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The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad
by Edward John Thompson
Published 1919
The Mesopotamian War was a side-show, so distant
from Europe that even the tragedy of Kut and the slaughter which failed to
save our troops and prestige were felt chiefly in retrospect, when the
majority of the men who suffered so vainly had gone into the silence of death
or of captivity. When Maude's offensive carried our arms again into Kut, and
beyond, to Baghdad, interest revived; but of the hard fighting which followed,
which made Baghdad secure, nothing has been made known, or next to nothing.
The men in Mesopotamia did not feel that this was unnatural. We felt, none
more so, that it was the European War which mattered; indeed, our lot often
seemed the harder by reason of its little apparent importance. Yet, after all,
Baghdad was the first substantial victory which no subsequent reverse swept
away; and it came when the need of victory, for very prestige's sake, was very
great.
Mr. Candler has written, bitterly enough, of the way the Censorship impeded
him in his work as official 'Eye-witness.' His was a thankless task; as he
well knows, few of us, though we were all his friends, have not groused at his
reports of our operations. No unit groused more on this head than my own
division. We usually had a campaign and a bank of the Tigris to ourselves.
'Eye-witness'
rightly chose to be with the other divisions across the river. Inevitably the
7th Meerut Division got the meagrest show in such meagre dispatches as the
Censors allowed him to send home. The 2nd Leicestershires, an old and proud
battalion, with the greatest of reputations on the field of action, remained
unknown to the Press and public. Our other two British battalions, the 1st
Seaforths and the 2nd Black Watch, could be referred to—even the Censors
allowed this—as 'Highlanders'; and those who were interested knew that the
reference lay between these two regiments and the Highland Light Infantry. But
who was going to connect the rare reference to 'Midlanders' with the
Leicestershires?
In May, 1917, the 7th Division tried to put together, for the Press, a
connected account of their campaigning since Maude's offensive began. After
various people, well qualified to do the work, had refused, it was devolved on
me, on the simple grounds that a padre, as is well known, has only one day of
work a week. The notion fell through. The authorities declined flatly to allow
any reference to units by name, and no one took any more interest in a task so
useless and soulless. But I had collected so much information from different
units that I determined some day to try to put the story together. I have now
selected two campaigns, those for railhead and for Tekrit, and made a
straightforward narrative. From a multitude of such narratives the historian
will build up his work hereafter.
An article by General Wauchope appeared in Blackwood's, 'The Battle that won
Samarrah.' This article not only stressed the fact that the Black Watch were
first in Baghdad and Samarra—an accident; they were the freshest unit on each
occasion, while other units were exhausted from fighting just finished—but
dismissed the second day of 'the battle that won Samarra' with one long
paragraph, from which the reader could get no other meaning except the one
that this day also was won by the same units as did the fighting of the 21st.
This was a handling of fact which appealed neither to the Black Watch, whose
achievements need no aid of embellishment from imagination, nor to the
Leicestershires, who were made to appear spectators through the savage
fighting of two days. If the reader turns to the chapter in this book entitled
'The Battle for Samarra,' he will learn what actually happened on April 22,
1917. The only other reference in print, that I know of, to the fighting for
Samarra is the chapter in Mr. Candler's book. This, he tells us, was largely
taken over by him from a journalist who visited our battlefields during the
lull of summer. He showed the account to officers of my division, myself among
them, and they added a few notes. But the chapter remained bare and
comparatively uninteresting beside the accounts of actions which Mr. Candler
had witnessed.
For this book, then, my materials have been: First, my own experience of
events quorum ego pars minima. Next, my own note-books, carefully kept over a
long period in Mesopotamia and Palestine, a period from which these two
campaigns of Samarra and Tekrit have been selected. Thirdly, I saw regimental
war-diaries and talked with brigade and regimental officers. Most of all, from
the Leicestershires I gained information. It is rarely any use to question men
about an action; even if they speak freely, they say little which is of value
on the printed page. One may live with a regimental mess for months, running
into years, as I did with the Leicestershires' subalterns, and hear little
that is illuminating, till some electric spark may start a fire of living
reminiscence. But from many of my comrades, at one time and another, I have
picked up a fact. I am especially indebted to Captain J.O.C. Hasted, D.S.O.,
for permission to use his lecture on the Samarra battle. I could have used
this lecture still more with great gain; but I did not wish to impair its
interest in itself, as it should be published. From Captain F.J. Diggins, M.C.,
I gained a first-hand account of the capture of the Turkish guns. And Major
Kenneth Mason, M.C., helped me with information in the Tekrit fighting. My
brother, Lieutenant A.R. Thompson, drew the maps.
In conclusion, though the Mesopotamian War was of minor importance beside the
fighting in Western Europe, for the chronicler it has its own advantages. If
our fighting was on a smaller scale, we saw it more clearly. The 7th Division,
as I have said, usually had a campaign, with its battles, to themselves. We
were not a fractional part of an eruption along many hundreds of miles; we
were our own little volcano. And it was the opinion of many of us that on no
front was there such comradeship; yet many had come from France, and two
divisions afterwards saw service on the Palestine front. Nor can any front
have had so many grim jokes as those with which we kept ourselves sane through
the long-drawn failure before Kut and the dragging months which followed.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. BELED
II. HARBE
III. THE FIRST BATTLE OF ISTABULAT
IV. THE BATTLE FOR SAMARRA
V. SUMMER AND WAITING
VI. HUWESLET; OR, 'THE BATTLE OF JUBER ISLAND'
VII. DAUR
VIII. AUJEH
IX. TEKRIT
X. DOWN TO BUSRA
Facsimile E-Book on PDF
A long, drawn-out campaign in appalling
conditions that was initially about protecting British oil interests but later
gave rise to visions of glittering prizes in the capture of Baghdad and the
crushing of the Turkish Empire in conjunction with the Russians.
Like Gallipoli, conditions in Mesopotamia defy
description. Extremes of temperature (120 degrees F was common); arid desert
and regular flooding; flies, mosquitoes and other vermin: all led to appalling
levels of sickness and death through disease. Under these incredible
conditions, units fell short of officers and men, and all too often the
reinforcements were half-trained and ill-equipped. Medical arrangements were
quite shocking, with wounded men spending up to two weeks on boats before
reaching any kind of hospital.
The early successes in the river delta were misleading; more and more troops
were sent to the Mesopotamia theatre, for operations towards Baghdad which
stretched the supply lines to the limit. There was a serious difference of
opinion between London, India and the Commander of the force, regarding the
role of the army. The fomer saw it as defensive; the latter two as offensive
with a view to capturing Baghad. The campaign was muddled: the attitudes and
complacency disastrous. The advance plodded on, until a resounding defeat in
November 1915 in front of Ctesiphon led to headlong retreat to Kut-al-Amara.
The army in Kut became surrounded and besieged; eventually 9,000 (3,000
British and 6,000 Indian troops) surrendered five months later - the greatest
defeat and loss in British military history up to that point.
Following the fall of Kut, the British ordered Major-General Stanley Maude to
take command of the British army in Mesopotamia. He introduced new methods,
which culminated in a decisive defeat of the Turks in February 1917, and the
capture of Baghdad in March 1917. On this day, the Berlin-Baghdad railway was
captured, and German schemes for Turkey were finished.
British forces (and Russians, advancing from the north and east) closed in on
the Turks throughout the autumn of 1917, and into the Spring of 1918. Despite
making great advances, however, and the additional pressure coming from the
north-west, where British forces in Palestine defeated the Turks, no decisive
victory was gained.
LEST WE FORGET
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