The Euphrates in the First World War

The Euphrates, Mesopotamia’s second river, played a smaller part in the war than the Tigris, but it too was fought over throughout the Mesopotamian campaign: from Nasiriyah in 1915 to Ramadi, Hit and Ana in 1917–1918. Its upper course ran through Anatolia, where the Russians reached it in 1916. In the war years its valley also became a road of death for deported Armenians.

A river of marshes and shallows

At the time the Euphrates flowed into the Shatt al-Arab by two channels: a new one at Kurmat Ali, a little above Basra, and an old one at Qurna. In its lower course it had no clearly defined bed and spread out into marshes and lakes. The chief obstacle was the shallow Hammar Lake, which in 1914 could be navigated only by vessels drawing three feet, and only at high water. Above Fallujah only flat-bottomed boats went downstream. The Euphrates was linked with the Tigris by the Shatt al-Hai, a channel that left the Tigris at Kut and was navigable for only part of the year.

Qurna, Shaiba and Nasiriyah (1914–1915)

At the confluence of the two rivers lay Qurna, which the British took in December 1914. In the spring of 1915 Lieutenant Colonel Süleyman Askerî gathered Turkish troops and thousands of Arab tribal warriors on the Euphrates and marched on Basra, but on 14 April he was beaten at Shaiba.

On 27 June 1915 General George Gorringe’s brigades set off up the Euphrates. They did not march across the desert, which at the height of summer was judged too dangerous, but travelled by steamer and boat through the floodwaters. Sappers blew up the dam on the Akaika channel, but such a strong current poured through the breach that the old steamers had to be hauled through with ropes. For three weeks the troops fought in the heat in front of the Turkish trenches, until on 24 July they broke through and the next day took Nasiriyah, seat of the Muntafiq tribal confederation. The whole Basra vilayet was in British hands.

The upper Euphrates and the Armenian deportations (1915–1916)

The river’s upper course lay behind the Caucasus front. On 16 March 1916 the Russians took Mamahatun on the Kara Su, the western Euphrates, and on 25 July they entered Erzincan, the headquarters of the Ottoman Third Army, without a fight. This ended the July offensive of General Nikolai Yudenich.

The Euphrates valley was also the scene of one of the greatest crimes of the war. During the Armenian genocide columns of deportees were driven on foot towards Aleppo, the Euphrates valley and Deir ez-Zor. According to the historian Raymond Kévorkian one of the largest killing sites was the Kemah gorge on the Euphrates. From April to December 1916 systematic massacres went on at Ras al-Ain and Deir ez-Zor, and many of the dead were thrown into the river.

The middle Euphrates (1917–1918)

After the capture of Baghdad the Euphrates front moved west. In July 1917 Lieutenant Colonel Haldane’s column attacked Ramadi in heat of over 50 degrees and lost more men to heatstroke than to enemy fire. The town mattered because the Turkish-German army group Yıldırım was to come down the Euphrates from Aleppo and retake Baghdad. On 28 September General Harry Brooking’s 15th Division surrounded Ramadi, and on the morning of 29 September the Turkish garrison laid down its arms.

In the spring of 1918 the same division went further. On 9 March it took Hit without a fight, about 50 kilometres upriver from Ramadi. On 26 March at Khan al-Baghdadi the infantry pinned the Turks frontally while the cavalry and armoured cars went round them through the desert, and the Turkish 50th Division surrendered almost in its entirety. On 28 March British armoured cars drove through Ana. London, however, wanted no operations up the Euphrates, and the British withdrew. At the end of April small Turkish detachments reoccupied Ana, and the British entered it again only at the turn of October and November 1918.