British occupy Hodeidah

A British chronology of the war states that on 13 December 1918 British troops occupied Hodeidah, Yemen’s most important port on the Red Sea and the main window on the world for Sanaa, which lies in the mountains. The course of events was more complicated. According to British war diaries, on 13 December ships carrying a battalion of the Indian Army’s 101st Grenadiers, sent from Egypt, appeared off the town. The British demanded the garrison’s surrender but received no answer. The landing took place only on the morning of the following day.

The dispatch of troops to Hodeidah was the result of the resistance that the Armistice of Mudros met with in Yemen. The Ottoman troops in this remote corner of the empire had long been cut off from Constantinople, and their commanders in Sanaa did not believe the news of the capitulation. The governor and the corps command preferred to come to terms with Imam Yahya rather than hand their weapons over to the British, and some officers demanded payment of arrears of pay before laying down their arms. Near Aden, Ali Said Pasha was already surrendering, but on the coast of the Tihamah the garrisons stayed at their posts. The British, who were short of men, decided to make a show of force in the country’s main port.

The grenadiers landed on the morning of 14 December and entered the town from the north. They were fired on by the Turks together with local Arabs, and the Indian soldiers had to advance from house to house. According to the war diaries they lost one man killed and one wounded. Then the situation reached a stalemate. Not even the arrival of another battalion, from the 7th Rajputs, changed it. The British, with the war already over, were in no hurry to compel the obstinate Turks by force, and instead of pressing the assault they waited.

The Turks in and around Hodeidah surrendered in batches. According to the reports of the British Residency in Aden, the breakthrough came only in January 1919. On 13 January an envoy from Constantinople arrived in the town and explained the situation to the officers, and the British and the Idrisi, ruler of the neighbouring Asir, put up the money that the Turkish officers were demanding before surrendering. By 16 January the garrison had laid down its arms, and at the beginning of February the prisoners were sent via the island of Kamaran, occupied by the British since 1915, to Suez. The last Ottoman units in Yemen surrendered in March 1919.

The British held Hodeidah for more than two years. In January 1921 they left it and handed it over to the Idrisi, their wartime ally, with whom they had concluded an agreement in 1915. Imam Yahya, who regarded the port as part of his kingdom, took this with indignation. The dispute over the port sharpened the war between the Imam and the Idrisi, and in 1925 the town was taken by the Yemenis.