Percy Lake appointed commander in Mesopotamia

The British chronology of the war records under 14 January 1916 that Lieutenant-General Sir Percy Lake was appointed commander-in-chief in Mesopotamia. He was to replace General John Nixon, who had commanded there since April 1915. The British official history (Moberly) and the report of the Mesopotamia Commission do not give the exact date of the appointment. They write only that Nixon fell seriously ill in January and that Lake was sent from India to take his place. The change came at the worst possible moment. General Charles Townshend’s division had for five weeks been defending itself in Kut, and General Fenton Aylmer’s Tigris Corps, advancing to relieve it, was in those very days fighting on the Wadi stream.

Nixon’s illness

Nixon had been ill for a long time. According to Moberly, already after arriving at Kut at the end of September 1915 his health had forced him to limit his personal activity. He then sent Townshend’s division against Baghdad, which was repulsed at Ctesiphon, and after returning to Basra on 6 December he felt much worse. Even so, he carried on working as long as his strength allowed. By the beginning of January 1916 he was so ill that he telegraphed India asking to be relieved of his command. According to the official history, the authorities in India had previously had no idea of his condition. Moberly supposes that Nixon delayed for a long time because he believed that a change of commander at so critical a moment would be very harmful, and he does not stint his admiration for Nixon’s courage and fortitude.

The choice of successor was obvious. The campaign in Mesopotamia was directed not by London but by the Government of India and the commander-in-chief of the Indian Army, General Beauchamp Duff. Lake was his chief of staff and, according to Moberly, had followed the course of the expedition closely from the start, and knew the situation in India and throughout the East as well as the government’s policy.

The new commander

Percy Henry Noel Lake was 60 years old. He was born in 1855 in Tenby in Wales, into an officer’s family, and his mother came from Quebec. He had served in the British Army since 1873. He fought in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, and in 1885 he was a staff officer on the Suakin expedition in the Sudan. He spent most of his career, however, in staff posts, including in Canada: in the 1890s he was quartermaster-general of the Canadian Militia, and in the first decade of the 20th century he headed its general staff and was its inspector-general, carrying out a series of reforms. In 1911 he took command of the 1st (Peshawar) Division in India, and from 1912 he was Chief of the General Staff of the Indian Army. For most of his service he was a staff officer, and he had commanded a division only in peacetime.

Lake had his share in the decisions that led Townshend to Kut. On 5 October 1915 he submitted a long appreciation of the situation to Duff. He estimated the Turkish forces in Mesopotamia at about 7,500 infantry, 600 cavalry and 28 guns. He wrote that the capture of Baghdad would deprive the Turks of a base, raise British prestige, offset a possible failure at the Dardanelles and cut the routes by which the Germans and Turks reached Persia and Afghanistan. He stipulated, however, that Nixon could move only once London guaranteed that an Indian division would be sent from France to Mesopotamia. The Mesopotamia Commission later found that Lake had supported Nixon’s plan. In October he also pressed for the organisation in India of an “Emergency Force” that could be sent quickly to Mesopotamia if needed, and for the construction of a railway from Basra to Nasiriyah, but the Government of India rejected the railway on grounds of cost.

What awaited the successor

Lake was taking over an army in a very difficult position. At Sheikh Saad Aylmer had driven back the Turks, but at the cost of almost 4,000 killed and wounded, and on the Wadi the Turks had again slipped out of encirclement. Torrential rain was turning the valley of the Tigris into mud, and reinforcements were piling up in Basra with no means of carrying them upriver. Nixon remained in command for a few more days. On 17 January, when he firmly rejected the idea that Townshend should abandon Kut and fight his way out to meet the relief force, he was, according to Moberly, already completely laid low by illness and awaiting Lake’s arrival. Had it not been for that, he would probably have gone upriver himself to assess the situation on the spot. Lake took over command at Basra on 19 January.