Battle of Sarikamish begins

The British chronology of the war records under 29 December 1914 the beginning of the Battle of Sarikamish (Turkish: Sarıkamış), at a small town with a railway station in the Russian Caucasus, several dozen kilometres from the fortress of Kars. In reality the Ottoman Third Army under the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, had gone over to the attack a week earlier, on 22 December, after preparations that the British chronology took to be the start of the offensive. 29 December was, however, one of the key days of the fighting for the town itself.

The march across the mountains

Enver’s plan was for two corps to outflank from the north the main Russian forces, standing in the valley of the Aras, and come out in their rear at Sarikamish. The march across the snowbound mountains proved a disaster. The X Corps of Colonel Hafız Hakkı first turned aside towards Oltu, where two Ottoman divisions fired on each other by mistake, and then crossed the Allahuekber ridge in a blizzard and bitter frost. According to Turkish sources, about 10,000 soldiers froze to death there. İhsan Pasha’s IX Corps also lost hundreds of men every night spent in the snow. By the time the troops reached Sarikamish they were already a shadow of the army that had set out on 22 December.

The assault on Sarikamish

On 26 December the first Ottoman units attacked the town. Its garrison was small. Colonel Nikolai Bukretov gathered several battalions, militia, railwaymen and soldiers from reserve units for its defence. Over the following days the Russians brought up reinforcements, and General Mikhail Przhevalsky took command of the defence. On 29 December, after the arrival of the remnants of the X Corps, the Turks launched their strongest assault. According to Turkish studies, about 600 soldiers of one regiment broke into Sarikamish but were driven out after heavy fighting. The frozen and hungry Ottoman units no longer had the strength to renew the attack with the same force.

Panic and Yudenich’s decision

On the Russian side the situation looked dangerous. The deputy viceroy of the Caucasus, General Aleksandr Myshlayevsky, who had arrived at the front a few days earlier, concluded that the troops on the Aras would be encircled. He ordered a retreat towards Kars and left the front. Sources date his departure to 28 December or to the following days. In the rear, as far as Tiflis, alarm spread, and alarming reports reached Russian general headquarters. At the same time an Ottoman detachment took Ardahan in the north.

The chief of staff of the Caucasus Army, General Nikolai Yudenich, decided, however, not to carry out the order to retreat. Instead of falling back to Kars, he brought further units to Sarikamish and prepared a counter-attack. In the last days of December the initiative began to pass to the Russians, and Enver’s exhausted troops themselves found themselves in danger of encirclement.