Attack on Ramadi

On 11 July 1917 a British-Indian column under Lieutenant-Colonel Haldane attacked the Turkish trenches at Ramadi, a town on the Euphrates a little over a hundred kilometres west of Baghdad. The British chronology of the war dates this action to 11–14 July, counting the withdrawal as well. The fighting took place in the hottest part of the Mesopotamian summer. According to F. J. Moberly’s British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign, on 8 July the temperature in Baghdad shot up to more than 122 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade, that is more than 50 degrees Celsius, and in tents and dugouts it was a few degrees higher still. The British official and historian Arnold Wilson says that in the sun the thermometer showed about 71 degrees.

A raid instead of an offensive

After the spring victories and the capture of Samarra the troops of General Frederick Stanley Maude went into summer quarters. On the Euphrates the British had held Fallujah since 19 March. In March the Turks had cut the dam on the Saqlawiyah canal in its vicinity, and an uncontrolled flood could threaten the railways from Baghdad to Samarra and Musaiyib and cut off Fallujah itself. In June it was decided to rebuild the dam. To cover the workers it was necessary to occupy Dhibban, some 30 kilometres east of Ramadi. On 5 July Maude proposed to the commander of I Corps, General Alexander Cobbe, combining the occupation of Dhibban with a blow at Ramadi, which was believed to be defended by about 120 cavalrymen, 700 infantry and six guns. He did not intend to hold the town permanently. He wanted to surprise and disperse the garrison, taking as many prisoners and as much booty as possible.

When the heatwave arrived on 8 July, Maude considered postponing the operation. Cobbe, on the advice of the local commander at Fallujah, advised against delay, because no cooling could be expected for many weeks. Wilson writes that Maude even proposed confining the operation to the occupation of Dhibban, but allowed himself to be persuaded. The 7th Infantry Brigade went to Ramadi, including the 1st Battalion of the Irish Connaught Rangers, the 91st Punjabis and the 2/7th Gurkhas, as well as two squadrons of cavalry, fourteen guns and four armoured cars. It was supported by three aircraft, and 127 vans and lorries could carry about 600 soldiers at a time. The troops marched only at night, by day the men were to rest in tents, and ice was carried for heatstroke cases. On the night of 7/8 July an advanced detachment occupied Dhibban without a fight, and on 10 July the whole column assembled there. Reconnaissance now estimated the Turkish garrison at 150 sabres, a thousand rifles and six guns, and reported that the Turks would abandon Ramadi if attacked.

A day of dust and heat

The column set off on the evening of 10 July, and at 1 a.m. on 11 July moved out from the Madhij defile towards the town. At dawn the armoured cars were stopped by a freshly dug canal linking the Euphrates with Lake Habbaniyah. The Gurkhas crossed it at about seven, but the trenches in front of Ramadi proved much stronger than had been thought: the first line was linked by a system of redoubts to a strong second line. About 900 metres of open ground separated the Gurkhas from the Turkish trenches. The Turkish artillery fired accurately and three times damaged the British wireless station. Two of the three aircraft had to land because of the heat. At about eight a dust storm blew up which lasted almost all day and made observation nearly impossible.

Then came a series of misfortunes. Shells cut the telephone lines, the signallers sent to repair them were killed, and two successive artillery observers were wounded or killed. The preparatory bombardment for the assault could not begin before 9.30, and after ten any action in such heat threatened disaster. At 9.20 Haldane called off the attack. Withdrawing the infantry by day across open ground was out of the question, so the soldiers lay out all day in front of the enemy. The water in the canal was salty. Ford vans brought them water from the river from ten until four in the afternoon, about 9,000 litres in all, and took back the wounded and exhausted. Heatstroke cases were nevertheless very numerous. Wilson writes that some soldiers went out of their minds and others died of thirst. The Turks shelled the British lines but did not counter-attack. Arabs attacked the flanks of the column several times without success.

The withdrawal

The Turks did not abandon their trenches, and Haldane’s exhausted soldiers were in no state to assault. At 3.15 a.m. on 12 July Haldane pulled them back to the palm groves by the river. He judged that taking the Turkish position would require prolonged operations, which in such heat were out of the question. On 13 July at 2 a.m. the column began its withdrawal. The rearguard was attacked by about 1,500 Arabs, and in the evening of that day the troops got back to Dhibban. Moberly states that the British lost 566 men in the whole action, 321 of them from the heat, which inflicted heavier losses on them than the enemy. Turkish losses were estimated at about 250 men, including about a hundred deserters who fled the day after the fighting.

Maude and Cobbe praised the handling of the column and the endurance of the soldiers. Wilson judged the expedition much more severely, stressing that it had been undertaken in the hottest season of the year despite Maude’s own original doubts. Ramadi remained in Turkish hands for another two and a half months. The Turks reinforced the garrison, but at the end of September, when the heat had eased, General Brooking’s British 15th Division surrounded the town and on 29 September forced its commander, Ahmed Bey, to surrender with more than 3,400 soldiers.