SCOPE AND MEANING OF THE MESOPOTAMIAN CAMPAIGN. THE SHARE IN IT OF THE
THIRTEENTH HUSSARS.
The bearing of the campaign in Mesopotamia upon the issues of the Great
War has already been examined in the course of the narrative; but at
the risk of some repetition it seems desirable to sum up here the
achievements of the British in this part of the world, and to see what
effect they had upon the general situation.
No one was in a better position to give a correct view of the subject
in a few words than the Commander who had the thoroughly deserved good
fortune to complete the overthrow of the Turks and the conquest of the
country. General Marshall, in his despatch of the 1st February 1919,
writes as follows:--
“The campaign in Mesopotamia has lasted just four years. From small
beginnings, when Fort Fao was captured on November 6th, 1914, the
ration strength of the force when Mosul was occupied had grown to some
420,000, including labour battalions.
“The area of territory of the Turkish Empire which has been conquered
and occupied amounts to 114,000 square miles. The sphere of operations
has included Trans-Caucasia and Trans-Caspia, and detachments furnished
by the force are being employed over territory extending from
Deir-as-Zor on the Euphrates, 330 miles north-west of Baghdad, to Merv
in Trans-Caspia, some 1450 miles north-east of Baghdad.
“Actual captures since the beginning of the campaign amount to 45,500
prisoners and 250 guns, together with vast quantities of war material
of all descriptions.
“These results have been achieved in a country destitute of shade
in summer, and impassable owing to floods in wet weather, and are a
lasting record of the gallantry and endurance of the officers and men,
both British and Indian, who have fought uncomplainingly in spite of
heat, thirst, rain, and discomfort, for four years in Mesopotamia.”
This no doubt is a true and in some respects a striking presentment of
the case; but it is a modest one, and more might have been said without
exaggeration.
Mention has been made in earlier chapters of the scheme of world
dominion conceived by the Germans, and of the part which Turkey was to
play in it. Germany aimed not only at becoming the Paramount Power in
Europe, but at the supreme control of the East. The two things were
parts, and equally important parts, of the great conspiracy. They were,
so to speak, the twin pillars upon which the whole vast superstructure
of German dominion was to rest. For the Eastern part of the scheme
Turkey was essential. Upon the geographical situation and the military
power of Turkey, supported by German gold and German military science,
supported also by the Sultan’s influence as the spiritual head of
Islam, everything depended. Through their vassal Turkey, the Germans
were to strike down their most formidable enemy--England, whose fleet
stood between them and the dominion of the world. This is not mere
surmise. Germany made little secret of her intentions, or of the means
by which they were to be fulfilled.
When Turkey proceeded to declare war against the Allies and to carry
out her part in the German scheme, she was very soon able, after
beating off an attack on the Dardanelles, to throw her whole weight
into Asia. From the nature of things her military effort then resolved
itself into an advance upon three fronts. On her left she struck at the
Russians in the Caucasus, in the centre she struck at both Russians and
English in Persia, and hoped to work through Persia upon Afghanistan
and India. On her right she struck at England in Egypt. All these
countries--the Caucasus, Persia, Afghanistan, the Indian Frontier,
Egypt--were mainly or largely Mahomedan, and the Koran was to give
weight to the blows of the Turkish sword.
Before very long Russia broke up, and England stood practically alone,
so that in Western Asia it became a duel between her and Turkey. The
struggle was fought out on all three of the Turkish fronts, but mainly
in the centre and on the Turkish right. On both these fronts England,
though dangerously weak at first, grew stronger and stronger as time
went on, until eventually she overwhelmed her enemy. Instead of being
attacked and beaten in Egypt, she advanced from Egypt and crushed
the Turkish armies in Palestine and Syria. Instead of being attacked
and beaten in Persia and India, she advanced into Mesopotamia, and
planted the British flag upon the citadels of Baghdad and Mosul. Under
these tremendous blows the Turkish military power collapsed, and with
it collapsed the Eastern part of the German world-scheme. Perhaps
more than this might be said; for the fall of Turkey was no doubt a
heavy shock and discouragement to Turkey’s masters, struggling hard
themselves to carry out their conquest of Europe. But it is enough
to know that the British armies in Mesopotamia and Palestine brought
Turkey to her knees.
It is not necessary to inquire which of the two had the leading share
in this great feat of arms. They were portions of one Imperial Army,
and though fighting hundreds of miles apart, with a vast desert between
them, they were enabled, through England’s command of the sea, to
afford each other some support. The Mesopotamian Army more than once
sent large forces round by sea to join the army in Palestine, and
Allenby’s victories in Palestine reacted with immense effect upon the
situation in Mesopotamia. It was a signal instance of the influence of
sea power in war, for it did much to neutralise the great advantage
given to Turkey by her central position against her widely-parted
enemies. The two of them, striking separately, yet in a sense together,
from their common base, the sea, overthrew and ruined her.
It was the same sea power that enabled England to make each of them
efficient in itself. Not only did the sea bring them their hundreds of
thousands of fighting men, but the sea brought them everything needed
to let their men fight with success. As to the Mesopotamian campaign,
it was, as its very name implies, a river campaign, and the utilisation
of the Turkish rivers, especially the Tigris, was the first essential
of success. Nothing was so remarkable in all the history of the
campaign as the way in which the Tigris was broken in and transformed
from an almost insuperable obstacle into a great military highway. By
a hard and sustained effort, impossible for any nation but the mistress
of the seas, the turbulent undisciplined river was tamed and enlisted
in the service of the invaders, and its carrying power was increased
nearly a thousandfold. When Maude began his advance, its surface was
swarming with steamboats that had found their way, thanks to the daring
and skill of British seamen, from the Hughli and the Irawadi and the
Thames, until they were numerous enough to carry a large army into
the heart of the Turkish Empire, and to keep it supplied with all the
multitudinous necessities of modern war.
The river steamers were supported by rapidly constructed railways and
roads, and all manner of engineering works; new irrigation channels
were made or ancient channels reopened; many of the wild Arab tribes
were gradually brought to see the advantages of order and service;
crops were raised and gathered; altogether the activities of our people
were innumerable, and the conquest of a country almost as large as the
United Kingdom went hand-in-hand with the measures necessary for making
it prosperous and contented.
What its future will be no one can say. To take over such a country,
with its turbulent population and unsettled frontiers and outlying
responsibilities of many kinds, is a formidable task; but in any case
the conquest of it, from such an enemy as the Turk, was no small
contribution to the work done by the British Empire in the Great War.
It was performed at a distance from England, among scenes unfamiliar to
Englishmen, and, partly owing to Press restrictions, it did not greatly
appeal to the country’s attention, which was naturally enough fixed
upon the progress of the conflict in Europe; but it was none the less
a great achievement, and one of which all concerned in it may well be
proud.
Among those concerned in it was the Regiment whose history forms the
subject of this book, and there remains to be considered now the part
which the Regiment played in the campaign.
The Thirteenth were perhaps fortunate in that they did not come to
Mesopotamia until 1916, when the first half, and the most trying
half, of the Mesopotamian Campaign was over. They had no part in the
earlier fighting, when the British force was small and ill-found, and
its difficulties great. They were spared the troubles and sufferings
endured by the troops who conquered the lower part of the country;
they did not march up with Townshend to the bloody field of Ctesiphon,
or share in the desperate efforts to break through to his relief when
he was shut up in Kut. When they landed at Basra all that was over.
Horrified at the losses and sufferings entailed by its attempt--one of
its customary attempts--to make a small force do the work of a large
one, the nation had suddenly woken up to the needs of Mesopotamia; and,
blaming every one but those chiefly to blame, itself and its statesmen,
was now pouring in without stint Regiments and guns and river steamers
and every kind of war material. It could not bring back to life the
thousands of men sacrificed, or undo the injustice done to some of its
best soldiers, but it was determined that the Mesopotamian force should
for the future fight with reasonable chances of success; and though its
attention was soon diverted again, it certainly made a fine effort, the
result of which was to endure. The Thirteenth came in on the turn of
the tide, and though they had before them two years of hard work and
hard fighting, they were never to know the bitterness of defeat.
Nevertheless the work was severe, and the issue of the fighting was
often doubtful for a time. That it uniformly ended in success, and
eventually in complete triumph, was proof of very high qualities in the
men who led and the men who followed. For the Turk is a stubborn enemy.
He was once acknowledged, by general consent, as the best soldier in
Europe; and if time has deprived him of some of his reputation, it
still stands deservedly high.
As in the Palestine campaign, so in Mesopotamia, the Cavalry found its
chance. There, as in all modern war, it was no doubt the Infantry and
guns which mainly decided the fate of battles; but the Cavalry had much
to do for the armies both before and after battle, in reconnaissance,
in sweeping the country for supplies, in pursuit, and in the turning
movements which at times brought about the enemy’s ruin. Even in the
actual shock of battle they were not wholly excluded from a share of
fighting and honour. Some tributes to the value of their services in
Mesopotamia have already been recorded in earlier chapters. There is
one service which perhaps has not been sufficiently brought out. The
whole plan of General Maude’s attack upon the Turkish army which faced
him on the north bank of the Tigris, when he began his advance in
December 1916, was to push up the south bank, and keep threatening
their rear from that side until they had so extended the line held by
their troops that they were no longer strong enough to hold it all
securely--to prevent his forcing a passage at some point and getting
in behind their main body. As he put it in a letter to General Symons:
“The Turks were very sticky and would not go for a long time, but
we gradually stretched them and stretched them till owing to their
casualties they were much weakened, and then we struck boldly at their
tail across the Tigris. I had been hammering at this for two months,
and the fact that they would not give up Sannaiyat, and consequently
placed themselves in the dangerous position of having a line of
communication in prolongation of their battle front, was their undoing.”
And the Cavalry had much to do with this stretching process. In his
despatch giving an account of the whole advance to Baghdad, General
Maude writes:--
“The work of the Cavalry had been difficult. The flat terrain
intersected with nalas obstructed movement without providing cover, and
the state of the country after heavy rains made progress even for short
distances laborious. The absence of water, too, away from the river,
limited its radius of action. Nevertheless its reconnaissance work and
the blows delivered against the enemy’s communications helped in no
small way to bring about that dissipation of his forces which was so
essential to our success, and the pressure applied after the passage of
the Tigris to the retreating enemy was instrumental in completing his
final rout.”
The Thirteenth, working from their camp on the Hai river, did their
full share of the Cavalry work so described.
During the subsequent march on Baghdad, to quote again General Maude’s
letter to General Symons: “Your old Regiment did splendidly,” and in
the course of it, at Lajj, they had their first chance, while pressing
the pursuit, of delivering a real Cavalry charge, mounted and sword in
hand.
This charge, “a brilliant charge,” as General Maude called it, was
the first of several which have been described in earlier chapters.
At Tekrit, at Kulawand, and at Tuz Kermatli the Regiment got in with
the sword; and if the final onslaught at Hadraniya was made on foot
with the bayonet, it was none the less a hand-to-hand attack, after
a gallop across the open to the foot of the bluff on which were the
Turkish trenches. Nor is an assault with the bayonet less creditable
than a mounted charge. Naturally a Cavalry Regiment will always long
for that, and rejoice in it if it comes; but, as many leading soldiers
have now recognised, Cavalry under present conditions, to be thoroughly
efficient, must be able to fight on foot as well as on horseback. Ever
since the American Civil War this has become clearer and clearer. The
Thirteenth in Mesopotamia, as other Cavalry Regiments in this war,
have in a measure reverted to their old rôle as Dragoons, to whom the
firearm of the Infantry is as familiar as the sword.
Far from lessening the honour due to them, the fact that both at Lajj
and at Hadraniya the Thirteenth showed they could fight either way, is
very much to their credit. There was no lack of the Cavalry spirit.
Their whole inclination was to charge on horseback, sword in hand. But,
if necessary, they could do something more.
To conclude, perhaps the most valuable singly of all the services
rendered by the Cavalry during the campaign, was the one of which the
Hadraniya charge was only a part--namely, the long march round into the
enemy’s rear and the closing of his line of retreat, which led to the
surrender of his whole force. The credit of this daring feat is due
in the first place to Cassels and his own 11th Brigade, but the 7th
Brigade too deserved much credit, for it may be doubted whether without
their timely help Cassels and his men could have held their own against
the repeated and desperate attacks of an enemy so superior in numbers.
Altogether, the Thirteenth Hussars did their duty well from the
beginning to the end of their stay in Mesopotamia, which lasted for
two years and a half. During that time they gained much honour at a
heavy cost. Of their officers, eight were killed in action or died
on service, two were disabled and taken prisoners, and fourteen were
wounded. In other ranks the numbers were 90, 2, and 176. It is an
honourable record.