Maude takes command in Mesopotamia

On 28 August 1916 Lieutenant-General Sir Percy Lake sailed from Basra for England, and the chief command of the British forces in Mesopotamia passed to General Frederick Stanley Maude. The British official history (Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, vol. III) gives 27 August as the last day of command of Lake, who had taken over the army in January, at the worst possible moment of the siege of Kut. According to Maude’s biographer, General Charles Callwell, the new commander arrived in Basra on 24 August and spent several days discussing the state of the army with his predecessor. He was taking over a force that four months earlier had lived through the surrender of Kut, and that all summer had been losing more men to disease than in combat.

Why Lake was recalled

The decision was taken in August by the War Committee of the cabinet. Lake was to be replaced by a younger officer, as had already been done on other fronts. He was 61, in poor health, and seven very hard months in Mesopotamia, as Moberly writes, had clearly worn him out. The official history does him justice. Lake had been unable to save Kut, but through the spring and summer he laid the foundations on which his successor could build. Kilometres of embankments protected the base area at Basra from the flood of 1916. On this area, of about 124 km², quarters had been built for 15,000 soldiers and 7,000 sick, as well as wharves at which ocean-going ships could moor, roads and bridges. Basra was at last well on the way to becoming an efficient base.

Much, however, was still lacking. There was a shortage of river steamers, which supplied the front on the Tigris, and of doctors and hospitals. In June almost 11,000 officers and men were evacuated sick from Mesopotamia, in July more than 12,000, in August again 11,000. The British were decimated by intestinal diseases, fevers and heatstroke, the Indian soldiers above all by scurvy, because fresh vegetables rotted in the heat. News of the sufferings of the sick and wounded reached Britain, and in August the government set up a commission to inquire into the conduct of the campaign. The War Office in London, which had taken over the direction of operations in February, had by decision of the War Committee also been responsible since 18 July for the personnel, administration and supply of the expedition, although India remained its main base.

Robertson’s choice

The choice of a successor was left to the Army Council, but according to Callwell the appointment was entirely the work of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson. It was not an obvious one. Maude was a junior major-general and knew neither India nor the Indian troops who made up most of the force in Mesopotamia. He was 52. Born in 1864 in Gibraltar, the son of a general who had won the Victoria Cross in the Crimean War, he had served from 1884 in the Coldstream Guards, and for the Boer War he received the Distinguished Service Order. Later he was military secretary to the Governor General of Canada and a staff officer at the War Office. In 1914 he commanded an infantry brigade in France and was wounded in April 1915. From August 1915 he led the 13th Division at Gallipoli, where on the last night of the evacuation of Cape Helles he himself led the last 160 soldiers to the beach, and in Mesopotamia this division was the main force of the last attempt to relieve Kut. On 11 July 1916 Maude took over command of the whole Tigris Corps from General George Gorringe. Now Maude was succeeded in that post by Major-General Alexander Cobbe.

There was no ill feeling between the outgoing and the new commander. Maude wrote to his family that he was sorrier than he could express and greatly admired Lake, who had fought splendidly against illness almost the whole time. According to Callwell, the whole army felt the same.

Order first, then Baghdad

Maude took command at a moment when London and India were once again arguing over the aims of the campaign. Since 30 April Robertson’s instruction had been in force, under which policy in Mesopotamia was defensive and neither Kut nor Baghdad mattered. In August, however, Ottoman troops in western Persia were pushing back General Baratov’s Russians, who had already lost Kermanshah and then Hamadan too. On 23 August the Commander-in-Chief in India, General Beauchamp Duff, warned that in winter the Turks might concentrate their forces against the British on the Tigris, and proposed forestalling them with a march on Baghdad. Robertson replied on 25 August that the War Committee had not changed its policy and that a serious advance would not be possible before 1 December. For the time being the rear had to be prepared and the army trained.

The new commander thought along similar lines. On 29 August, replying to these instructions, he firmly advised against going over to the offensive until river transport had been expanded. That same day Robertson telegraphed him personally to do everything possible for the efficiency of the army, to raise the soldiers’ morale and to improve the unreliable communications. Maude also proposed dividing the four divisions on the Tigris into two corps, forming a cavalry division from two brigades and moving his headquarters from Basra closer to the front. Moberly describes him as a tireless worker who took many matters into his own hands and was often seen among the troops. The first months of his command went on reorganisation. In December 1916 he moved against the Turks on the Tigris, and on 11 March 1917 his troops entered Baghdad. Maude did not live to see the end of the war: he died of cholera in Baghdad on 18 November 1917.