The Battle of Nasiriyah completed the British conquest of the Basra vilayet. The British and Indian troops of General George Gorringe, which at the end of June 1915 had set off up the Euphrates, fought their way out of the Akaika channel onto the main stream of the river on 5 July. A few kilometres short of Nasiriyah, however, they came up against strong Turkish trenches with both flanks resting on marshes, and for nearly three weeks they had to wait for reinforcements, fighting in a heat that killed and wore down the soldiers faster than the enemy. On 24 July, after the arrival of two more brigades, heavy guns and aircraft, Gorringe broke through the Turkish positions on both banks of the Euphrates. During the night the Turks abandoned the town, and on the morning of 25 July the British entered Nasiriyah.

Name and dates

The British official history (Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia) describes the whole operation in the chapter “Operations on the Euphrates and the capture of Nasiriya”, and the British lists of battle names speak of the actions at Nasiriya. The English Wikipedia dates the battle to 27 June – 25 July 1915, counting from the departure of the expedition from Qurna. Until 3 July, however, the British were only hauling their vessels over the dam on the Akaika channel and reconnoitring. They fought their first skirmishes with the Arabs on the afternoon of 4 July, and their first real battle with the Turks on 5 July, at the mouth of the channel where it joins the Euphrates. We therefore adopt the dates 5–25 July 1915. The most important days were 5 July (the fight at the mouth of the Akaika), 14 July (the failed attack on the Sandhills on the right bank) and 24 July (the decisive attack). The town was taken on 25 July.

Background

After the capture of Amara on the Tigris, the commander of the British forces in Mesopotamia, General John Nixon, wanted to take Nasiriyah on the Euphrates as well. The town was the Turkish seat of government in the land of the powerful Muntafiq tribal confederation. Nixon feared that the Turkish garrison could once again lead the Arabs from there against Basra, as it had in the spring at Shaiba. He also assumed that most of the Turkish troops had left the town for the Tigris, so resistance would be weak.

Marching across the desert at the height of summer was impossible, so General Charles Melliss’s 30th Brigade travelled in river steamers and boats across Hammar Lake and the Akaika channel, a branch of the Euphrates above Suq ash-Shuyukh (PL). It had no pack animals, and all its supplies went by water. The Royal Navy flotilla was commanded by Commander Wilfrid Nunn, who had the armed launch Sumana, the old paddle steamers Shushan, Mahsoudi and Muzaffari, and 4.7-inch guns mounted on boats. Pushing the vessels over the dam on the channel took several days, and only on the evening of 3 July were all of them through.

Forces

According to the British official history, on 5 July Gorringe had a mere 1,719 rifles: the 1/4th Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, the 2/7th Gurkha Rifles, the 24th and 76th Punjabis, half a battalion of the 48th Pioneers, sappers, and a mountain and a field battery. The waters of Hammar Lake were falling, and every transport of reinforcements was harder than the last. On 11–13 July the 12th Brigade arrived (the 2nd Battalion of the Royal West Kent Regiment, the 67th and 90th Punjabis, the 44th Merwara Infantry), and on 19 and 20 July the 18th Brigade (the 2nd Battalion of the Norfolk Regiment, the 110th Mahratta Light Infantry, the 120th Infantry), together with two heavy 5-inch guns, howitzers, a machine-gun battery and the Madras volunteer battery. Two aircraft flew in on 19 and 22 July. On the day of the decisive attack the British had about 4,600 rifles and 26 guns. The battalions, however, were badly depleted: the Hampshire battalion numbered only 140 men.

On the Turkish side, according to the British official history, the commander was Ahmed Bey. On 5 July at the mouth of the Akaika the British faced about 300 Turkish soldiers, about 2,000 Arabs and two guns, and during the fighting about 700 more soldiers with two guns arrived from Nasiriyah. Later the Turks were constantly reinforced. On 14 July the British estimated them at five to six thousand men with ten guns. According to estimates made after the battle of 24 July, Ahmed Bey had about 4,200 Turkish soldiers with 15 guns, as well as many Arab tribal fighters.

Course: the fight at the mouth of the Akaika (4–5 July)

At four in the morning on 4 July the gunboats with the 76th Punjabis took a building the British called Ati’s House, roughly halfway along the channel. In the afternoon the Gurkhas landed on the southern bank and, under Arab fire, made their way through the date groves to the wide and deep Shatra creek. Its far bank was held, so they spent the night there under fire. During the night the Hampshire battalion joined them.

On the morning of 5 July Melliss, with the 24th and 76th Punjabis and the mountain battery, advanced along the northern bank of the channel. The 76th were held up by heavy fire from behind low mud walls. The 24th came across the floods in Arab boats (bellums), but they too came under fire, landed and continued the attack on foot. Sumana, sent to help, was hit twice and put out of action. Before noon the Punjabis reached the Euphrates and, with rifle fire supported by the guns, began to get the better of the Turkish trenches and battery on the opposite bank. At about 1.20 p.m. the Turks hoisted white flags. The soldiers carried the boats by hand across several dozen metres of dry land, and Melliss crossed the river and took over the prisoners and guns. Meanwhile the pioneers and the Hampshire battalion had worked round the Shatra creek from upstream, and Turks retreating towards the Euphrates ran into the British and surrendered. Their Arab allies fled. By evening the channel had been cleared of mines and the flotilla anchored at its mouth.

The British took 91 prisoners and two guns, and lost 109 killed and wounded, including 25 killed. Half the losses fell on the 76th Punjabis. The next day Nunn, accompanied by the British political officer Sir Percy Cox, steamed to Suq ash-Shuyukh, an important trading centre with about twelve thousand inhabitants. White flags were flying over the town. The British hoisted a flag over the customs house and left the town in the care of the local sheikh.

Course: before the Majinina trenches (6–23 July)

On 6 July the flotilla and the troops moved up the Euphrates. Some fifteen kilometres short of Nasiriyah, in a bend of the river named after the nearby village of Asani, they came upon a barrier of sunken vessels (which did not, however, close the fairway) and strong Turkish trenches on both banks. On the right bank these lay behind the wide and deep Majinina creek, approached across completely open ground. On the left bank they began at a point the British named Thornycroft Point after a Turkish motor boat. Both flanks of the Turkish position rested on marshes. Gorringe, with about 1,900 rifles, many of them fit only for light duty because of the heat, decided not to attack without reinforcements. He sent all the shallow-draught vessels back to Qurna for more troops, and meanwhile pushed his positions closer to the Turks by night.

The first reinforcements arrived on 11 July. On the night of 12–13 July the Turks attacked the British trenches on the left bank three times and were repulsed each time. A reconnaissance in a bellum showed that a group of low sandhills (the Sandhills) on the right bank, west of the mouth of the Majinina, could be reached by boat through the marshes. Gorringe decided to take them, so as to enfilade the Turkish trenches from there and threaten their rear. On the night of 13–14 July the 76th Punjabis and the pioneers advanced the line on the right bank to the village of Shukhair without much opposition. At the same time Lieutenant-Colonel Climo’s 24th Punjabis travelled in bellums through the reeds towards the hills. The men had to push the boats by hand. At dawn, after a short bombardment by the mountain guns, they went in to the assault, wading waist-deep and deeper, but were held up a little over two hundred metres short of the trenches. Arabs from the marshes attacked them from the flank, and Turkish guns fired on them from the north. Climo ordered a withdrawal, which, under continuous fire and with the wounded in the boats, lasted until ten in the morning. Out of 436 men the regiment lost 56 killed and 91 wounded, and of its eight British officers only two survived.

Gorringe postponed the planned attack on the left bank and asked for more reinforcements, especially aircraft and heavy guns. The failed attack did, however, bring him an advantage: the alarmed Turks moved some of their troops from the left bank to the right, which, according to Gorringe himself, largely decided the later victory. Over the following days both sides fought small, stubborn actions, and the British dug their trenches ever closer to the enemy. According to the official history, from 6 to 23 July they lost 302 men in action. Heat and disease took far more. From 26 June to 23 July 373 sick front-line soldiers were sent back to Basra, and on 24 July another 316 lay in the hospital in the camp at Asani. On 21 July a Royal Flying Corps flight gave Gorringe a full picture of the Turkish positions for the first time.

Course: the attack of 24 July and the capture of the town

At five in the morning on 24 July, with a wind cooler than usual, the British artillery opened fire. At 5.30 a.m. the 12th Brigade, led by the Royal West Kent battalion, went into the attack on the left bank. By 6.40 a.m. the battalion had taken the trenches at Thornycroft Point, and the brigade, in heavy fighting, cleared the whole ground up to the Majadiya creek, where it captured six guns. On the right bank the launch Sumana, under heavy fire, towed an armoured barge carrying bridging material across the river and grounded it in the Majinina creek. The sappers and a Hampshire detachment each lost about twenty men in doing so. The barge and the bridges proved too awkward to use, but the barge acted as a dam and lowered the water. The Hampshire battalion, the Gurkhas and the 76th Punjabis waded the creek waist-deep, and the Turks fled from their trenches before the assault, leaving five guns behind. Before ten o’clock the whole Majinina position was in British hands.

The Turks still held out on a rear position on the Sadanawiya creek. It was over 43 degrees Celsius in the shade, and the telephone link between the staff and the brigades broke down, so for two hours the battle stood still. In the afternoon Nunn brought Shushan in to close range and shelled the defenders with all his guns, supported by field guns on the steamer Mejidieh. The Turks fled through the marshes to the north. In the evening Nunn went upriver to reconnoitre right up to the town. A gun on Shushan set a Turkish motor boat on fire, but the vessels were fired on from the rooftops, so the flotilla anchored for the night below the town. On the morning of 25 July representatives of the inhabitants came out to it with the news that the Turks had abandoned Nasiriyah during the night. Melliss entered the town with a hundred Gurkhas, and during the day the 12th and 30th Brigades joined him.

Losses

On 24 July, according to the official history, the British and Indians lost 104 killed and 429 wounded. The Royal West Kent battalion suffered most: it went into action under 500 strong and lost 44 killed and 110 wounded. Including the earlier fighting, battle casualties came to about 950 men, not counting the hundreds of sick. The navy had only five wounded in the whole operation. The British estimated Turkish losses on 24 July at about 2,000 killed and wounded. That day they took 450 prisoners, and by 29 July the number had risen to 951. They captured all 15 Turkish guns, 5 machine guns, three motor boats and large quantities of arms and ammunition. Some studies, including the English Wikipedia, give a round figure of a thousand prisoners and 17 captured guns.

Significance

The capture of Nasiriyah closed to the Turks the second route to Basra, besides the Tigris, and gave the British control of the whole Basra vilayet. In his report Nixon praised Gorringe and the troops, writing that seldom had an army had to fight in worse heat, and on 28 July King George V sent him his congratulations. The battle also showed the weaknesses of the operation in Mesopotamia, however: the lack of land transport, the dependence on falling water and the enormous losses to disease. Another victory strengthened Nixon’s conviction that the Turks were weak. As early as September his troops took Kut, and in the autumn they advanced on Baghdad, which ended in defeat and the surrender of Townshend’s division at Kut in April 1916.

Battle of Nasiriyah