Third attempt to relieve Kut

The third relief attempt was the last chance for General Charles Townshend’s division, besieged in Kut on the Tigris since December 1915. After the defeat at Dujaila in March, the Anglo-Indian Tigris Corps, now commanded by General George Gorringe, received the fresh 13th Division, veterans of Gallipoli. On 5 April 1916 it took the trenches in the Hanna defile, abandoned by the Turks, and in the evening the position at Fallahiyah. The next Turkish line, at Sannaiyat, between the river and the marsh, withstood three attacks: on 6, 9 and 22 April. On the right bank the British took Beit Aiessa on 17 April, but during the night they had to beat off a violent Turkish counter-attack. All the while they were also fighting the swollen Tigris and the wind, which drove the water of the marshes onto their trenches. On the evening of 24 April the steamer Julnar tried to carry food into the town, but stuck at Magasis. Five days later Kut surrendered.

Name and dates

The British official history (Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, volume II) describes this fighting as the third and last attempt to relieve Kut (the last attempt at relief), with the battles of Hanna and Fallahiyah, Sannaiyat and Beit Aiessa. Gorringe intended to advance on 1 April, but a downpour that began on the night of 31 March/1 April and lasted until 2 April put the attack off to 5 April. We take that day as the start of the battle. We take its end as 24 April, when in the evening Julnar sailed from Fallahiyah. The ship ran aground at Magasis during the night of 24/25 April. The last land attack, on Sannaiyat, took place on 22 April, and according to the official history on the same day Gorringe concluded that, in the time that hunger left Townshend, further attacks had no chance.

Background

After Dujaila Townshend claimed that, after another cut in rations, he could hold out until 15 April. Gorringe therefore had a few weeks to prepare a new attack. On 14 and 15 March the Tigris reached its highest floods. The water flooded the trenches of both sides, cut the roads and threatened to burst the embankments, which had to be repaired constantly. Gorringe gave up the outflanking of the Turkish Es Sinn position on the right bank, because that route turned out to be more exposed to deliberate flooding by the Turks than had been thought. He decided first to take Hanna, then Sannaiyat on the left bank, and only at the end to strike at Es Sinn. Meanwhile the sappers sapped forward towards Hanna, and by 28 March they had come to within about 140 metres of the Turkish trenches.

By 24 March almost all the infantry of Major-General Frederick Stanley Maude’s 13th Division, brought from Egypt after the evacuation of Gallipoli, had reached Sheikh Saad. Its transport wagons, however, were stuck in the floods, and the lack of river steamers again limited everything. On 2 April the staff in Basra reminded Gorringe that he had food at the front for only seven or eight days, so the columns of guns, cavalry and transport moving up the river by road had to be halted at Amara. At the beginning of April, according to the official history, Gorringe had just over 30,000 infantry and 127 guns, eight aeroplanes, three seaplanes and five river gunboats. Many battalions, however, were weak, made up of recruits and drafts for the units shut up in Kut, and experienced officers and NCOs were lacking.

The British estimated the Turkish forces on the Tigris at about 30,000 infantry and 88 guns. According to Moberly there were in fact about 20,000 of them, in five divisions. The Ottoman troops at Kut were commanded by Halil Bey (Halil Kut), and the whole Sixth Army by Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz. According to Turkish studies the positions on the right bank were defended by Ali İhsan Bey’s XIII Corps. On the left bank, in the narrow defile between the Tigris and the Suwaikiya Marsh, the Turks had successive lines of trenches: at Hanna, at Fallahiyah and at Sannaiyat, each a few kilometres behind the previous one.

Hanna and Fallahiyah (5 April)

At 4.55 a.m. on 5 April, before sunrise and without artillery preparation, the 13th Division moved off against the trenches at Hanna. The first and second lines fell almost without resistance, and by seven the British had taken all five. The Turks had withdrawn during the night, leaving only a small rearguard with machine guns. Prisoners said that the water had forced them to retreat. On the right bank General Henry Keary’s 3rd Division took the abandoned Abu Roman position before noon. Gorringe wanted to give the Turks no breathing space. The attack on Fallahiyah, planned for noon, was however postponed to the evening because of the heat, the mirage and the open ground. At 7.35 p.m. the 38th and 39th Brigades went in to the assault and by nightfall had taken the position, which according to the British was held by only three battalions. The 13th Division lost 1,868 men that day, most of them at Fallahiyah.

Sannaiyat (6–9 April)

That same night Gorringe threw General George Younghusband’s 7th Division against Sannaiyat. Its brigades, delayed by units of the 13th Division coming off the battlefield and by the winding Turkish trenches at Fallahiyah, did not manage to approach under cover of darkness. The distance turned out to be more than one and a half kilometres greater than had been thought. At dawn on 6 April the 28th and 19th Brigades were crossing the open plain and still could not see the Turkish trenches when machine-gun and artillery fire from both banks of the river fell on them. The attack stalled a few hundred metres short of the position. The brigades lost 1,168 men. Meanwhile the wind was driving the water of the Suwaikiya Marsh onto the British trenches, and the Tigris rose above the highest level of the year, so Gorringe had to call off a night attack.

Over the next two nights the 7th Division pushed its trenches closer to the Turks. Reconnaissance showed that the marsh could be forded, but Gorringe judged an outflanking move too risky. On 9 April at 4.20 a.m. the 13th Division advanced on Sannaiyat in the dark. When flares rose above the Turkish trenches and fire came down, some of the chilled soldiers, who had long been lying ready, fell back and drew the following waves with them. The first line broke into the Turkish trenches but, without support, was driven out with grenades. The division lost 1,807 men. According to Townshend, Halil later admitted to him that the attack failed only for lack of support.

Beit Aiessa (12–19 April)

General Percy Lake, commander of the forces in Mesopotamia, concluded that the right bank now offered a quicker route to Kut. On 10 April he asked Townshend whether he could hold out longer. Townshend cut the rations again and promised to hold out until 21 April, and on 14 April, after air drops had been announced, until 29 April. From 15 April airmen dropped food into the town. On the right bank the Turks cut the river embankments and flooded the ground in front. On 12 April brigades of the 3rd Division waded knee-deep in water and drove back the Turkish outposts, losing over 400 men. On the morning of 17 April the 7th and 9th Brigades took the main position at Beit Aiessa, killing about 300 Turks and taking about 180 prisoners.

In the evening the Turks counter-attacked from the west and south-west with at least twelve battalions, including eight from the 2nd Division. They broke the 9th Brigade and recovered part of the lost ground, but by dawn on 18 April their successive attacks had broken against the 8th Brigade. The British lost about 1,600 men and 15 machine guns in these days. Gorringe estimated the Turkish losses at 4,000–5,000. Moberly observes that although the counter-attack was a tactical defeat for the Turks, in practice it stopped the British advance on the right bank. On 19 April the 13th Division tried to push on across flooded ground and lost over 600 men, gaining little. On the same day Goltz died in Baghdad.

The last attack on Sannaiyat (22 April)

Lake and Gorringe concluded that the Turks had weakened the garrison of Sannaiyat to reinforce the right bank. The attack planned for 20 April had to be postponed because the wind had again flooded the trenches. On the morning of 22 April the 7th Division advanced on a narrow front through mud and water, in many places knee-deep. A battalion made up of the remnants of the Black Watch and the Seaforth Highlanders, together with the 92nd Punjabis, broke into the first and second Turkish lines, fighting in the mud, often unable to use their rifles. Turkish counter-attacks drove them back. The division lost 1,283 men. In the evening Lake reported to India and London that since 5 April the Tigris Corps had lost 9,700 men, a quarter of its strength, and still stood about 19 kilometres from Kut on the right bank and 24 kilometres on the left. Gorringe concluded that his soldiers had reached the end of their strength.

Julnar (24 April)

There remained one last, desperate attempt to deliver food by river. The steamer Julnar, armoured and stripped of her woodwork, carried 270 tons of supplies. She was commanded by Lieutenant Humphrey Firman, with Lieutenant-Commander Charles Cowley, an expert on the river from the Lynch shipping company, as his second. On the evening of 24 April (according to Moberly at 7 p.m., according to Newbolt at 8 p.m.) the ship sailed from Fallahiyah, while British artillery and machine guns tried to drown the noise of her engines. She passed under fire by Sannaiyat and Es Sinn, but at Magasis a shell hit the bridge and killed Firman. A few minutes later Julnar caught on a cable stretched across the river, ran aground and had to surrender. Cowley died in captivity in unclear circumstances. Both were awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously.

Losses

According to the official history, the Tigris Corps lost about 9,700 men from 5 to 22 April, and over 23,000 in the less than four months of fighting for the relief, from January to April. Some studies give about 30,000 killed and wounded for all the relief attempts. Some battalions practically ceased to exist: at the end of April only 48 of the original 842 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, the Black Watch, were left. Full figures for Turkish losses are lacking. Gorringe himself estimated them in the night counter-attack at Beit Aiessa at 4,000–5,000. Ottoman losses during the whole siege are usually estimated at about 10,000.

Significance

The failure of the third attempt sealed the fate of Kut. On 26 April Lake instructed Townshend to open negotiations, and on 29 April the garrison surrendered. Moberly writes of the Tigris Corps’ long struggle against the adversities of nature and setbacks in battle. Floods, wind and rain repeatedly spoiled British plans, and the lack of ships prevented all the forces from being assembled in time. The Turkish soldiers repeatedly defended themselves and counter-attacked with great courage, and their commanders skilfully used the water, flooding the ground in front of their positions. The experience of these weeks became the basis of the reforms that Maude carried out when in August 1916 he took over command in Mesopotamia.