Chapter 15

Aftermath

‘Commanders must have integrity. Without integrity, they have no power.’

(Sun Bin, The Lost Art of War, c. 350 BC, translated by Thomas Cleary)

The surrender of Kut was, without question, one of the greatest military defeats ever suffered by the British, and the loss of national prestige was commensurately enormous. Kut took its place with Yorktown and Kabul, and was only to be exceeded by the abject capitulation of Singapore twenty-six years later.

Colonel Nizam Bey, commanding the occupying force, was vastly discommoded, when he arrived in the British lines at the head of a Turkish force, to be told that the garrison’s forty-three guns had all been destroyed.²⁷³ The Turks swiftly took control of the town, hoisted the Ottoman crescent flag and got down to some serious looting.

The British officers assembled at the erstwhile garrison headquarters and many offered their swords to Nizam Bey as a token of their defeat – he accepted the swords and shook the donors by the hand. Other officers would have none of this and either broke their blades or cast them into the Tigris, where, no doubt under layers of silt, they remain to this day.

There were special arrangements for Townshend’s surrender. Khalil Pasha came to the town, accepted Charlie’s sword and revolver and, immediately, handed both back to him. This was a chivalrous gesture. However, it was in marked contrast with the conduct of a previously, generally admired enemy. The Turks now promptly and summarily hanged a considerable number of locals who they pronounced to be ‘collaborators’. They may well have been, but they really did not have many other options.

Major General Charles Mellis was lying in his hospital bed when a Turkish soldier presumed to steal his boots. Mellis rose from his bed, chased and caught the thief, who was then soundly thrashed by a Turkish officer. Soon thereafter, but unconnected to this incident, a stream of Turks came to gaze at the redoubtable Mellis, whose courage and qualities of leadership were recognised. The feisty little general was the recipient of the title ‘His Excellency Mellis Pasha’.

His captors treated Charles Townshend with fawning courtesy, and when he moved among his troops Mr H. Eato recalled that he said, ‘I’m going to get you all released on parole.’²⁷⁴ It was an empty promise that raised the expectations of the captured soldiers. There was, of course, no parole; only an order to form up and march the 9 miles upstream to Shamran. Nine miles was no test for fit, well-fed and shod infantry soldiers. But these men were starved, sick and in many cases their boots, rotted in the floods, were falling to pieces. Aggressive, hostile captors whipped the column of men along the route. It was a march that was beyond the capacity of some and they fell by the wayside – there they died.

At Shamran, initially, there was no food, only some large tents big enough to give cover to a hundred men. Later, a heap of Turkish army biscuits were dumped on the ground. These biscuits were circular, fibrous and as hard as stone. They looked like dog biscuits and tasted much worse. They contained sufficient straw and dirt to be utterly unpalatable. But to starving men they were all there was, so those who still had teeth tried to gnaw at the circumference. Some tried to break a biscuit into smaller pieces; others soaked them in Tigris water for hours and were agreeably surprised at the degree to which the biscuits swelled. They were now much more digestible but no less disagreeable.

The following morning a grim pattern emerged. Men started to froth at the mouth, their bowels loosened and their stomachs rebelled. ‘A green slime’ was the produce and in short order death followed. The doctors termed it ‘enteritis’, others thought it was an extreme form of cholera. Whatever it was, it was poisoning men who had survived shot and shell and all other sorts of privation. There was no other form of food available in the bleak wastes of the desert and the doctors issued orders that the biscuits should be soaked and then baked, ‘or they will kill you.’²⁷⁵

That was no doubt excellent advice but not easy to implement. There were no facilities whatsoever to bake anything, and only camel thorn to provide a fire. For many it was all ‘just too bloody difficult’. They ate their soaked biscuits and paid the price. The inhumanity of the Turks who watched this business was entirely in character. They had a track record in cruelty, well earned by the persecution of their Armenian population, starting on 24 April 1915. From that date, the Ottoman Government killed from 800,000 to 1,500,000 people. This was on much the same scale as that displayed by the Japanese and Germans some twenty-five years later in different parts of the globe. Compassion was not on offer and these captive British and Indian soldiers would need all the help they could get.

Moberly, in his Official History, The Campaign in Mesopotamia (p. 460), characteristically tried to rationalise the completely irrational and random manner in which the Turks treated their captives. Nevertheless, he concluded:

of the British rank and file in captivity, 209 were exchanged, but more than 1,700, or over 70 per cent, died in captivity or have never been traced. Of the Indian rank and file about 1,300 are known to have died in captivity; between 1,100 and 1,200 escaped or were exchanged; the remainder were either repatriated or have been presumed to be dead.

In total, more than 3,000 British, Indian and followers perished ‘in conditions and in circumstances which must forever form a blot on the Turkish reputation’. Long after the war, and certainly up to 1924, exprisoners of war were turning up in India.

Townshend was held at Kut for two days while appropriate arrangements were made on his behalf. Then he embarked in a launch with an entourage that consisted of Captain Morland, his aide-de-camp, Lieutenant Colonel Parr, two British orderlies, of whom Private John Boggis was one, an Indian servant, and a Portuguese cook. The vessel sailed upriver and, at Shamran, Charlie went ashore to say his farewells to Delamain, Hamilton and the newly promoted Evens, his former GSO1. The soldiers lined the bank, and as ‘Our Charlie’ sailed away they waved and cheered. Townshend commented in his diary that, ‘I shall never forget that cheer. Tears filled my eyes as I stood to attention at the salute. Never shall I have such a command again. I loved the 6th Division with all my heart.’

66. One of the Indian soldiers of the 6th Division who survived a Turkish prison camp – many did not.

He was quite right: he would never have such a command again – in fact, he would never be employed again. His behaviour, from April 1916 until the war’s end, earned him the contempt of some, the dislike of others and the enmity of many more. This was because he did nothing to ease the condition of his men in captivity, despite having access to the senior levels of the Turkish Government. If ‘betrayal’ is an element in this book, then by his outrageous neglect of his duty and his men, Townshend takes his place among the betrayers. With his men out of sight and out of mind, Townshend was now at liberty to focus on things that really mattered – the well-being, comfort, status and reputation of Charles Townshend. All else was secondary.

Townshend was enough of a realist to recognise that the Turks would use him for propaganda purposes. The Turks ‘were determined to show the British Force captured to the world.’²⁷⁶ The Turkish newspaper Tanin was scathing when it said, ‘This time they did not succeed in scuttling. This time the English who, when they cannot achieve success, consider it the greatest honour to run away, have been unable to do so as they did at Gallipoli.’²⁷⁷

When Russell Braddon published his book The Siege in 1969, he was forthright in his condemnation of Townshend, who epitomised all that Braddon abhorred. Braddon found few redeeming characteristics in Charlie and, as a result, his book, excellent though it is, lacks balance. However, Braddon had been able to interview many survivors of the 6th Division, so his book does enjoy a degree of authority. The book was duly published and created uproar with the survivors of the 6th Division, to whom ‘their Charlie’ was a hero despite his behaviour after the surrender being well documented. His surviving soldiers were vocal in his support and, fifty-three years after Townshend had abandoned them to their fate, they still thought that the sun rose and set upon him. As they say in Yorkshire, ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk.’ To return to 1916, The Times, on 31 May, in an editorial thundered:

The main issue is not what General Townshend said to General Nixon, but first, who was responsible for the mad decision to advance on Baghdad. We trust Sir John Nixon will explain why he never transmitted General Townshend’s objections and why he decided to disregard them.

In Baghdad, it was intended that Townshend should stay in von der Goltz’s house, the Field Marshal having recently died. ‘Typhus’, said some, ‘Poisoned by the Turks’, alleged others, but the result was the same and the old German did not live long enough to see the fall of Kut. Townshend was housed in the Italian Consulate, where Khalil threw a dinner party in his honour. They sat for some hours while Townshend spoke at length about Napoleon.

Later in his journey to a comfortable billet, Townshend chanced upon a party of his soldiers and sailors led by Sub Lieutenant Reed. Some of the party were survivors of the Julnar episode, but the meeting was unproductive and all that Townshend could provide for his men was warm best wishes. The peregrinations and lifestyle of Chitrál Charlie, from this point on and until his death in May 1924, are not relevant to this text, but can be found in his biography of that title published by Pen and Sword Books.

Chapter notes

273 Sandes, E.W.C., In Kut and Captivity.

274 Eato, H., quoted by Braddon, R., The Siege, p.259.

275 Spackman, W.S., ibid, p.260.

276 Townshend, C.V.F., My Campaign in Mesopotamia, p.336.

277 Arabian Report, No. XXIa, 4 July 1916, FO/2779/152060.