BRITISH TROOPS CROSSING THE RIDGE BETWEEN DELI ABBAS AND KIFRI The glare and dust and heat of marching in the daytime in Mesopotamia can better be imagined than described. Often where a man's pith helmet ceased its shade, his face was blistered as by fire. In this campaign the services of mule drivers, whose jerky carts were compelled to act as ambulances in the early advance, were heroic. harness or creaking of a transport cart, the host of 20,000 men moved like a great machine across the desert. Time after time men in the ranks and officers at the heads of columns reached for a pipe but remembered just in time, and soon in the still air the soldier moved like one asleep over the illimitable level beneath the stars. At dawn the columns diverged, General Keary leading his men against the left face of the redoubt, and General Kemball against the right. It was evident that the Turks were yet unalarmed for the relief force passed silently through the Arab fires in the cold light of the after dawn. Daylight was growing, but General Keary had been ordered to wait until General Kemball's force came up. His route was longer and he was two hours after time. By the delay and enforced wait, the element of surprise was lost and the attack foredoomed to failure for Kemball and Keary had no advantage in numbers, the Turk was infinitely better placed, and the relieving force was compelled to seek a rapid decision through the exigencies of desert, waterless country. After marching all night the troops fought on through long sun-baked hours, yet at half-past four no progress had been made, and withdrawal was ordered and effected in good order. The reverse of March 8 made Townshend's case almost hopeless; whatever action was now taken the waters would have to be reckoned with. After failure to break through El Hanna, January 21, trench warfare had begun on the left bank and continued until the capture of the position on the morning of April 5. There was little resistance at this spot but the Turk was playing for time-time to starve out Kut, time to wear the British down as they advanced-and he fell back, three miles beyond the El Hanna lines, on to what was known as the Falahiyeh position. This was rushed at night, and the attackers pushed on straight to Sannaiyat where the enemy held three lines, all with their flanks resting on river and marsh. Six miles behind this again lay his strongest position of all, the Sinn line, which he had been building up for months. Two attacks were delivered on Sannaiyat, but both failed, and at the end the elements themselves enlisted for the Turk, and with the rains the Tigris rose and the marsh spread. On the night of the eleventh a thunder storm of extraordinary violence followed by a water-spout, a hail storm and a hurricane set the spray leaping four feet in the Tigris and the water in the marsh rising visibly. For a time all movement on the left bank was impossible, and the relieving force put its energies into clearing up the network of trenches and the two difficult lines of Beit Aiessa and Chahela. Though the Turks counter-attacked determinedly with twelve battalions, flinging into the assault the famous 2d Division of Constantinople, veterans of the Balkan War and of Gallipoli, they were repulsed and put out of action with a loss of the best part of two divisions. But the attack had not yet carried the Sannaiyat position, and to go forward with the possibility of the Turk letting in the Tigris upon the rear was not to be thought of and once more, April 22, when the floods had somewhat abated the Mesopotamian Army attacked, with no success. A FINAL EFFORT TO RELIEVE THE GAR- One more effort was made to prolong the struggle. On the night of April 24, the paddle steamer Julnar with a cargo of provisions sufficient to feed the garrison for three weeks attempted to force the blockade. Eyewitness says: "The Julnar started her voyage at nine on a moonlight night. A surprise was, of course, impossible; she awoke the whole camp with her engines and screw; and it was not long before we heard the fusillade she drew from the Turks. She ran a terrific gauntlet of rifle and machine gun fire from both banks as she passed through the enemy's position at Sinn, but she was well plated and sandbagged and steamed through. She was nearing Magasis, within four miles of Kut, when she struck the steel wire hawsers which the Turks had stretched across the stream. Her rudder became entangled and she was held up. . . . With a nice calculation the Turks had laid their trap for their prize at the one point on the river where she would be out of range of the guns both of the Kut garrison and of the relieving force. The next morning an airman sighted her moored to the bank by Magasis fort, intact and floating on her own keel. The Turks drew rations from her the same day, and christened her 'The Gift'. " G ENERAL TOWNSHEND IS FINALLY The drama of Kut which had cost the relieving force 22,500 lives was played out; only the epilogue remains to be told. On the morning of April 29, Townshend sent a wireless: "Have destroyed my guns and am destroying most of my munitions and have sent out officers to Khalil to say am ready to surrender. Khalil is at Madug. I am unable to hold on any more. I must have some food here. I have told Khalil today, and have sent launch with deputation to bring food from Julnar." Nine thousand fighting men, nearly 3,000 British and 6,000 Indians surrendered at Kut. The Turks were MAP SHOWING THE TURKISH DEFENSES BEFORE KUT Sheik Saad and Orah were evacuated by the Turks during the first ten days of the British advance. Frontal attack failed against the Umm-El-Hanna lines, but a diversion against the enemy's strongest position at Es-Sinn was almost successful. In the first week in April both Umm-El-Hanna and Falahiyeh fell, but the enemy still held Sannai-Yat and Es-Sinn; floods precluded further advance and Townshend was forced to surrender, April 29. can be but briefly touched upon. They fall under two phases: first a determined siege, then a protracted investment. For the first month Turkish pressure was very heavy upon the invested city, but with the advance of the relieving force, it relaxed and the question of ammunition was less pressing. Food was the great problem and not until after the costly actions of January 7, 13, and 22 had been fought by insufficient forces were hidden stores found in Kut which gave three months' supplies to the besieged on a gradually reduced scale. Kut con know how things stood. "I have ample food for eighty-four days," he said, "and that is not counting the 3,000 animals which can be eaten. I expect confidently to be relieved in the first half of the month of February. Our duty stands out clear and simple. It is our duty to our Empire, to our beloved King and country, to stand here and hold up the Turkish advance as we are doing now, and with the help of all, heart and soul together, we will make the defense to be remembered in history as a glorious one We will succeed-mark my words ... The scope of the Tigris as a line of communication was limited to the number of vessels that could move at one time up and down stream through the narrows. At Basra there was a model like a war game showing the position of every ship on the river with its distinguishing flag, and with this map before him the controller of navigation at the end of the wire regulated the movements of the fleet. would not eat the bullocks or oxen, and scurvy took heavy toll of them; in the hospitals, milk gave out, and the patients' diet was confined to cornflour or rice water for the sick, and ordinary rations for the wounded. Early in March it was clear that the vitality of the troops was almost exhausted, the recuperative power of the sick was low, and skin and flesh had lost the power of renovation. The disappointments of the failures of January and March 8 left them weary with exhausted expectancy. Again on the tenth Townshend issued another communiqué sympathizing with his men but inviting their co-operation in garrison was on the verge of starvation, and on the day of surrender the men in the trenches were too weak to carry back their kits. To an heroic defense of five months succeeded two and a half years of captivity with all its hardships and humiliations, and more than half of the rank and file succumbed to the hard conditions of exile. When the armistice was concluded it was found that of 2,680 N. C. O.'s and privates taken at Kut over 65 per cent had perished. Of the 10,486 Indians, combatants and followers, 1,290 died and 1,773 were untraced. Most of the Kut prisoners perished in the terrible crossing of the desert During the war the camel has been the steed of the German and the Turks, the Arab and the Indian, the Anzac and the South African. Because the desert is his home, he can bear its glare and dust and sandstorms, and carry heavy burdens for long distances without food or water. He is not swift like motor transport, but he is valuable in that he can penetrate through trackless sandy wastes. pressure upon the Tigris. In January, 1916, Townshend was shut up, and on the 9th of the month the evacuation of Gallipoli had been completed. Before the Turkish troops released from this area could be redistributed on the Saloniki Bagdad, and Caucasian fronts, Grand-Duke Nicholas decided to advance, although the difficulties of winter fighting among the plateaux and mountains of Armenia might have. deterred a bolder man. In December, 1915, the Russian Caucasian army had been reinforced by 170,000 men, and a new expeditionary force under General Baratov sent to clear Central Persia |