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The
Long Road to Baghdad
in
Two Volumes by Edmund Candler
Available in PDF for Windows and Mac
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The Long Road to Baghdad
Extract from the book...
"The Turks made
no stand in their strongly entrenched position at Ctesiphon. We were too
close on their heels,
and gave them no pause at Aziziyeh. After the action at Lajj
their vanguard fell back on Diala, destroying the
bridge which crosses the Diala River at its
junction with the Tigris. We pushed on
in pursuit on the left bank,
sending the cavalry with the 7th Division and the 35th Brigade to work
round on the right bank, where the
Turks had a force covering the city from the south
and south-west. Speed in following up was essential, and the
column attacking Diala was faced with another crossing from
which the element of surprise was eliminated. The
village lies on both banks of the stream, which is 120 yards
wide. Houses, trees, nullahs and walled gardens
made it impossible to build roads and ramps quickly and bring
up pontoons without betraying the point of
embarkation. Hence the old bridgehead site was chosen. The
passage might have been forced with less loss by a
wide flanking movement farther inland, but this would have
meant delay, and in a pursuit time is essential. One
must reckon on the enemy being hustled and weakened in moral,
and one must display a boldness which would
be foolhardiness in an open fight. The general who does not
presume weakness in an opponent in such circumstances,
or who hesitates to act on it, would be lacking in initiative.
But if the enemy is not hustled, if his moral
is good and his dispositions sound, the details who are thrown
in on this principle as a feeler have to pay.
The 13th
Division were leading on the left bank, and the attack on the
night of March 7th-8th was launched
by the 6th King's Own of the 38th, or Lancashire, Brigade.
It failed completely ; but the gallantry of our
men has never been surpassed in war. Immediately the first
pontoon was lowered over the ramp the whole
launching party was shot down in a few seconds. It was bright
moonlight, and the Turks had concentrated their
machine guns and rifles in houses on the opposite bank. The
second pontoon had got into the middle of the stream
when a terrific fusillade was opened on it. The crew of five
rowers and ten riflemen were killed and the boat
floated downstream. The third pontoon got nearly across, was
bombed, and sank ; all the crew were killed.
But there was no holding back. The orders still held to secure the
passage. Crew after crew pushed off to an
obvious and certain death. The fourth crossing party
was exterminated in the same way, and the pontoons drifted
out to the Tigris to float past
our camp in the daylight with their freight of dead.
Telephone wires
were carried over in the boats. In one boat that was drifting
downstream the only survivors
were a signaller, and a private of the King's Own who appeared to be
mortally wounded. The signaller
attached his line to the bows of the drifting boat,
dived overboard and reached the shore with the other end of the
line; by this, with assistance from the bank, he succeeded in
hauling in the pontoon with the wounded man. The
rowers who went over were volunteers from other battalions in
the brigade. They and the Sappers working
on the bank share the honours of the night with the attacking
battalion. It had become a forlorn hope, but
the men laughed and joked, keeping the tragic,
sentimental, and heroic at arm's length, as is the manner of
their kind. Nothing stopped them save the loss of
the pontoons. In the last lap one of the Lancashire men
called out: "It's a bit hot here; let's try higher up."
But the gallant
fellows were reduced to their last pontoon. The East
Lancashire Regiment, which was to have
crossed higher up simultaneously with the King's Own, were
delayed, as the boats had to be carried nearly a mile
across difficult country to the stream. After the failure of
the bridgehead passage this second crossing was abandoned,
but the men were still game.
On the second
night the attempt was pursued with equal gallantry by the
Loyal North
Lancashires. This
time the attack was preceded by a bombardment. Registering by
the artillery had been impossible on the first day
owing to the rapidity of the pursuit. It was the barrage that
secured us the footing ; not the shells, but the dust
raised by them. This was so thick that you could not see your
hand in front of your face. It formed a curtain
behind which the boats were able to cross. Afterwards, in
clear moonlight, when the curtain of dust had lifted, the
conditions of the night before were established.
Succeeding crossing parties were exterminated ; pontoons
drifted
away. But the footing was secure ; the dust had served us
well. The crew of one boat which lost its way during
the barrage was untouched in midstream, but they did not make
the bank in time. Directly the air cleared a machine
gun was opened on them ; the rowers were shot down and the
pontoon drifted back to shore. A sergeant called for
volunteers to get the wounded out of the boat. A party of
twelve men went over the river bund; every man of
them, as well as the crew of the pontoon, was killed.
Some sixty men
had got over. These joined up and started bombing along the
bank. They were soon heavily
pressed by the Turks on both flanks, and found
themselves between two woods. Here they discovered a
providential
natural position. A break in the river bund had been repaired
by a new bund, built in the shape of a half-moon
on the landward side. This formed a perfect lunette. The Lancashire men,
surrounded on all sides save towards
the river, held it through the night and all the next day
and the next night against repeated and determined attacks.
These assaults were delivered in the dark or at dawn.
The Turks only attacked once in daylight, as our machine
guns on the other bank swept the ground of the
position. Twenty yards west of the lunette there was a thin
grove
of mulberries and palms. The position was most vulnerable on
this side, and it was here the Turkish counterattacks
were most frequent. Our intense intermittent artillery fire
day and night on the wood afforded some protection.
The whole affair was visible to our troops on the south side,
who were able to make themselves heard
by shouting. Attempts to get a cable across by rockets, for
passage of ammunition, failed. At night volunteers were
called for to swim the stream with a line. The strongest
swimmer was almost across when Lieutenant
Loman, the adjutant of the regiment, who was paying out the
wire, fell dead, shot through the heart, and the weight
of the line prevented the man in the water from reaching the
other bank. At midnight of the
9th-10th, the Turks
were on the top of the parapet, but were driven back. One more
determined rush would have carried the lunette, but
the little garrison, now reduced to forty, kept their
heads and maintained a cool control of fire. A corporal was
seen
searching for loose rounds and emptying the bandoliers of the
dead. In the end they were reduced almost to their
last clip and one bomb ; but we found over a hundred Turkish
dead outside the redoubt when they were relieved
at daylight on the morning of the 10th.
The crossing on
the night of the 9th-10th was entirely successful. With our
cavalry and two columns of infantry
working round on the right bank the Turks were in danger of
being cut off as at Sannaiyat. Before midnight
they had withdrawn their machine guns, leaving only riflemen
to dispute the passage. The crossing of the
Wiltshires upstream was a surprise. They slipped through the
Turk's guard. He had pickets at both ends
of the river salient where we dropped our pontoons, but
he overlooked the essential points in it, which offered us dead
ground uncovered by his posts up and down stream. It was so
unexpected that the Turks did not realise what
was in the air until our footing was established. One man was
actually bayoneted as he lay covering the opposite
bank of the river with his rifle. The other ferry nearer
the bridge also crossed with slight loss owing to the diversion
upstream. The Turks, perceiving that their flank was being
turned, effected a general retirement; the greater
part of their garrison between the two ferries, some 250 in
all, finding us bombing down on both flanks, surrendered.
A third ferry
had been arranged on the Tigris. Two armed
motor launches of the spacious pattern constructed
for the landing at Gallipoli .were manned overnight by 500 of
the Cheshires. These were to be run ashore on to
the Turkish trenches facing the Tigris half a mile
above its junction with the Diala. The Cheshires were to land,
rush the position, skirt the village at the back, and
join hands with the small garrison of the North
Lancashires,
provided it still held out, and with any details that
might have effected a passage. It was a gallant venture ; but
the flats and shallows forbade. One of these ugly,
clumsy barges, with its bellyful of armed men like the horse of
Troy,
grounded on a sandbank, and we on the Tarantula had an anxious
quarter of an hour the next morning towing
her off, before the enemy's guns could register on us.
But the
Cheshires, had they been in time, could not have added greatly
to the success of the action. The passage
had been forced before dawn. By half-past nine on the morning
of the 10th the whole brigade was across. Soon
after eleven the bridge was completed and the
pursuit continued. The splendid gallantry of the 38th Brigade
will never be forgotten, and if there is any perspective
in history, the Diala will be remembered—not as the stream
in which Cyrus lost his horse, but as a kind of Lancashire Thermopylae.
At Bawi, four
miles above Ctesiphon, we bridged
the Tigris again, and
threw a force of all arms on to the right
bank. The 35th Brigade had crossed by ferry on the night of
the 7th and 8th, and were working up the river
bank. The Cavalry Division crossed by the bridge on thenight of the 8th
; the 7th Division on the early morning
of the 9th. The Turks were holding a position at Shawa Khan,
some five miles south-west of Baghdad, with their
left resting on the river. They had no natural defences on
this bank comparable to the Diala. By this time they
had abandoned all hope of saving the city and were fighting a delaying
action. The dust storm which blew hard
on the 9th and 10th helped them, screening them from our guns
in their retirement.
On the 9th
there was a scattered fight on a very wide front, and we
advanced, driving the enemy's patrols and
pickets before us. By two in the afternoon the 7th Division
were in touch with the 35th Brigade on the
right. As the line of our advance drew in towards the
bend of the river our flank was exposed all day to an enfilade
fire from the enemy's guns on the other bank. Behind his huts
and walls and in his hastily improved watercuts
the Turk had a strong rearguard position, and it was
immensely improved by the support he received from his
artillery across the Tigris, where his
guns lay concealed in palm groves and safe from attack so long
as the Diala
defences held. Inland our troops on the extreme left
were seven and a half miles from water. A force consisting of
the 51st Sikhs, 56th Rifles, 92nd and 28th Punjabis, who were
sent out to find the enemy's right flank, failed. And
the cavalry lent no aid, as, through want of water and
the exhaustion of their horses, they were for all practical
purposes immobilised. When darkness fell the Turks were still
holding the position, but before dawn our
patrols pushed forward and found that they had evacuated. The
morning of the 10th discovered the
enemy in a new line of trenches covering the iron bridge.
The day was
spent in a gradual advance under a heavy fire. All the time
the Turk must have been slipping
away, but in the blinding dust our guns had no target. The
wind served him in good stead ; a clear sky would
have doubled his losses. Our own casualties in the two days'
fighting and marching, though there was no
bayonet work or rushing of trenches, were not small. For the
Turk, having little transport to fall back upon,
was reckless in his expenditure of shells, and he had
the advantage of us in the dust as he knew the ground and
had registered the positions. The losses of the 7th
Division exceeded a thousand. But the Turks were not for
staying. They could hear the sound of battle on the left bank
which told them that we had crossed the Diala.
Towards evening they were firing salvoes from all
their guns—no uncertain sign of impending departure ; and
their uneasiness was betrayed in the wild, rapid and
continuous fire opened by their infantry on our patrols.
Then, soon after midnight, the glare of
the flaming city indicated the organised destruction of a
retreat. At 1 a.m.
a patrol under a Gurkha officer of the 2 /4th Gurkha Rifles
reported that the enemy's gun pits were empty, and
that there were no Turks in the Iron Bridge nullah.
The order for the attack in the early hours of the night had
not been cancelled, and no further move was made till 2 A.M. on the 11th.
The 21st Brigade then passed
through the 19th Brigade ; patrols were pushed forward, and it
was found that the Turk had only left a few riflemen
to cover his retirement. At 5.45 a.m. a half
company of the Black Watch under Lieutenant Houston
seized the Baghdad railway
station with the loss of two men. Two hours afterwards the
35th Brigade had
occupied the suburb opposite the site of the bridge of boats,
and before noon the cavalry
were in Kadhimain.
On the left
bank, after the crossing of the Diala, there was fighting in
the palm groves of Saida and
Dibaiyi. The Warwicks went in and
the Turks were cleared with the bayonet after our artillery
had combed
the wood. The enemy's main body was holding the Tel Mahomed
position a mile and a half farther north, a
trench line running nearly four miles inland from the Tigris. The 38th and
39th Brigades attacked this in front
while the 40th Brigade made a wide turning movement on the flank."
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In addition a
supplementary 62 page volume of illustrated articles from the Great War
magazine series is included on the ebook, covering the Battle for Kut, the
advance on Baghdad and the subsequent battles
in Mesopotamia.
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The Mesopotamian Campaign was a campaign in
the Middle Eastern theatre of the World War I fought between Allied
Powers represented by the British Empire, mostly troops from the
British Raj, and Central Powers, mostly of the Ottoman Empire.
The war in Mesopotamia
(modern Iraq) was almost accidental in its scope. The British had no
serious interest in this part of the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman
government lead by Enver Pasha didn't care much about it either, it
ranked in priorities below the Caucasus Campaign and the Sinai and
Palestine Campaign. Mesopotamia was also rather isolated from the rest
of the Ottoman Empire. Althought work had started on a Berlin to
Baghdad Railroad as early as 1888, by the start of 1915 there were four
gaps in the tracks and it took 21 days to travel from Constantinople to
Baghdad.
The British interests
were to protect their oil refinery at Abadan and to defend their allies
in the area (Persia and Kuwait). Ottoman interests were to maintain the
status quo.
Shortly after the war
started in Europe, the British sent a military force to protect Abadan,
one of the world's earliest oil refineries. The British didn't use much
oil at the start of the war but they had already started building
warships which would be fueled by oil instead of coal by 1912.
On November 6, 1914,
the British force attacked and took the Turkish fort at Fao Landing.
Two weeks later, the British occupied the city of Basra. The main
Turkish army, under the over-all command of Khalil Pasha was located
275 north-west around Baghdad and made only weak efforts to dislodge
the British from the southern end of Mesopotamia.
Initial British
Conquest of Basra
British Offensive into
Southern Mesopotamia, 1915
Battle of Ctesiphon,
1915
In April of 1915, a new
British commander, General Nixon was sent to Mesopotamia. He ordered
his commander in the field, General Townshend to advance to Kut or
Baghdad if possible. Townshend and his small army advanced up the
Tigris river, defeating several Ottoman forces sent to halt him.
Worried about the possible fall of Baghdad, Enver Pasha sent an old
German general, Baron von der Goltz, to take command of the Ottoman
army in the field.
Townshend and Goltz
fought a battle at Ctesiphon, 25 miles south of Baghdad. The battle was
inconclusive as both the Ottomans and the British ended up retreating
from the battlefield. However, Townshend concluded a full scale retreat
was necessary so he withdrew in good order back to Kut, then halted and
fortified the position.
Defending Kut as
opposed to retreating back to Basra was a mistake. Kut was isolated,
and while it could be defended, it could not be resupplied. Baron
Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz was a famous military historian who had
written several classic books on military operations, he had also spent
12 years working with the Ottoman army. Under his expert direction the
Turkish forces built defensive positions around the land side of Kut,
laid siege to the British, and built fortified positions down river
designed to fend off any attempt to rescue Townshend.
The siege of Kut lasted
from December 7, 1915 till April 29, 1916. The British made three major
attempts to break the siege, each effort was unsuccessful. After the
first failure, General Nixon was replaced by General Lake. All told the
British suffered 23,000 casualties in their unsuccessful effort to
break the siege. Townshend surrendered April 29, 1916 and his 8,000
soldiers became captives of the Ottomans. More than half of the British
prisoners died as they were forced to do hard labor for the remainder
of the war.
Baron von der Goltz
died just before the surrender of Kut, supposedly of typhus. With the
loss of Baron von der Goltz, the Ottomans never won another battle
against the British in Mesopotamia.
The British viewed the
loss of Kut as a humiliating defeat. It had been many years since such
a large body of British Army soldiers had surrendered to an enemy. Also
this loss followed only four months after the British defeat at the
Battle of Gallipoli. Nearly all the British commanders involved in the
failure to rescue Townshend were removed from command. The Turks proved
they were good at holding defensive positions against superior forces.
The British refused to
let this defeat stand and so the new commander, General Maude was given
additional reinforcements and equipment. For the next six months he
trained and organized his army. His offensive was launched on December
13 1916. The British advanced up both sides of the Tigris river,
forcing the Ottoman army out of a number of fortified positions along
the way. General Maude's offensive was methodical, organized, and
successful. The British recaptured Kut in February of 1917, destroying
most of the Ottoman army in the process.
By early March, the
British were at the outskirts of Baghdad, and the Baghdad garrison,
under the direct command of the Governor of Baghdad province Khalil
Pasha, tried to stop them. General Maude outmanouvered the Turkish
forces, destroyed a Turkish regiment and captured the Turkish defensive
positions. Khalil Pasha retreated in disarray out of the city. On March
11, 1917 the British entered Baghdad where they were greeted as
liberators. Amidst the confusion of the retreat a majority of the
Ottoman army (some 9,000 soldiers) were captured. A week after the city
fell, General Maude issuing the oft-quoted Proclamation of Baghdad,
which contained the famous line "our armies do not come into your
cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators"
Further small scale
attacks were made by the British towards the north and east but General
Maude died from cholera in November of 1917 and his successor, General
William Marshall halted operations for the winter. The British resumed
their offensive in late February 1918 capturing Kifri and Hit
(previously called Khanaqin). General Marshall's forces supported
General Lionel Dunsterville's operations in Persia during the summer of
1918 but his very powerful army was "astonishing inactive, not only in
the hot season but through most of the cold" (Cyril Falls, "The Great
War" pg. 329). In October the British went on the offensive for the
last time and fought a battle at the Battle of Sharqat, routing the
Turkish army. General Marshall accepted the surrender of Khalil Pasha
and the Turkish 6th Army on October 30 1918. British troops marched
unopposed into Mosul on the 14 November 1918.
The British lost 92,000
soldiers in the Mesopotamian campaign. Turkish losses are unknown but
the British captured a total of 45,000 prisoners of war. By the end of
1918 the British had deployed 410,000 men into the area though only
112,000 of them were combat troops. The vast majority of the British
empire forces in this campaign were recruited from India.
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Get to grips
with the history of the campaign which lead to modern day Iraq and the
continuing turmoil in the region.
The Long Road
to Baghdad is comprehensive and makes for fascinating reading. So many
of the places mentioned are still in the news today.
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Available in
PDF
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