Siege of Kut begins

On 7 December 1915 the Ottoman troops of Colonel Nureddin Bey began closing the ring around Kut on the Tigris. According to the British official history (Moberly), Turkish forces estimated at a division with eight guns dug in on the right bank, north-west of the town. On the left bank, also to the north-west, there were about 1,500 men with guns, and a few kilometres upstream the greater part of two divisions. All day Turkish guns shelled the town. That day Nureddin sent General Charles Townshend a letter calling on him to surrender. Moberly notes briefly that only one answer was possible. This day is usually regarded as the beginning of the siege, which lasted almost five months.

The first day

In the afternoon Turkish infantry, using dead ground, advanced under cover of heavy fire to an irrigation ditch about 400 metres north-east of the fort, the most advanced point of the British defences. The shelling of the fort cost 30 killed and wounded that afternoon. In the evening Townshend reported to General John Nixon that his position had been outflanked from the south by a Turkish division which had crossed the Shatt al-Hai a few kilometres from the town, probably to cut the road downstream. According to a report of 14 December, there were about 12,000 Turks around the town with 33 guns. Before Kut stood the same four divisions that had fought at Ctesiphon: the 35th, 38th, 45th and 51st. The new 52nd Division was only just approaching.

The garrison was now on its own. The day before, on 6 December, the cavalry brigade had crossed to the right bank and set off downstream to Ali al-Gharbi. Arabs followed it step by step, but the cavalrymen got through. On the morning of 7 December the last two serviceable aircraft flew away, as there were no spare parts for them in the town. Townshend was still trying to put up a bridge in a better place, higher up the river. Covered by a company of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry ferried to the other bank on a barge, the sappers built about 120 metres of bridge by the evening.

Why defend Kut

The siege began amid a dispute. On 6 December Townshend, convinced that relief in two months meant the destruction of his division, proposed to Nixon that he be allowed to withdraw to Ali al-Gharbi. Nixon refused. He replied that a retreat would open the way for the Turks along the Shatt al-Hai and would have a bad effect on feeling in the region, while the defence of Kut tied down superior enemy forces. He also promised that reinforcements would be at Sheikh Saad and Ali al-Gharbi within a week. At four in the morning on 7 December Townshend replied that this changed his situation and that he would stay. He added that he knew from history the fate of armies that shut themselves up in fortresses. The same day the General Staff in India concluded that it would be better to evacuate Kut, but the decision was left to Nixon.

After the cavalry had left, 11,607 soldiers remained in the town, including 2,851 British and 8,230 Indian rank and file, as well as about 3,500 Indian transport followers and other civilians employed by the army. Townshend had 43 guns. He himself reckoned that he had about 9,000 combatants, and only 5,000–6,000 infantry. The British battalions were, as he wrote, “skeletons”, and the Indian battalions were short of British officers. On top of this there were more than 6,000 inhabitants of the town.

For the moment the Turks were in no hurry to storm the town. They advanced as far as the fire of the British guns allowed, dug in and approached by saps. The first serious attacks came in the following days. On 9 December the Turks drove a detachment of the 67th Punjabis away from the bridge, and that night British volunteers blew the bridge up. By 13 December several attacks on the northern line of defence had been repulsed. The garrison did not expect that nearly five months of siege lay ahead.