British capture Nasiriyah

On 25 July 1915 the British and Indian troops of General George Gorringe occupied Nasiriyah on the Euphrates without a fight. The Turks had abandoned the town during the night, after the British had broken through their positions a few kilometres downstream the day before. After almost a month of fighting in the heat and among the floodwaters of the lower Euphrates, the expedition which had set out from Qurna at the end of June came to an end.

The last day of fighting

On 24 July Gorringe, reinforced by two new brigades, heavy guns and aircraft, attacked the Turkish trenches on both banks of the river. On the left bank the 12th Brigade took the trenches at Thornycroft Point and on the Majadiya creek. On the right bank the launch Sumana, under fire, grounded a barge in the Majinina creek to serve as a makeshift dam, and the Hampshire battalion, the Gurkhas and the Punjabis waded across and took the Turkish positions. In the afternoon the Turkish rearguard on the Sadanawiya creek fled under fire from the ships. In the evening Captain Wilfrid Nunn sailed with three vessels right up to the town. White flags were already flying over Nasiriyah, but Turkish soldiers were firing from the roofs and wounded the commander of the steamer Shushan. As darkness was falling, Nunn anchored for the night below the town.

Entering the town

At about six in the morning on 25 July a deputation of leading inhabitants came alongside Shushan. They declared that the Turks had left the town during the night and invited the British to enter. Nunn informed General Charles Melliss, whose 30th Brigade was encamped nearby. Melliss with a hundred Gurkhas sailed up in Shushan, Sumana and Mahsoudi and took over the town. During the day the 12th and 30th Brigades arrived, while the 18th Brigade cleared the battlefield and guarded the waterway to the camp at Asani. By 29 July the number of prisoners taken had risen to 951. The British captured all fifteen Turkish guns.

According to the British official history, Nasiriyah had about ten thousand inhabitants. It was a relatively new town, founded in the nineteenth century by Nasir Pasha, chief of the Muntafiq tribal confederation, and since then the seat of Turkish authority in their country. The Muntafiq were reputed to be the most powerful and most warlike tribes of lower Mesopotamia. The town had wide, parallel streets and a few good buildings, but most of the houses were so filthy that the troops could not be quartered in them. Because of the floods Nasiriyah was in effect an island. This was a serious worry for Gorringe, because the field hospitals were overflowing, and the heat and disease were wearing down the soldiers more than the fighting.

The end of the conquest of the Basra vilayet

The capture of Nasiriyah gave the British the whole of the Basra vilayet, which the Government of India had ordered General John Nixon to secure. The Turks lost the second route, besides the Tigris, by which they could threaten Basra. In his report Nixon wrote that seldom had troops had to campaign in worse heat, and praised the cooperation with the navy and the air reconnaissance before the battle. On 28 July King George V sent him congratulations for Gorringe’s column.

Yet another easy victory, however, strengthened Nixon’s conviction that the Ottoman army in Mesopotamia was weak. His eyes were already turning up the Tigris, towards Kut, where Turkish troops were gathering. The British took it in September, and in the autumn they set off for Baghdad.