolsheviks.
99 A Punji stick or stake is a booby trap. It is a simple, sharpened spike, usually made of wood and placed vertically in the ground. Punji sticks are usually deployed in substantial numbers. The Viet Cong in Vietnam used them effectively and frequently.
100 Barker, A.J., The Neglected War, p.82.
101 Liddell Hart, Sir Basil, Thoughts on War, Faber, London, 1944.
102 Moberly, F.J., The Campaign in Mesopotamia 1914–1918, Vol. 1, pp.323–4.
103 Kipling, R. (1865–1936), The Feet of the Young Men.
104 Barker, A.J., The Neglected War, p.85.
105 MC Report, p.65.
106 Townshend recorded that seventeen enemy guns were captured (p.120). However, Barker said, ‘fourteen, including one of 1802 vintage’ (p.88). The Official History settled for thirteen.
107 Nunn, W., Tigris Gunboats, p.163.