Chapter 9

The Pyrrhic Victory at Ctesiphon

‘The object is not the occupation of a geographical position, but the destruction of the enemy force.’

(General Pyotr A. Rumyantsev, 1725–96)

The force opposing 6th Division was composed of 18,000 infantry, 400 cavalry, two regiments of camelry, an uncounted mob of Arabs, certainly numbering several thousand, all supported by fifty-two guns and nineteen machine guns. So much for Nixon’s ‘appreciation’ that had identified an enemy force of only 4,000 Turks with low morale. There was also the prospect of further large Turkish reinforcements joining the battle in the near future.

Townshend had an enhanced division; numerically he had 13,700 infantry, five batteries of guns (thirty-five) and eleven squadrons of cavalry. In addition, the Royal Navy was present and its guns might come into play. The naval force consisted of HMS Firefly, Butterfly, Comet, Shaitan, Sumana, Shushan and Massoudieh. Captain Nunn was in command and for a ‘blue water’ sailor, he was a long way from home.

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As 6th Division prepared for action, in London an MP, Sir Mark Sykes, was drafting a letter to The Daily Telegraph.

Sykes had seen active service in South Africa and commanded a militia regiment. He was affected by what he saw when he visited the theatre of operations and wrote:

There are paddle steamers which once plied with passengers, and now waddle along with a barge on either side, one perhaps containing a portable wireless station and the other bullocks [to draw] heavy guns; there are once-respectable tugs which stagger along under a weight of boiler plating, and are armed with guns of varying calibre; there is a launch which pants indignantly between batteries of 4.7in looking like a sardine between two cigarette boxes. There is a steamer with a Christmas tree growing amidships, in the branches of which its officers fondly imagine they are invisible to friend or foe … and this fleet is the cavalry screen, advance guard, rear guard, flank guard, railway, General Headquarters, heavy artillery, line of communication, supply depot, police force, field ambulance, aerial hanger and base of supply of the Mesopotamia Expedition. [Author’s italics]¹³⁹

38. Colonel Sir Mark Sykes Bt MP (1879–1919).

In his short letter, Sykes had encapsulated everything that had made Townshend and his soldiers so vulnerable as they prepared for battle. The letter prepared Daily Telegraph readers for stormy water ahead but it was far too late to effect any change.

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The Mesopotamia Commission observed that, after the capture of Kut, ‘there was a spirit of intense optimism, and over confidence as to what could be achieved overcame General Nixon and his Headquarters Staff.’¹⁴⁰ Townshend, in his memoir, written five years later and with the benefit of hindsight, said:

I knew nothing about this ‘intense optimism’. All I do know is that I was determined to carry through the operation if it could possibly be done, and it was my plain and simple duty to carry out the orders of my superior to the best of my ability, although his orders were against my better judgment. Personally, I had no doubts in my mind as to the extreme gravity of the results of this advance, an offensive undertaken with insufficient forces, and not only that, but an offensive undertaken in a secondary theatre of war, where our strategy should have been to have remained on the defensive with minimum forces sufficient for that purpose. All my study indicated disaster to me. However, the die was cast. And so when Sir John Nixon asked me on the eve of battle, ‘Are you confident of winning, Townshend?’ I replied, ‘Yes, I shall win all right.’ And I did.¹⁴¹

In military circles, the rule of thumb is that the attacker needs a numerical advantage of 3:1 or better if he is to succeed. Here the forces were about numerically equal; moreover, in this case the attack would be across a flat desert, in good light, into well-constructed redoubts, fifteen in total. The flank attack had to carry the day or 6th Division would be slaughtered.

Operations started on the night of 21/22 November with a night march from Lajj. Townshend had again divided his command into four columns and the first into action was Column ‘C’ (Brigadier General Hoghton), with the task of engaging the enemy in the area of the so-called ‘Water Redoubt’ and ‘High Wall’ in the middle of the Turkish first line. The object of the exercise was to pose sufficient threat to cause Nureddin to move troops to that redoubt.

The remainder of the force, Columns ‘A’ and ‘B’, marched through the night to develop Townshend’s signature ‘turning attack’. They were under the command of Brigadier Generals W.S. Delamain and W.G. Hamilton; the latter was newly appointed, having relieved Major General Fry in 18th Brigade.

The cavalry ‘Flying Column’, or Column ‘D’, was commanded by Major General Mellis. Townshend did not trust Brigadier General Roberts after the abject performance of the cavalry at the Battle of Kut and so had summarily reduced his responsibilities. Roberts was superseded and was required to serve under Mellis, which must have been difficult for both men. In Mellis, Townshend had a profane, robust, hard-charging, unsophisticated warrior and a man to be relied upon. An infantry battalion was added to the Flying Column, but quite how Mellis was to employ and deploy foot soldiers when the bulk of his force was mounted was not immediately obvious but became clear later on.

Hoghton’s approach across the almost featureless desert did not draw the expected fire, much to the surprise of the participants. The enemy were clearly prepared to wait and engage at a shorter and more lethal range. The lack of response from the Turks was discommoding Hamilton, who was to launch his attack on the Turkish second line behind the Vital Point, but only when he heard that Hoghton was in contact with the enemy.

It was when Hoghton and Hamilton were fully engaged that Delamain was to sweep forward and take the VP. There was no contact and so Hamilton marked time, and eventually had to ask for permission to crack on with his part of the plan.

The Battle of Ctesiphon then unfolded, initially, much as Townshend planned. As the attacker, the initiative was his to exploit, and this he did. What neither he nor Nixon had anticipated was the stout and heroic defence put up by Nureddin’s troops. The battle was noted for the ferocity of the hand-to-hand fighting and the brutal losses on both sides. These Turks were every bit as obdurate as their fellows who were winning at Gallipoli.

It will aid the reader if they consider two sketch maps of the battle from different sources. The first of these is taken from Townshend’s book at page 156, produced in 1920. It shows the Diyala River, against which he expected to trap the remnants of Nureddin’s force. It should be compared with the second map of much the same ground on page 102.

The VP was carried by troops of 30th Brigade under the command of ‘the gallant Climo’,¹⁴² as the defenders streamed back to their second line. Delamain, seeing his objective already taken, presumed that the whole Turkish front line had collapsed and so he swept on to the second line. Unfortunately he left a substantial body of enemy behind him. These unforeseen changes left Hoghton to face a well-entrenched enemy. A frontal attack was so clearly suicidal that Hoghton opted to move his formation across the battlefield at 90°. This was an extreme manoeuvre, very hazardous, and Hoghton’s column was punished as it moved across the Turkish front. Townshend watched horrified as his master plan started to unravel. A counter-attack swiftly followed the taking of any position and the dead started to pile up around the breast works. Gurkha and Punjabi dead were unhappily abundant.

Townshend rode across the shell-swept battlefield to discuss the situation with Delamain, now back at the VP. Townshend commented in his book (p.173) that,

A mass of tangled wire and deep trenches compelled us to dismount … and in getting to Delamain with whom I wanted to speak … I had to traverse a length of trench. The dead lay so thick that we literally walked on the bodies. I found him behind a small sand hillock, for the spot was under fire from some Turks cut off from retreat and installed in a redoubt some 700 yards south of the VP.

Delamain briefed Townshend, who was really on top of his game as he responded quickly and calmly. His demeanour under fire was noted by many of his officers and soldiers and there is no doubting the physical courage of ‘Charlie’. He seemed inured to the eleven dead Gurkhas at his feet and to the products of their kukris – each with his head split open or severed. He sent a message to Hoghton to bring up his left shoulder and move at once on the VP because he saw ‘that the battle was by no means finished’. Battered Hoghton strove to comply.

Unfortunately, the guns of the Royal Navy could not be brought to bear; they were held up at Bustan by the menace of heavy Turkish artillery at the bottom of the river loop on the right-hand bank.

39. The Battle of Ctesiphon (1). (C.V.F. Townshend)

Townshend moved his headquarter to the VP and it was not a bonus when Nixon and his acolytes came to join him, just in time to hear that strenuous opposition had bogged down Hamilton’s column. He had taken the second line but was facing tenacious counter-attacks. Mellis was unable to come to the rescue as his cavalry formation was also having difficulties. The cavalry were now in a dismounted role and being held up by a strongly held trench line. At this point, ‘Mellis sent in 76th Punjabis [who were in support of his cavalry] with the bayonet and they carried the position in fine style.’¹⁴³

Townshend called out, ‘Boggis.’

‘Sir,’ responded his batman, who was never far away.

‘A change of clothing.’

‘Now, Sir?’

‘I always change at this time.’

John Boggis was committed to making a hazardous journey of about a mile, on foot, across a very active battlefield to the river to collect clean clothes for his general. He had then to retrace his steps. Boggis stepped out of the trench and he was lost to view. There was a lengthy pause, but Boggis returned safely bearing the fresh linen.

‘Your clothes, Sir.’

‘Thank you, Boggis.’

Townshend stripped and stood naked, surrounded by the dead and the dying and in the sight of his staff officers. Deliberately, he donned a silk vest, silk underpants, a khaki shirt, his riding breeches, boots and his solar topee. A junior officer passed to him a piece of plum cake, of which he was very fond. The death and destruction all about him continued unabated.¹⁴⁴

Lieutenant Colonel C.A. Rayner, who had witnessed this performance, endorsed John Boggis’s account of this extraordinary event when both were, later, interviewed by Braddon. Quite what was in Townshend’s mind is unknown. It was either a demonstration of incredible sang-froid or exhibitionism. What it certainly showed was his complete disregard for the life of the young soldier who ministered to his needs, and that perhaps overshadows the theatre of the change of clothes.

The day wore on and the sun blazed down on men lying in pools of their own and their comrades’ blood. The tenor of the hand-to-hand fighting was ghastly, and in the confusion units became mixed and command and control weakened. There was fighting all along the front and a series of small, almost self-contained actions. The officer casualties in the Indian battalions were particularly heavy and particularly critical. Cohesion started to evaporate and at this point the Turkish reinforcements, which had been so airily dismissed by Nixon, made their appearance on the field.

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.

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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.

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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 unopposed 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.