IN KUT AND CAPTIVITY.*
MAJOR SANDES has written an interesting book on the earlier phase of the war in Mesopotamia, which will serve as a pendant to Mr. Candler's account. Major Sandes was attached to the Sixth Indian Division, under General Townshend, which formed the main portion of Sir John Nixon's expeditionary force. He was in charge of the bridging train which followed the army up the Tigris. He describes the capture of Kurna, the rapid advance up to Amarah, the battle of Es Sin, where the Turks offered a strenuous resistance, the occupation of Kut, and the fatal advance upon Baghdad which ended at Ctesiphon. His account of the battle of Ctesiphon is by far the best that has appeared, and is illustrated with useful sketch-maps. He gives a full narrative of the retreat, which was most skilfully conducted, and relates the history of the five months' siege of Kut. After the surrender in April, 1916, he was taken to Asia Minor, and remained at Yozgad till Turkey capitulated a year ago. Major Sandes was thus spared the doubtful privilege of engaging in the controversy that arose out of the fall of Kut, and his book has the freshness of an independent record. It is well furnished with maps and plans, and it is evidently based throughout on official information and the evidence of eyewitnesses. Whatever may be thought of the strategy of the campaign, the Sixth Indian Division achieved a great name for itself in the advance on Baghdad, and deserved to find so competent an historian as Major Sandes.
The battle of Ctesiphon, November 22nd-25th, 1915, was an astonishing adventure. The Sixth Division, with part of the Thirtieth Brigade and a Cavalry Brigade, had marched away northward beyond Kut to attack Nuruddin's larger army and to capture Baghdad. General Townshend, as he told his troops in Kut, had remonstrated against his orders, and had urged that two, if not three, divisions were needed to do the work, and to hold the great city when it had been taken. The mere task of holding the line of communications, for Baghdad is five hundred miles from Basra, required at least a division. Nevertheless "political considerations," as the author says, prevailed and the advance was made. The army, mainly composed of Indian infantry, had driven Nuruddin from his entrenchments at Es Sin, and was confident of repeating the performance. Major Sandes says that Nuruddin, like General Kuropatkin in Manchuria, always hesitated and was lost at the critical moment, so that it is quite possible that General Townshend might, with luck, have reached Baghdad. His opening attack on the morning of November 22nd was almost completely successful. Advancing across a perfectly flat waste, the British and Indian infantry carried the key-position of the Turkish front line and took eight guns and many prisoners. The Turks then made a counter-attack which was repulsed with great loss. Nuruddin's heart seems to have failed him at this moment, for at three o'clock in the afternoon our airmen saw the Turks removing their bridge and their transport, while Turkish columns were marching northward. But in the very nick of time, for the enemy, Khalil Pasha's army corps from Erzerum had reached Baghdad, and was immediately sent to the battlefield. It made a second counter-attack at half-past three that afternoon, and by sheer weight of numbers checked . • In Rut and Captivity with the Sixth Inflian Division, By Major E. W. C. Sander, M.C., R.E. London ; Murray. [24s. noLl
our advance, so that the eight Turkish guns had to be abandoned. Khalil, being a man of spirit, then induced the doubting Nuruddin to hold on to the Ctesiphon position, until on the fourth day of the fighting General Townshend was compelled to give up the enterprise for lack of men. The British losses were very heavy. Major Sandes says that the force of 11,000 bayonets sustained 4,267 casualties. The Eighteenth Brigade lost nearly half its numbers. In the Seventeenth Brigade the Staff suffered so greatly that Company Sergeant-Major Arlett, of the 1st Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry, had to act as Brigade Major, besides taking command of a large body of Indian infantry whose officers had all been killed or wounded. It would have been madness for this sadly weakened force to continue attacking a Turkish army twice or three times as strong in its formidable entrenchments, when General Townshend could not hope to profit by a victory. We may infer, indeed, that he would have been worse off if Nuruddin had retreated on the first. afternoon of the battle. Khalil's fresh divisions might then have caught our advancing troops unawares, and the inevitable retirement would have been longer and more difficult than it was. Major Sandes rightly reminds us that the Erzerum Corps contained some of the best material in the Turkish Army, and had done very well against the Russians. In holding back this Corps for three days, and beating off its attempts to intercept the retreat, the Sixth Division achieved a brilliant feat of arms.
The story of the siege of Kut is well told by Major Sandes. Whether there should have been a siege at all is, of course, a question for debate. The author marshals the arguments for and against holding Kut, but does not decide between them. It is obvious that he and his fellow-officers expected to be relieved in a very short time. Some of them, he says, spent their leisure in writing out orders for new kits from India, to be posted as soon as the relieving force arrived. They assumed that, as the Sixth Division had captured the Es Sin position, the Twelfth Division and the reinforcing divisions that were soon to arrive would be equally successful. But the Turks were much stronger during the siege of Kut than they had been in the previous autumn, and heavy rainstorms converted the Tigris Valley into a morass through which it was almost impossible for General Aylmer to advance. Maj% Sandes thinks that the ability of the Kut garrison to hold at/ ..as underestimated, and that the relieving force acted with undue haste on the assumption that Kut must fall in-three or four weeks at most. Had the attacks on Es Sin been delayed for a time, they might have been delivered with much greater weight. As it was, General Aylmer almost succeeded in breaking the Turkish lines on the right bank on March 8th, 1916, but the author seems to doubt whether he had troops enough to drive the blow home. It is most unfair to blame generals for not foreseeing all the accidents of war. We can only presume that if the Mesopotamian Command had known that Kut would stand a five months' siege, it would have acted differently. As it was, 23,000 casualties were sustained in the unsuccessful attempts to relieve a force of 13,000, many of whom were sick or wounded. Had General Townshend abandoned Kut and joined the rest of the army further down the Tigris, we should have lost the stores in Kut, but we should have saved many good fighting men. The politicians who were ultimately responsible were doubtless influenced by the Russian Government, who feared that a Turkish success on the Tigris might react on the Caucasus and Persia. If, however, the defence of Kut was a strategic error, it was a tactical success. The Turks made one great attack on Christmas Eve, 1915, and were soundly beaten. After that they contented themselves with a blockade. The garrison lost about a fourth of its numbers from wounds or from disease aggravated by poor food. When Kut surrendered the fighting strength of the garrison was 10,000 men, of whom three-fourths were Indian troops. Major Sandes gives a most painful account of the way in which the prisoners, especially the rank-and-file, were ill-treated by the Turks. We recommend the few surviving Turcophiles to read his pages, which should dispose of the Turkish soldier's mythical reputation for courtesy and good feeling.
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