THE MIDDLE EAST FRONT
THE MESOPOTAMIAN CAMPAIGN
THE RECAPTURE OF KUT: FEBRUARY 1917 - THE TAKING OF BAGHDAD: MARCH 1917
THE ARMISTICE OF MUDROS: 30th OCTOBER 1918
Acknowledgements
Cartoon:dailysabah.com Map of Mesopotamia:historyireland.com Troops on the March: goodfreephotos.com Entry into Baghdad: nam.ac.uk General Stanley Maude: en.wikipedia.org Halil Pasha: wikiwand.com End of Ottoman Empire (detail): vimeo.com
As we have seen, the capitulation of the Kut garrison in April 1916, after a five-month-long siege, was an humiliation for the British, as was the treatment meted out to the captured men on their forced march to concentration camps, some as far distant as Anatolia. Many did not survive the rigours of the march or the hardship of the captivity that followed. Failures in that earlier advance had been a lack of clarity over the purpose of the campaign; the command structure then in place; and, perhaps above all, the means of supplying the immediate and essential needs of the frontline forces, including the provision of more troops. These shortcomings had to be addressed. The man chosen to do just that was Lieutenant General Frederick Stanley Maude, a veteran of the Western Front and Gallipoli. As overall commander in Mesopotamia, he introduced a stricter command structure – avoiding at ground level at least the conflicting military and political standpoints – and he greatly improved medical as well as military support, plus the means by which these could be quickly delivered. This included the building of railways, improved gunboats and river steamers, and a ready supply of more accurate maps.
Thexcounter-offensive began in December 1916. An Anglo-Indian force of 150,000 men advanced on Kut, crossed the river north of the city in order to attack the fortress from a different direction, and, with the aid of gunboats on the River Tigris, put the Ottomans to flight. The city was in Anglo-Indian hands again by the 22nd of February, 1917, and Baghdad was but a short distance to the north-west. This time the Ottomans, being unable to hold back such a formidable force, abandoned their lines, and the British entered the capital city on the 11th March. Two days later, however, fearing a counter attack from an Ottoman force of 10,000 men, positioned just north of the capital, Maude launched his “Samarra Offensive”. This included a number of vicious encounters, notably the Battles of Jebel Hamlin, Shiala and Istabulat, and it was not until the 23rd April that the town of Samarra, together with its vital railroad, was captured, some eighty miles north of Baghdad. Denied this vital rail centre, Halil Pasha, commander of the Sixth Army, withdrew his battered force up river and established his headquarters in Mosul.
Maude saw Mosul as his next target, but his Samarra Offensive had been costly, with 18,000 casualties and 38,000 lost to sickness. There was a danger of repeating the errors of the past. Concerned, therefore, that his supply lines were becoming too long; anxious to avoid fighting in the heat of the summer; and unwilling to advance further until he had received the necessary reinforcements, he decided not to make his thrust towards Mosul until 1918. Instead,xas a preparatory move, he attacked the garrison town of Ramadi, about sixty miles west of Baghdad, on the south bank of the Euphrates. This held a strategic position on the road between Aleppo and Baghdad, and needed to be captured prior to an advance on Mosul. His first attack in mid-March was a clear failure. The Turks put up a spirited defence and this, together with the extreme heat (123ºF at times), and the arrival of a dust storm, proved too much for the Anglo-Indian force. The second battle in September, however, which trapped the Turks against the Euphrates, was successful. The town was captured, plus a large amount of munitions, and this paved the way for the final offensive in February 1918. But Maude was not to see that day. After a brief illness, he died of cholera in the November. It wasxleft to his replacement, General William Marshall, to make a rapid advance to the north – over 130 miles in fact – and defeat the Turkish Sixth Army within a day at the Battle of Sharqat in the last week of October. Mosul was then taken peacefully by an Indian cavalry division on the 14th November, thereby taking over an area known and coveted for its rich oilfields. The Mesopotamian Campaign was at an end.
WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1-1914-1918-WW1
In thexmeantime, the Armistice of Mudros was signed aboard HMS Agamemnon, off the Greek island of Lemnos (30th October), bringing an end to the war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans surrendered all their remaining garrisons, and the Allies occupied the straits of the Dardanelles and Bosporus. Constantinople was occupied on the 13th November.
LieutenantxGeneral S
ir Frederick Stanley Maude (1864-1917) was born in Gibraltar, the youngest son of General Sir Frederickk Francis Maude, a veteran of the Crimean War. He attended Eton College and
the Royal Military College at Camberly, and was commissioned into the Coldsteam Guards in February 1884. He saw active service in Egypt and the Second Boer War and, after serving as secretary to the Governor-General of Canada (the Earl of Minto), was appointed second in command of the Coldstream Guards. At the outbreak of the war, he served on the Western Front and, after being wounded at the Battle of Ypres in April 1915, took an active part throughout the Gallipoli Campaign. His most important appointment came in July 1916, when, with the rank of Lieutenant General, he was given command of all the Allied forces in Mesopotamia. Here, in the aftermath of a poorly organised and over ambitious campaign – culminating in the siege of Kut and a humiliating surrender – he showed infinite skill, as we have seen, in preparing for what was described as “a methodical, organised and successful attack” upon the capital city of Baghdad. The heavy cost in casualties during his subsequent Samarra Offensive, however, aimed at clearing his path to Mosul, plus his battle over the capture of the garrison town of Ramadi, convinced him that he should delay the final assault until 1918. As a result, he never completed his mission. After a brief illness, he died of cholora in the November, and was buried in Baghdad War Cemetery. His epitaph reads: “He fought a good fight. He kept the faith”.
Incidentally, in the Gallipoli Campaign, Maude was the last soldier to leave the peninsula in January 1916, and he is remembered to this day for his famous line in his Proclamation of Baghdad: “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators.” Sadly, come the postwar settlement, these words did not ring tunefully true!
HalilxPasha graduated from the War Academy at Constantinople in 1905, and for the next nine years saw service in Macedonia, Persia, the Balkan Wars and Libya. On the outbreak of the First World War, he was involved in operations against the Armenian people, and then became one of the senior commanders in the Mesopotamian Campaign. He was promoted to general after taking a leading part in the encirclement and siege of Kut, and the surrender of the Anglo-Indian force in April 1916. Later, however, he was forced to give ground, abandon Baghdad, and then concede defeat following the British occupation of Mosul in November 1918. On the home front, as mentioned earlier, he played a strong supporting role in the Armenian Genocide, carried out by his nephew Enver Pasha. He regarded the large Armenian population as a serious threat to the safety and survival of the Ottoman Empire, and was in favour of their complete annihilation. In aiming for this, he openly admitted that he had personally organised the killing of around 300,000 men, women and children. He massacred all Armenians within his battalions, and many civilians were buried alive in purpose-built pits. At the end of the war he was imprisoned in Constantinople for his part in the Armenian atrocities, but he managed to escape, and was eventually permitted to return to Turkey following the declaration of the Turkish Republic in 1923. He died in 1957.
Incidentally, “Kut Day” was celebrated annually by the Turkish armed forces until Turkey joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation in 1952.
The Mesopotamian Campaign, begun in November 1914, cost the British and Empire forces some 85,000 casualtes, killed, wounded or captured, the vast majority being borne by the Indian Army. It was a hard fought campaign, conducted in a difficult terrain and a harsh, demanding climate. The British eventually achieved success, but their defeat at the Battle of Ctesiphon in November 1915, and the humiliation suffered at the siege of Kut, tempered any feeling of success. The Armistice of Mudros brought an end to the campaigns, together with the six other war zones in which the Ottoman Empire was involved, but the final settlement was long in coming. The Treaty of Sèvres was concluded early in 1919 but, as we shall see, the Turks, taking up arms, rejected its terms, and the postwar settlement was not finally reached until August 1923.
TROOPS ON THE MARCH AND ENTERING BAGHDAD
To go back to the Dateline, click HERE
