by Peter Hart
Military supplies of every kind poured into Mesopotamia. The munitions position had radically improved since the outbreak of war and by late 1916 batteries of guns and howitzers could be sent out, along with a munificence of ammunition supplies. They would supply one devastating response to the Turkish trenches. All the paraphernalia of modern war was flooding in, from machine guns to mortars, purpose-built bridging materials to reconnaissance and scout aircraft – everything the Tigris Corps could need. The four divisions that were already there were brought up to full strength of some 160,000 men and were now collectively known as the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force (MEF). This time the British were serious.
There was also a change in the High Command, with the appointment of Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude to replace General Sir Percy Lake. Maude was determined to take a more ‘hands on’ command of his forces than his predecessor and so moved his headquarters up to the front. He had been given clear instructions by the Chief of Imperial General Staff, General Sir William Robertson, which restated the necessity of securing the oil fields, the pipelines and the Basra area. The prospect of taking Baghdad was raised but only with the stern warning that ‘This further advance should not be undertaken unless and until sanction for it is given.’24 Maude, however, while unwilling to move until he was certain of success, was intent on achieving total victory over the Turks in Mesopotamia.
During the summer of 1916 the Tigris Corps remained stuck in its trenches with the Turks still well entrenched in front of them. Both sides were in a relatively quiescent mood: the Turks resting while the British restocked their depleted divisions. By the autumn, Maude’s forces had been split into two corps: Gorringe had been replaced by Lieutenant General Alexander Cobbe as commander of the I Indian Corps (3rd and 7th Indian Divisions), while the III Indian Corps (13th Division and 14th Indian Division) was commanded by Lieutenant General Sir William Marshall.
Maude made his first carefully planned move on 13 December 1916. His generalship was not so very different from that of Townshend, it was just that this time everything required for success was firmly in place, his advance was not hemmed in by the floods and he was not under the same pressing time constraints as Aylmer and Gorringe. Using a bombardment of the Sanniyat lines to deflect attention, and a night march, the cavalry and the 13th Division managed to cross the Shatt al Hai feeding into the Tigris on the western bank opposite Kut. The Turks were then thrown into further confusion when RFC bombing missions managed to harass the Turkish steamer responsible for their pontoon bridge into releasing its tows and thereby scattering vital pontoons all across the Tigris. This denied the Turks the means of rapidly crossing the river and, over the next few days, Maude attempted to further threaten their communications, thereby forcing them to withdraw.
Bad weather caused the suspension of operations but fighting recommenced in January 1917, with Maude’s forces making considerable progress. Turkish morale began to crack as large numbers were taken prisoner. A vital factor in British successes was the increasing intensity of the artillery barrages which had the potential to overwhelm any Turkish response – modern mechanical war was coming to Mesopotamia. The Turks still held the formidable Sanniyat positions on the eastern bank of the Tigris, but as a whole the Turkish forces were starting to struggle. Their commander, General Khalil Pasha, had been overconfident in the ability of his forces to hold back the British on the Tigris and hence had detached several divisions to engage in abortive secondary operations in Persia, thereby leaving far too few troops to face the revitalised British. Hubris, it seemed, was not a solely British failing. Maude conceived of a plan to avoid more direct frontal assaults on the Sanniyat lines by making a crossing on to the east bank of the Tigris at the Shumran Bend upstream of Kut on 23 February. It was an exceptionally risky operation, but Maude tried to ensure that preparations were thorough: three pontoon bridges were prepared, all personnel were carefully trained and deceptions and a diversionary attack at Sanniyat were planned to pin the Turkish reserves, while overall there was a heightened sense of secrecy.
The boats were launched into the water at the Shumran Bend at 05.15 on 23 February. Once the Turks spotted them they opened up a rapid fire. However, the British held the bridgehead just long enough to allow a pontoon bridge to be created. When it became apparent what was happening, the Sanniyat positions were skilfully evacuated by the Turks as they fell back to avoid being cut off. For a moment it was like the old days under Townshend: the naval gunboats raced off up the river, harassing the retreating Turks and sinking most of their shipping. Kut fell on 25 February as the Turks retreated towards Baghdad. Some 7,000 Turks had been captured in the operations, while large quantities of artillery, machine guns, mortars, supplies, transport equipment, bridging equipment and riverboats were captured or destroyed. But should Maude should carry on to Baghdad? Could he with his four divisions deal with the Turkish reinforcements that would undoubtedly rush to the area? Was there really any point in a further advance? Had not the objectives as delineated by Robertson been achieved? There was much discussion of the correct course of action but, in the end, Maude’s conviction that the Turks were well and truly beaten held considerable weight in view of his cautious performance to date. As such he was given permission to commence the advance to Baghdad.
Whatever the logic or otherwise of taking Baghdad, militarily it proved the right decision. The Turks failed to inundate the plains around Baghdad and, when defences on the line of the River Diyala were swept aside, they withdrew from the city, leaving Maude’s troops to enter Baghdad on 11 March 1917. The fabled city proved a great disappointment to the first soldiers to arrive. They had enjoyed mental images of something grander than the reality of the filthy dirty streets of Baghdad.
In many ways the capture of Baghdad did not really change the overall situation, as had been pointed out in the wise words of warnings from the likes of Robertson, who counselled not to risk too much in capturing the city. For the capture of Baghdad was not an end in itself; it certainly did not mark outright victory. The Turks still had to be harried and pursued back to avoid them posing a future threat; it was still necessary to prevent them from uniting their forces and certain key points would have to be secured to stop them flooding the whole area by manipulating the river waters. Mesopotamia was like a vast sponge sucking in British military resources. Everything had to be done for the best of military reasons, but what really had been gained once the oil fields had been secured in 1914? Nothing. The whole Mesopotamia Campaign had become an object lesson in mission creep: the original goal had been achieved, but enormous risks had been undertaken to achieve a progression of ostensible objectives that had no real justification.
It had been presumed that with the capture of Baghdad and with the possibility of working in conjunction with the Russian forces now operating in the Caucasus and Persia, the Mesopotamian Campaign was all but over. But the Russians had been crippled in the aftermath of the March 1917 Revolution which caused an increasing deterioration in Russian military morale. So it was that Maude found there was still much hard fighting to be done. Battle followed battle, but the campaign never seemed to be quite over. Usually the British won and gained a few more miles of desert and the latest ‘essential’ tactical prize, but occasionally there were painful reverses. Operations were finally suspended during the long hot summer of 1917, lasting from May right through to September.
The resumption of fighting saw a slightly different situation as the Russian collapse freed up Turkish troops for offensive operations against Maude’s forces. But the British too had been busy and had extended their supply lines forward to create an effective modern transport system that stretched from Basra to Baghdad. Flood control and irrigation measures had been instituted to manage the flow of the great rivers. The threat of marauding Arabs along the lines of communication had been reduced by a combination of pacification and slaughter. Maude’s attitude had not changed over the summer break; he was still resolved on the d
estruction of all organised Turkish resistance. So the campaign continued: pushing ever higher up the Tigris, Euphrates and Diyala rivers. Then Maude himself died of typhoid on 18 November 1917 and General Sir William Marshall took overall command of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force. The guiding hand had been stilled, but operations continued unabated; Maude’s final instruction is reputed to have been that they should ‘carry on’.
Over the last year of the war the British pushed north towards the Mosul oilfields and across to the Caspian Sea. This was a world away from the original aims and objectives of the campaign; this was fighting for the sake of it, of localised priorities and tactical considerations rather than some rational analysis of where troops were best deployed on a global basis. Robertson, always the realist, in his instructions to Marshall called for consideration to be given to how the Mesopotamian army could be reduced. This pious hope attained greater urgency when the capture of Jerusalem by Allenby in December 1917 seemed to indicate that the Palestinian Campaign (being waged in tandem) offered a greater potential for successful operations against Turkey. In consequence, two divisions were redeployed to Palestine. Yet plenty of troops still remained in Mesopotamia.
Following the long lull during the hot season of 1918 the Turkish situation was desperate and Marshall was ordered to advance on Kirkuk with the intention of dominating the Mosul oil fields. The operations were successful and, following the signing of the Armistice on 30 October 1918, the whole Mosul area was successfully occupied and the four-year campaign was finally over. At the point of surrender there was an active strength of some 217,000 British and Indian soldiers serving in Mesopotamia (plus some 71,000 in the Labour Corps and 42,000 in the Inland Water Transport), but in all over 675,000 troops had been deployed over that period, of whom 92,500 had become casualties. All this for operations that had achieved their original declared objectives in the first few days of the campaign in November 1914; everything else had been vainglorious nonsense. Mesopotamia was a tragedy from start to finish, fought in circumstances of exceptional difficulty. For the first two years it had been starved of resources. It had also proved the graveyard for the reputations of many generals, even though the tactical skills they had demonstrated had by and large been adequate. But in the end the British had won: the Empire had gained its oil fields and one more sector of the globe was under British control.
13
EASTERN FRONT, 1917–18
‘The Russian people are suffering from economic fatigue and from disillusionment with the Allies! The world thinks the Russian Revolution is at an end. Do not be mistaken. The Russian Revolution is just beginning.’1
Minister of War Alexander Kerensky
THE RUMANIAN FIASCO had done nothing to help the Russians. As the Rumanian armies collapsed the Russians were forced to extend their lines to the south, triggering a considerable degree of military reorganisation across the board, which became the responsibility of the new Chief of Staff at the Stavka, General Vasily Gurko, who had temporarily replaced General Mikhail Alekseyev who was on extended sick leave. To expand the number of divisions in the line, Gurko converted them from sixteen battalions per division to twelve, thereby bringing the Russian Army into line with the German system. This was a very ambitious programme, for although it promised to create another sixty divisions, the question was whether the Russians had the experienced senior officers and staff to bring them into action, or indeed the artillery batteries needed to give them the requisite firepower. The extra divisions were supposed to be of front line quality, but were soon allowed to deteriorate into second line formations, incapable of reaching the standards required. All told these reforms did little to improve military efficiency while proving a distraction from some far more pressing underlying problems.
Meanwhile, Allied efforts for 1917 were concentrated on General Robert Nivelle’s ambitious plans for a war-winning French offensive in the Champagne area, supported by a diversionary attack by the British at Arras, both scheduled for April. Yet a prominent role was still envisaged for the Russians, who were expected to add further pressure on the Germans by launching a major new spring offensive on the Eastern Front. Gurko cautiously insisted that May 1917 would be the earliest that the Russians would be ready to attack. But by then everything would have changed.
The winter of 1916–17 was exceptionally severe, which exacerbated the transport and supply difficulties faced by the Russians already struggling to cover the new Rumanian sector of the front. Although the performance of the munitions industries had improved, it was apparent that the supply of many of the basics of life: food, winter uniforms and even essentials like boots was still lagging far behind demand. Ominously, this triggered several mutinous riots among the worst affected regiments, even though on the surface everything seemed to be proceeding as normal.
Discontent within the Army was, however, only a small part of the story. The Russian home front was gradually collapsing under the intolerable strain of war. The Tsarist government did not have the flexibility necessary to cope with the plague of economic, political and social problems that infected the land. The Tsar himself perceived any form of democracy as a threat to his regime and, rather than introducing an increased measure of liberalism, was more attracted to the idea of a total dissolution of even the tokenistic Duma. Appointments to positions of considerable authority were routinely assigned by the Tsar on the grounds of either naked favouritism or the authoritarian credentials of the candidate. Spy scares raged through society, with particular suspicion falling on any Russian general unfortunate enough to have a Germanic name. Meanwhile, incompetence and corruption blossomed unfettered, while at the centre the Tsar was publically embarrassed by the adherence of the Tsarina Alexandra to the ludicrous cult of Rasputin, an unhinged religious mystic with a penchant for irreligious pursuits. The whole despotic system of government was resting on just a few weak individuals. Russia was being hollowed out from within and the vacuum at the centre was creating dangerous instability.
The Russian armies may have been short of food rations, but they actually had priority in the allotment of the harvests; the result was increasing food shortages in the major cities. Production of agricultural food stuffs was generally in sharp decline, severely affected by the call-up of so many farm workers, shortages of essentials like fertilisers and the continuing distribution problems on the vastly overstretched railway system. As the population of the cities began to starve, popular discontent spread. Inflation was soaring, but wages remained static, so the poor were priced out of the market for whatever food was available. In a severe winter there were also shortages of fuel. The result was food riots, widespread industrial strikes and open political dissent, with most participants unanimous in blaming the Tsar and his government for their suffering.
The Tsar himself was oblivious to the threat; he ruled by divine right and was therefore above such mundane considerations. Meanwhile, all about him his regime was falling apart with amazing rapidity. Political demonstrations multiplied exponentially and there was ever-increasing vigour in the protestors’ demands for food, political change and, increasingly, direct action. As more and more military units began to go over wholesale to the revolutionaries, the functionaries of Imperial government found themselves subverted on all sides. Many fled, while those who overtly resisted risked their lives. By the time General Mikhail Alekseyev had returned from sick leave to resume his position as Chief of General Staff, he could offer little support to the beleaguered Tsar. In 1906 the Russian Army had put down a revolution, but in 1917 it both lacked the enthusiasm and was far too occupied with the war to open fire on the people.
By March 1917, Russia was in a state of flux, racked by an incoherent revolution: not a rigorously planned affair, but rather a series of simultaneous uprisings against a corrupt and introspective regime. Two organisations emerged with ambitions to control events: the first was the liberal-minded Provisional Government, set up by prominent members of the Duma to try and control
developments until democratic elections could be organised for later in the year; more threatening to the establishment was the Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (or Soviet), which adopted a socialist viewpoint. In the early stages of the revolution the competing bodies were able to adopt a modus vivendi, co-existing in a dual structure and, for the most part, putting aside their differences to protect their position from the prospect of a counter-revolution. The Tsar, however, could find support from nowhere. The Russian Army stood aloof, its senior generals bluntly recommending his abdication as the solution: this was hardly what Nicholas II wanted – or, indeed, expected – to hear, but as the situation spiralled out of control he was left with no choice. Finally, on 15 March 1917, he abdicated in favour of his brother, the Grand Duke Michael, who promptly rejected the poisoned chalice. The Allies, too, showed little concern for the Tsar’s person, officially recognising the Provisional Government as his legitimate successor within a week of his abdication. In this they were encouraged mainly by the fact that the new regime seemed inclined to continue the Russian war effort. It also meant that they were better able to present the war as one of the democracies of the Entente fighting against the despotic regimes of the Central Powers – something they could hardly push with much conviction while Russia was still ruled by tsars. This would prove especially useful in trying to inveigle the United States of America into the war.
