Fighting at Beit Aiessa

On the morning of 18 April 1916, after a night of fighting, the last Turkish waves fell back from the British trenches at Beit Aiessa, on the right bank of the Tigris, less than 20 kilometres from besieged Kut. The day before, General Henry Keary’s British-Indian 3rd Division had taken the position in a swift attack. In the evening the Turks struck it harder than ever before in this campaign. The British beat off the counter-attack, but lost part of the ground they had gained and about 1,600 men, and their advance along the right bank towards Kut came to a standstill.

After two failed attacks on Sannaiyat, the last on 9 April, the command of the Tigris Corps shifted its effort to the right bank. General George Gorringe wanted to break through the Es Sinn position, the same one against which the attempt to take the Dujaila Redoubt had foundered in March. First, however, Beit Aiessa had to be taken, from where the Turks, cutting the river embankments, were flooding the ground in front. From 12 April the 3rd Division advanced, often knee-deep in water, through downpours and gales that time and again broke the dykes and flooded the trenches. By 16 April it had driven the Turks from their advanced posts and stood a few hundred metres in front of the main line.

At 6.45 a.m. on 17 April the British artillery opened fire on the Turkish trenches, and ten minutes later the 7th and 9th Brigades moved off. The men of the 27th Punjabis reached the Turkish line before the bombardment had ended. They saw the bayonets of rifles propped against the parapet while the defenders sheltered at the bottom of the trench. Without waiting for the artillery to lift, they jumped into the trench. The other battalions followed them. According to the British official history (Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia), about 300 Turks were killed in the trenches, about 180 were taken prisoner and eight machine guns were captured, at small cost to the attackers. A Turkish counter-attack before noon broke down under artillery fire. Gorringe ordered the 3rd Division to be relieved in the evening by General Frederick Stanley Maude’s 13th Division, and an attack on the Chahela position for the next day.

Before that could happen, at about 7 p.m., in the light of a half moon, long lines of Turkish infantry came on from the west and south-west. According to information gathered by the British on the battlefield, the Turks threw at least twelve battalions into the attack, eight of them from the crack 2nd Division. Some accounts speak of about 10,000 men under Halil, commander of the Ottoman forces on the Tigris. The blow fell first on two battalions of Gurkhas of the 9th Brigade, who were beginning to run short of ammunition. After a quarter of an hour or so their line broke and the whole brigade fell back in disorder, carrying part of the 7th Brigade with it. In the darkness it was hard to tell friend from foe. The Turks retook some of the trenches and captured several machine guns. The Connaught Rangers, however, held on their flank, and the commander of the 9th Brigade rallied the scattered men and stopped the Turks. In the south the 8th Brigade, with the 1st Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, the 47th Sikhs and the 59th Rifles, beat off five attacks by dawn. During the night battalions of the 13th Division arrived. By about 5.30 a.m. the Turks were already falling back under artillery and machine-gun fire.

On 17 April and the night of 17/18 April the British lost about 1,600 men, most of them during the night, and 15 machine guns. In the morning, according to the official history, 1,200–1,500 Turkish bodies lay in front of the 8th Brigade alone. Gorringe estimated Turkish losses at 4,000–5,000, and some accounts give about 4,000. Moberly observes, however, that although the counter-attack was a tactical defeat for the Turks, in practice it stopped the British progress on the right bank and may have been decisive. Turkish accounts count this fighting among the battles of Fallahiyah (Felahiye) and present it as a defensive victory. A large part of the 3rd Division was unfit to attack for several days. On the evening of 18 April General Percy Lake, commanding in Mesopotamia, and Gorringe concluded that the Turks had weakened the Sannaiyat position by moving troops to the right bank, and decided to strike it once more. The 13th Division’s attack on the right bank the next day got bogged down in ground flooded by the Turks.