British win at Kut

On 28 September 1915 the British and Indian troops of General Charles Townshend defeated the Turks at Es Sinn on the Tigris, about 11 kilometres east of Kut. After a night march around the marshes, General Walter Delamain’s column took the redoubts on the left flank of the Turkish position, and in the evening drove back an approaching Turkish reserve with the bayonet. The British official history calls this action the Battle of Kut. It was the greatest British victory in Mesopotamia in 1915, but not the one Townshend had hoped for.

A position that could not be taken from the front

After the capture of Nasiriyah in July, the commander of the British forces in Mesopotamia, General John Nixon, obtained the consent of London and India to occupy Kut. The way was barred by the Ottoman army of Colonel Nureddin Bey, who had spent several months fortifying a position across the river. On the right bank the trenches ran along the high banks of an old canal, known as Es Sinn. On the left bank they stretched for about 11 kilometres, broken up by marshes, with three redoubts at the northern end. The river was closed by a barrier of boats and cables. The British, who had observed the fortifications from aircraft, judged them the strongest they had encountered in the campaign.

Townshend, who had almost 11,000 men and 28 guns, decided not to attack along the river, as the Turks expected. For two days he feigned an attack: on the right bank he pitched all his tents and had trenches dug in full view of the enemy, and on 27 September General Charles Fry’s brigade attacked the Turkish centre. According to the British official history a few sepoys deserted to the Turks and revealed the real plan, but Nureddin took this for a ruse. In the evening Delamain’s column crossed to the left bank by a pontoon bridge.

The day of battle

At two in the morning on 28 September Delamain led his battalions to their start line east of the Turkish redoubts. Some of them, under General Frederick Hoghton, were to turn the Turkish flank from the north, but in the darkness they lost their way and had to go round the whole of the Ataba marsh. Delamain did not wait for them. At 8.45 a.m. he launched half a battalion of the 117th Mahrattas, sappers and a battalion of the Dorset Regiment into the attack. Shortly after ten, after bayonet fighting, they took the North Redoubt, the Mahrattas losing half their men. The Turks gave up the Central Redoubt almost without a fight. At the South Redoubt they defended themselves stubbornly and counter-attacked, but at about 12.45 p.m. it too fell. Several hundred Turkish soldiers were taken prisoner.

The fighting took place in dreadful conditions. A strong wind raised clouds of dust, mirage blinded the gunners, and the water in the marshes turned out to be undrinkable. The telephone cable linking Townshend with Delamain ran out, and messages were carried by aircraft. Fry’s brigade, which did not know how the turning movement was going, failed to break through the Turkish centre. Towards evening Delamain set off with his exhausted men around the Suwada marsh to strike the centre from the rear, but ran into a Turkish reserve coming up from the river. The British and Indians, though barely able to stand, changed front and charged with the bayonet into the setting sun. The Turks fled, leaving four guns behind. Night ended the fighting.

Lieutenant-Commander Cookson

At about six in the evening Townshend suggested to the navy that it try to break through the river barrier after dark. Three armed launches approached without lights, but the Turks spotted them and opened fire from both banks. The flotilla commander, Lieutenant-Commander Edgar Cookson, had the Comet laid alongside the boat forming the centre of the barrier and tried himself to cut the cables holding it with an axe. Hit by many bullets, he died ten minutes later. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The flotilla turned back with fourteen wounded aboard the Comet.

An incomplete victory

In the evening Townshend did not know what had become of Delamain’s column, which spent the night on the battlefield without water or food in piercing cold. Nureddin used the darkness to withdraw his troops skilfully from all their positions. On the morning of 29 September aircraft found that the Turks were retreating up the Tigris, and that same day the British entered Kut without a fight. According to the British official history the Turks lost about 4,000 men, including 1,153 prisoners, and 14 guns. British losses from 26 to 28 September amounted to 1,233 men, including 94 killed.

The Ottoman army, however, had not been destroyed, and the low water hampered the pursuit. A few days later the Turks halted on a prepared position at Ctesiphon, halfway to Baghdad. The seemingly easy victory strengthened Nixon’s conviction that Baghdad was within reach.