Cossacks link up with the British on the Tigris

In May 1916 a sotnia of Russian Cossacks rode unexpectedly from Persia into the British camp at Ali al-Gharbi on the Tigris. The British chronology of the war records the meeting under 18 May. The British official history of the Mesopotamian campaign gives 20 May. According to Russian accounts, written down years later from the commander’s recollections, the Cossacks approached the British positions at half past eleven at night on 6 May by the Julian calendar, that is, late in the evening of 19 May by the Gregorian, which almost matches the British date. It was the first meeting of Russian and British troops on a common front in this war.

A raid across the mountains

The detachment was commanded by Sotnik Vasily Gamaliy of the 1st Uman Regiment of the Kuban Cossacks, which belonged to the reserve of General Nikolai Baratov’s corps. That corps was to draw the Turks away from besieged Kut, and when the fortress fell it halted at Qasr-e Shirin on the Iraqi border. Russian accounts state that the sotnia set out on 27 April by the Julian calendar, that is, 10 May by the Gregorian. W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, authors of a history of the Caucasian wars, write instead that Baratov sent Gamaliy off in April, before reaching Qasr-e Shirin. There was a single task: to cross the Zagros mountains, through the lands of the Lur tribes and the border district of Zurbatiya, and to make contact with the British on the Tigris.

According to the British official history the detachment numbered 113 officers and men. Russian sources speak of 107 Cossacks plus officers and an interpreter. They had only ten pack horses and bought food along the way. They covered about 200 miles (more than 300 kilometres) across the mountains and, on the last stretch, across the desert. The Lurs, according to Allen and Muratoff, were cautious and neutral, and there was no serious fighting. The British noted that the Cossacks lost only a few horses, which died of exhaustion, thirst or in accidents. Russian accounts add that not a single man of the sotnia was killed.

In camp on the Tigris

Arnold Wilson, a British political officer in Mesopotamia, called the march “a splendid feat” and added bitterly that the British cavalry showed not the slightest aptitude for such tasks until almost the very end of the campaign. The Cossacks spent about two weeks on the Tigris. General Percy Lake, commander of the British forces in Mesopotamia, decorated the officers with the Military Cross on the orders of King George V. The citation spoke of recognition of this feat and of “the first meeting for a hundred years of British and Russian troops as allies in the field”. At the same time Baratov’s staff and that of the British Indian Expeditionary Force “D” exchanged liaison officers.

The Russians, too, appreciated the raid. Gamaliy received the Order of St George 4th class, and all the rank-and-file Cossacks of the sotnia received St George Crosses.

The military significance of the march was small, however. Allen and Muratoff call the link-up “no more than a gesture”. Kut had already surrendered, and the British troops on the Tigris and the Russian troops in Persia were separated by hundreds of kilometres of mountains. By the time the sotnia returned across the Zagros to its own lines, Baratov’s corps, after its failed attack on Khanaqin, was already falling back towards Kermanshah.