MESOPOTAMIA.
The campaign in which the Thirteenth Hussars were now to share was of
great importance to England, and not without importance to the decision
of the world-war. It may be well to say something here on the subject.
The designs of Germany in bringing about, after many years of elaborate
preparation, the conflict of 1914, were not fully understood until they
were laid bare in Chéradame’s book, ‘The German Plot Unmasked,’ which
was published in 1916, with an Introduction by Lord Cromer. Though
England was the greatest of Asiatic powers, and more concerned in the
march of events in the East than any other nation of Europe, except
possibly Russia, she had to learn from a Frenchman how her Eastern
Empire was threatened by Germany--just as she had formerly had to
learn from an American sailor, though she was the greatest of maritime
nations, the influence of sea-power upon History.
To put it in a few words, Germany aimed, as Napoleon had aimed a
century earlier, not only at supreme dominion in Europe, but at supreme
dominion throughout the world. To effect this aim she had brought
about the alliance with Austria, which placed at her disposal the
whole resources of the great central European block, about a hundred
and twenty millions of people highly organised for war, and had
also succeeded in establishing her paramount influence over Turkey,
which meant not only another twenty millions of people, but a vast
territory stretching very nearly from the frontiers of Austria across
the Bosphorus and far into Asia. The inclusion in the alliance of
the comparatively small but powerful state of Bulgaria practically
completed Germany’s line of communication with Turkey, and made her in
fact dominant from the Baltic to Constantinople, and on through Asia
Minor to Arabia. A great strategic line of railway had been designed,
and in part constructed, which was to run from Constantinople to
Baghdad, and was to be continued to a terminus on the shores of the
Persian Gulf.
[Illustration: “GERMANY AND HER CONFEDERATES”]
Italy was a doubtful ally, but was nominally with Germany too, and
might at least be regarded as neutral.
The German scheme was to deal first with the two great Continental
powers which stood in Germany’s way, France and Russia. If they could
be attacked and overthrown, as she believed they could be, by a swift
onslaught upon each of them in turn, the Continent of Europe would
be at her feet. It was calculated that England would be neither
willing nor able to interfere in their behalf before their fate was
sealed. Then, with France and Russia powerless, or even possibly
enlisted as vassal States, Germany would turn upon the only power
which stood between her and the dominion of the world--England. Having
a contemptibly small Army, and no allies in Europe, England would
either come to heel without fighting, or would be attacked in India
and overwhelmed, probably with the help of the Indians themselves.
Her fleet would not be able to help her against vast armies, German
and other, marching upon the Indian frontier from Asiatic Turkey, and
the few hundred thousand trained men she could put into line would be
swamped by ten times their numbers. Afterwards, if America or Japan
or China gave any trouble, it would be easy enough to deal with them.
The only powers that really counted were the three great European
powers--France and Russia with their trained armies, and England with
her trained fleet.
It was an ambitious scheme, but not one that could be regarded as
visionary. It did not take sufficient account of England’s sea-power;
but undoubtedly if France and Russia had both been struck down,
and England had been left standing alone, he would have been a
very fearless Englishman who could have faced the future without
apprehension. Even supposing that no immediate attack upon England
had followed, her prospect of holding her own indefinitely against a
Germany rapidly outgrowing her in population and wealth would not have
been promising. The silent deposition of the naval power of France by
that of Germany in the course of a few years before the War had been a
striking lesson. But as a matter of fact a great attack upon England
was undoubtedly contemplated. “Der Tag” was to have come, and come soon.
Can any one feel sure that if England had stood by while France and
Russia were overwhelmed she could afterwards have successfully resisted
that attack? The Boer War had shown that at the beginning of the
century a combination of the Continental powers against her was not
improbable. Would it have been less probable fifteen or twenty years
later, when the sea strength of those powers compared with her own had
vastly increased, and when France and Russia had been incensed against
her by her failure to help them in their time of need? And if all the
navies of Europe had joined against her, could she have drawn for help
on India and the Dominions beyond the seas? Would she not have found
it hard enough to protect her own coasts? Happily for her she did not
stand aside, and that issue was never put to the test. Unready for war
as she was, and unwilling, she struck with sure instinct before it was
too late.
Even so, though England threw in her lot with Russia and France, the
struggle was not an unequal one, and, as everyone knows, there were
times when it seemed that the Allies might lose the war, or at all
events fail to make more than a drawn fight of it. Their latent numbers
and resources were greater, but the enemy enjoyed the immense advantage
of having chosen his own time, when he was ready and they were not. He
had also the advantage of united command and of the central position,
whilst the Allies were widely separated. These advantages very nearly
outbalanced latent numbers and resources. Eventually they proved
insufficient to do so, but they nearly succeeded. Nothing prevented
Germany winning but the fact that she had to put out all her armed
power at once, and to fight England then, instead of reserving her
Turkish strength for a separate duel with England later.
How formidable her Turkish strength was, a glance at the map will
show. Not only were the Turks a great military nation, with warlike
traditions and a population capable of raising two millions of fighting
men, but Turkey stood across the Straits between Europe and Asia, and
while guarding them could throw her weight freely upon the East. India
was England’s most sensitive point, the one where she was exposed to
military aggression by land. Strike her there, the Kaiser thought, as
Napoleon had thought before him, and the clay feet of the great image
would crumble under her.
Between Europe and the Indian frontier lies a stretch of country 2500
miles in breadth, held by three independent powers, Turkey, Persia,
and Afghanistan.[14] All these powers are Mahomedan, and of the three
Turkey is, or was in 1914, by far the most powerful. Not only was
she the strongest from a military point of view, but in the eyes of
countless millions of Mahomedans the Sultan of Turkey was the head of
the faith, the true successor of the Prophet; and he was entirely in
German hands. His power extended over a thousand miles, to the frontier
of Persia, which was not only weak, but at the moment unlikely to
use such strength as she had on England’s side. Turks and Persians
certainly did not belong to the same sect of the Mahomedan faith, and
had often been enemies in the past. But the Persians after all were
Mussulmans, and their religious sympathies in any quarrel between
Mahomedans and Christians were sure to be against the Christians.
Persia held a thousand miles more of the space between Europe and
India. Beyond her again to the eastward, right up to the Indian border,
lay the third of the independent powers--Afghanistan. The external
relations of Afghanistan were supposed to be under British control,
and her ruler enjoyed a British subsidy. But his people were turbulent
and fanatical, and belonged for the most part to the same religious
division of Islam as the Turks. They were believed to have little love
for the British, who had more than once invaded their country. Finally,
along the Indian border itself, and inside India, there were perhaps
seventy millions of Mahomedans, some belonging to wild mountain tribes,
constantly at war against the British, and most of the rest inclined
to acknowledge the religious supremacy of the Sultan. These Mahomedans
had, as a rule, served the British Government with fidelity, and formed
a considerable part of the Indian Army. But they too were of the faith.
Surely the Germans had some ground for hoping that if the Turks made
a vigorous push towards India from their own Asiatic territory, their
armies, organised and commanded by German officers, and supported by a
hot religious propaganda, would succeed in doing much evil to England.
They might, perhaps, succeed in sweeping the independent Mahomedan
States with them into a great invasion of India. In any case they would
seriously disturb the country, and probably stir up a Mahomedan revolt
with which England would find it hard to deal. If backed by a great
German army they would be irresistible.
The Kaiser was not far wrong. Even though by joining France and Russia
in 1914 England disarranged the German calculations, and brought on
the Eastern conflict prematurely from a German point of view, it was
shown that there had been good reason for the Kaiser’s confidence.
Turkey under German direction proved strong enough, even without
the help of a German army in the East, not only to repulse a great
Anglo-French attack upon her in the Dardanelles, but to inflict much
loss upon England in Western Asia, and with the aid of a strong
politico-religious propaganda, to cause sensible trouble on the Indian
border. In the end she failed, and the blow which was to have brought
about the overthrow of England in India resulted in the complete
collapse of the Turkish Empire: India, instead of being a source of
weakness to England, turned out to be a great addition to her military
power. But before this result was reached there were four years of
hard fighting, and at times the issue seemed to be very doubtful.
Unquestionably, the Anglo-Turkish conflict was a matter of great
moment, and the result of it seriously affected the success of the
whole German scheme.
It is interesting to consider in some farther detail what was the
strategical position of Turkey with regard to war in Asia when she
elected to draw the sword. The original home of the Ottoman Turks
was on the Asiatic side of the Straits, and it was there that in
this century, if not always, the main strength of the Ottoman Empire
has lain. Asia Minor was the great recruiting ground for the Turkish
armies, and the great central base from which she could strike out
eastward. Assuming that her alliances in Europe, and the possession of
the immensely strong position on the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles,
made her practically secure on the western side, as proved to be the
case, the value of the Asia Minor base for action eastward was very
great indeed. There she could place the bulk of her large army, and
from there she could throw her weight upon the distant possessions of
the Allies, where they were incapable of much mutual help,--upon the
Russians in the Caucasus on her left--upon Persia, and possibly through
Persia upon India in the centre--upon Egypt on her right. The Allies,
hard pressed in Europe, and therefore comparatively weak on these
extremities of the great semicircle, seemed to be at an almost hopeless
disadvantage in meeting the blows she might strike, outwards as it
were from the handle of an open fan towards the end of the spokes. Her
fronts in Asia were three--Armenia, Persia, Palestine; and it seemed
that from her inner position she could act with greater effect upon
each of these fronts than the scattered Allies could do, acting from
the outside inwards.
On the central of the three fronts the Turks were perhaps in a
specially strong position, for they had an established secondary base
in Mesopotamia, with its famous capital Baghdad, to which extended,
though with one or two gaps, the great strategical railway from
Constantinople. Beyond Baghdad they held the lines of the Euphrates
and Tigris rivers, and could push eastward into Persia by the highroad
which from time immemorial has seen the march of conquering armies
eastwards and westwards,--the armies of the Persians for Marathon and
Platæa--the armies of Alexander the Great on their way to India--and
numberless others before and since.
But what German and Turk alike failed to understand, or at all events
to appreciate at its full value, was the sea-power of England.
Sea-power had in old days given Rome the mastery over Carthage, and in
later times it had enabled England to wear out Napoleon. It was to be
the deciding factor now in the overthrow of the Turkish Empire, and
with the Turkish Empire, of the great German scheme of world domination.
For recognising at once the great danger to India of letting the Turks
push forward into Persia, and possibly into Afghanistan, recognising
also the value of the Persian oil-fields and other British interests
in that ancient country, Great Britain had determined not to await
Turkish and German aggression on its Indian frontier, but to meet
the threat with a bold offensive on Turkish soil. Directly it became
certain that Turkey had thrown in her lot with the Central Powers, in
the autumn of 1914, an expeditionary force sailed from India for the
Persian Gulf, and seized the mouth of the Shat-el-Arab, by which the
Tigris and Euphrates pour into the sea. The objects of this expedition
were at first limited. The protection of the oil-wells, of such
importance to our Navy, and the blocking of the German strategical
railway through Baghdad, were all that was immediately contemplated.
But the comparatively easy success of the Indian force, mainly composed
of native Indian soldiery, in defeating the Turkish troops near the
coast, encouraged the British commanders to push on up the rivers into
Mesopotamia. In 1915, a year after the outbreak of war, a force under
General Townshend had taken Kut-el-Amara, three hundred miles from
the sea, and the attack on the Dardanelles being on the point of open
failure, it was decided that as a counterblast to this failure Great
Britain should strike a great blow in the East by marching to Baghdad
and conquering all Turkish Arabia.
[Illustration: MESOPOTAMIA]
It was an important decision, and full of interest in many ways.
Mesopotamia is the cradle of history, sacred and profane. It is the
legendary site of the Garden of Eden, and from its plains, from Ur of
the Chaldees, the Patriarch Abraham set out with his flocks and herds
for the Holy Land. After his day it was the site of great empires.
Babylon lies in the centre of it, Nineveh not far to the north,
Shushan a few score miles to the east. It has seen Grecian and Roman
armies as well as Asiatic hosts, and the first explosion of the new
Mahomedan faith was across its plains to Ctesiphon, and Persia, and
Syria. Baghdad soon arose as the Mahomedan capital, and became famous
throughout the world. Undoubtedly, to attack Turkey in Mesopotamia was
to cover India and Persia from attack on her part; and to beat her
out of Baghdad was to strike her a blow which would resound all over
the world. She would perhaps exhaust herself in trying to recover her
position there, as Napoleon exhausted himself trying to recover from
a similar sea-borne blow in Spain. From the time when Townshend was
ordered to advance on Baghdad, the Mesopotamian Front became one of the
important theatres on which the Great War was being played.
As a fighting ground, Mesopotamia had some advantages for Great
Britain, and some great drawbacks. The southern part of it came down to
the sea, and communications with India and England were therefore open.
Everything required for the conduct of war could be supplied. Moreover,
though the climate of Mesopotamia was hot in summer, it was perhaps, as
before remarked, better suited for the Indian soldiery, who formed the
bulk of the British forces, than what Europeans would consider a more
healthy climate, the temperate climate of Northern France. Its plains
too were free from the geographical obstacles of mountainous countries.
Right up to Baghdad they were flat and bare, very different from the
wild fighting grounds of the Indian frontier, with their rocky peaks
and forest-clad hillsides and rushing torrents.
On the other hand, the summer heat in Mesopotamia was excessive, even
for Indians, and desperately trying to white men, while in winter
the wind and cold were at times severe. Moreover, the very flatness
of the Mesopotamian plains was a difficulty. The great rivers which
wound across them were in the rainy season swollen by the melting
snows of their upper courses, until they overflowed their banks, and
caused vast inundations and swamps impassable for troops. The march of
military forces in the hot season, with the thermometer in tents at
120° or more, was too deadly to face, and movement in the flood season
was impossible; so the real fighting season was almost limited to the
time from the end of the heat till the filling of the rivers--that is,
from about the middle of October to the middle of March.
At all other times, and indeed at all times, the rivers themselves
were the chief means of communication for troops and supplies; and
boats of any carrying power were few. Even when armed movement on
land was possible, any advance against an enemy in position was a
formidable task, for the flat ground afforded not a vestige of cover,
and troops had often to go forward to the assault of trenches over
ground as smooth and bare as a billiard-table, perhaps up to their
knees in mud, with deep swamps on each side preventing any attempt at a
turning movement. Mud, indeed, proved to be a more formidable obstacle
than mountains and ravines. Troops could not advance over it with any
freedom or swiftness, and they could not camp in it without misery and
loss; nor could they be fed in large numbers, for it made the transport
of supplies very difficult. Then the whole country, though not really
friendly to the Turks, was inhabited by Arabs who were anything but
friendly to an invader. Whether in the marshy lands near the rivers or
on the dry plains beyond, they were always hanging on the flanks of
an advancing or retreating force, their desert horsemen as elusive as
the “web-footed” men of the marshes, swift to gather and as swift to
vanish in the mirage of an enchanted land where all seemed fantastic
and unreal. With stubborn Turkish soldiery, organised by Germans,
intrenched in large numbers along the river lines, and supported by
larger numbers of these irregular auxiliaries on every side, the
country was no easy field of action for a British army.
Nevertheless, in spite of all difficulties of climate and ground, the
British expeditionary force had by the autumn of 1915 established
itself in control of the river mouths, with a considerable Turkish
province in its hands. Then, in an evil hour, came the decision to
advance on Baghdad, and a single British Division was pushed forward.
It was a very daring if not an insane project, and it failed. Before
the end of the year the unfortunate Division found itself besieged by
superior forces at Kut-el-Amara, and in the following April, after a
siege of five months, a starving British force of more than 10,000
men, nearly 3000 of them white men, was marched away by the Turks into
bitter captivity.
This was the heaviest blow that had ever been dealt to British arms and
British prestige in Asia. Not only had 10,000 men been taken prisoners,
but the Turks had inflicted upon other British forces trying to relieve
them a series of bloody repulses. Struggling forward, time after
time, with splendid devotion over the muddy flats, in vain attempts
to drive from strong lines of trenches an enemy superior in numbers,
our soldiery, white and black, had lost over 20,000 men in killed and
wounded, and had been forced to admit that for the time they could do
no more. The Turks had won a striking success, the measure of which to
Great Britain was the loss of an Army Corps.
But, much to its credit, the British nation refused to accept the
defeat in Mesopotamia as a final one. Though staggered by it and the
still greater repulse at the Dardanelles, England resolved that the
Turks should yet be conquered. Smarting from her defeats, she was not
wholly just to the leaders who had done all that men could do to effect
impossibilities. Some honourable reputations were sacrificed, and
wrong done to brave and capable soldiers. But at least her resolution
did not fail. Her legions, rapidly increasing not only on the soil of
the British Islands but throughout the Empire, and made available by
her sea-power for employment all over the world, were poured upon the
Turkish frontiers. The Turks had dealt her two stunning blows; but
brave fighters as they had shown themselves to be, they were to learn,
as Germany learnt, that it is not prudent for any nation to rouse the
English.
In Mesopotamia the military chiefs who had failed in their attempts to
reach Kut before its garrison was starved into surrender, were relieved
of their commands, and the Mesopotamian force was entrusted to General
Maude, who, unlike them, was now given time to collect a large army,
properly organised and equipped, and was helped in his task by every
possible means both in India and in England. Troops were sent to him
in numbers sufficient to let him meet the Turks on at least equal
terms, and immense efforts were put forth to give him the necessary
equipment for scientific modern warfare, and the transport necessary
for effective action. Roads and railways were established, and above
all, a great fleet of river steamers was gathered from various parts
of the world, in order that he might be able to use to the full the
natural highways of the country. During the whole summer of 1916 these
preparations were steadily pushed on, with a view to another advance
when the hot weather would be over.
It was to this country, and during this pause in the conflict, that
the Thirteenth were diverted from their work in France. The diversion
was of course a disappointment. The Regiment could no longer hope to
join in the coming triumph on the Western Front. Not for them the
grand pursuit to the Rhine, and on over German country to the gates
of Berlin, and the final march Unter den Linden. It was hard to give
up such a prospect. But it has been shown in what spirit the order
was received. They were soldiers, and their duty was to do their best
wherever they might be most useful to the country. If they were more
wanted in the East than on the Western Front, so be it.
And, after all, perhaps it might be as well for themselves. The coming
triumph in Europe might be long postponed, might even turn out to be
one for the Infantry and guns alone. In the plains of Mesopotamia they
might reasonably look for some Cavalry ground--for some chance of
striking a blow on horseback and justifying their existence. There,
at all events, they would not have the work and the honour altogether
taken out of their hands by the airmen, who were to them what the eagle
was to the horse, and find themselves chafing in impotence while the
enemy defied them from the shelter of his trench lines, against which
they were as useless as unarmed men. Mesopotamia held out some hope to
the cavalryman who still believed in his arm. He might yet get home
with lance and sabre, and take his revenge upon the footmen who had
so long held him at a distance with fortifications and “villainous
saltpetre.” Asia had always been the land of the horseman. Surely it
would be so again.
And he was not wrong. Both in Mesopotamia and in Palestine, horsemen
were to strike heavy blows before the war ended.