General Barrett to command the expedition to Mesopotamia

On 28 September 1914, according to the British chronicle of the war, Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Barrett was designated the future commander of Indian Expeditionary Force D. This was the force that British India was preparing for operations at the head of the Persian Gulf in case the Ottoman Empire entered the war on Germany’s side.

Oil from Abadan

Barrett, born in 1857, was an experienced officer of the Indian Army. He had fought in the Second Anglo-Afghan War and in campaigns on the Indian frontier, and since 1912 had commanded the 6th (Poona) Division. It was this division of the British Indian Army that was to form the core of the new force.

The expedition’s most important task was to protect the refinery on Abadan island and the pipelines of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the forerunner of BP. The refinery lay on the Persian bank of the Shatt al-Arab, directly opposite Ottoman territory. Its importance was enormous, because the Royal Navy was converting its newest ships from coal to oil, and in 1914 the British government had become the company’s majority shareholder. British prestige in the Arab world and among the sheikhs of the Gulf was also at stake.

Landing at Fao

Until war was declared, the preparations had to remain secret so as not to provoke the Turks. On 16 October General Walter Delamain’s 16th Brigade, sent on ahead, sailed from Bombay. It travelled with the convoy carrying Indian troops to Egypt, but in accordance with secret orders it detached itself and on 23 October reached Bahrain, where it waited on events. After the Ottoman Empire entered the war, the brigade landed on 6 November at Fao (Al-Faw) at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab and took the Turkish fort there. In mid-November Barrett arrived with further units of the division. In the second half of November the British occupied Basra, and in December Qurna at the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris.

In April 1915 Barrett, who was ill, gave up his command. The expedition, conceived as a limited covering operation, turned into one of the longest campaigns of the war. The Mesopotamian campaign brought the British the humiliating capitulation at Kut in 1916 and the capture of Baghdad in 1917, and lasted right up to the armistice with Turkey at the end of October 1918.