End of the Battle of Sheikh Saad

On 8 January 1916 relative quiet reigned at Sheikh Saad on the Tigris. After two days of bloody fighting, the troops of General Fenton Aylmer, marching to relieve besieged Kut, were so exhausted that Aylmer called off the planned attack. The Turkish defenders used the night of 8/9 January to withdraw upstream. On the afternoon of 9 January the British occupied Sheikh Saad without a fight. The battle thus ended in a British victory, but not the decisive one that had been hoped for, and at too high a price.

The seventh of January

The day before, Aylmer, who had come up on 6 January with the rest of the corps, threw all his forces into the attack. General George Younghusband, now responsible for the left bank, was to outflank the Turkish left from the north with three brigades, but the columns lost their way in the flat terrain and walked into crossfire from trenches that nobody had expected there. They attacked into the sun, in a mirage that also blinded the artillery. By dusk the line had come to within three or four hundred metres of the Turkish trenches, and there it was stopped. The 2nd Battalion of the Black Watch and the 6th Jats each lost nearly 400 men, including their commanding officers, and the 1st Battalion of the Seaforth Highlanders and the 125th Rifles about 300 each. On the right bank General George Kemball’s 28th Brigade stormed the Turkish first line at about four in the afternoon, taking two mountain guns, three machine guns and about 600 prisoners. It got no further, however, stopped by fire from further trenches along the irrigation ditches.

A day without an attack

The night of 7/8 January was wet and icy. For most of the night the soldiers collected the wounded, carried up ammunition, water and food and reorganised the depleted units. By morning everyone was dead tired. Aylmer judged that there was no point in renewing the attack on the left bank until the Turkish trenches could be enfiladed and taken in reverse from the other bank, and at 7.40 a.m. he ordered Kemball to drive the Turks out of Sheikh Saad itself. The first reports that the enemy was falling back on both banks proved premature. A squadron of the 14th Hussars discovered, in a bold raid, trenches in front of the village holding about 500 soldiers, and the airmen spotted about 5,000 Turks between Kemball and Sheikh Saad. Kemball was ready to attack in the afternoon, but at one o’clock Aylmer asked him whether it would not be better to dig in and take the village in a night attack by the whole corps. Kemball admitted that his men urgently needed rest, water and food, and the attack was called off. That day there was only an exchange of artillery fire and sniping.

In the evening Aylmer reported to General John Nixon that because of the exhaustion of his troops he had not advanced, and that in the face of what he believed to be about 15,000 Turks and numerous Arabs any further advance would be slow until reinforcements arrived. The estimate was inflated. According to the Turkish General Staff, the defenders of Sheikh Saad, the 35th Division reinforced by the 52nd Division and the remnants of the 38th, had about 9,000 rifles. The airmen had already noticed in the afternoon columns of troops and transport moving upstream. During the night, in the rain, the Turks abandoned their trenches.

The Turkish withdrawal and the balance sheet

On the morning of 9 January the ground was so sodden that all movement was difficult. At about ten the cavalry found that the Turks had abandoned their trenches on the left bank, and before two in the afternoon the leading units of the 28th Brigade entered the empty Sheikh Saad. The gunboats that moved upstream found a barrier of mines laid across the stream. There was no pursuit: the men’s fatigue, the rain and the mist, which made flying and reconnaissance impossible, held Aylmer up for several days. The Turks fell back upstream, and after a few days dug in on the Wadi stream, where they again stood to fight.

On 10 January Aylmer reported about 3,790 killed and wounded. The British official history later gives 4,007 men, including 417 killed. The British estimated Turkish losses at about 4,000, including 650 prisoners, but some more recent studies, citing Turkish archives, give far fewer. There was no way to treat the wounded. The medical services were sufficient for only a small part of the needs, so on the night of 7/8 January many wounded lay untended in the rain on the bare ground, and until 9 January the doctors could barely keep up with first aid. The British official historian admitted that the Turks had fought better and more skilfully than in the previous battles on the Tigris, although they had been short of food for several days. They had delayed the relief and inflicted heavy losses on it without suffering a decisive defeat. Kut was still waiting.