Start of the Battle of Kut (1917)

At 9 a.m. on 9 January 1917, in thick fog, the brigades of General Henry Keary’s Indian 3rd Division went in to assault the Turkish trenches in the Khadairi Bend, on the right bank of the Tigris, north-east of Kut. The first line fell within minutes, but for the rest of the day the Turks counter-attacked so fiercely that some of the gains had to be retaken in the afternoon. The British chronology of the war records under this date the start of the Battle of Kut, 1917 (Battle of Kut, 1917), and calls the fighting begun on 13 December the operations for the capture of Kut. The British official history (Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, vol. III) counts the Battle of Kut al-Amara, 1917 as beginning on 14 December 1916. Both agree in ending it on 24 February 1917. They differ only in what they call the first stage. With 9 January the move into position along the Shatt al-Hai canal ended, and the systematic driving of the Turks from the bridgeheads they held on the right bank began.

The Imam Muhammad sector

The Khadairi Bend was the first objective of General Frederick Stanley Maude. The Turkish position, which the defenders called the Imam Muhammad sector, cut across the loop of the river with several lines of trenches. The first was about 2.5 kilometres long, and its southern end rested on a fortified point in the sandhills by the bank, with concealed machine-gun emplacements. From the bend the Turks could flood the British lines when the river rose, and they were linked to the left bank by ferries sheltered from fire by the lie of the land. Since Christmas the 8th and 9th Brigades of the 3rd Division had been approaching the Turkish trenches by sapping, in the rain and under fire from both banks. When the weather improved on 6 January, the 9th Brigade was already less than 200 metres from the enemy’s right flank.

That day Maude issued the order: on 9 January to capture the southern part of the position in the bend. He estimated the Turkish forces in the Shumran, Shatt al-Hai and Kut area at about 12,700 rifles and 39 guns. The assault was to be supported by the 56 guns of the 3rd Division and three batteries of the 13th Division. From 5 January the artillery bombarded the trenches in the bend and cut the wire. The effectiveness of this fire was later confirmed by a Turkish telephone order of 8 January found in the captured trenches. In it Ismail Hakki, acting commander of the 45th Division, praised the infantry, which despite bloody losses had not given ground, passed on that the corps commander “kisses the eyes” of all the soldiers, and announced that a fresh battalion would cross into the bend that night to relieve the one that had suffered most. On the evening of 8 January fog came down again and Maude cancelled the diversions that were to distract the Turks: a cavalry raid on Bughaila upstream and a III Corps sortie at Shumran.

Fog and counter-attack

The fog hung over the bend until about 3 p.m. At 8.45 a.m. the artillery opened a hurricane bombardment, and a quarter of an hour later the infantry rushed the first line: in the 9th Brigade the Gurkhas, the 105th Mahrattas and the 93rd Infantry, in the 8th Brigade the 1st Battalion of the Manchester Regiment. The Turks were evidently surprised, for a minute or two after 9 a.m. the whole sector under attack was in British hands. By 11 a.m. the 9th Brigade had pushed on to a dry watercourse behind the first line and begun to dig in there.

At about 10 a.m., under cover of the fog and thick scrub, the Turks struck the Manchester company that was advancing along the dry watercourse into the depth of the position. The company stood its ground and was almost wiped out, and its Lewis guns jammed with mud. The telephone lines were cut, and the gunners in the fog did not know where their own men were, so they could not help. The Turks pushed back successive units and retook part of the captured trench. In the 8th Brigade they realised what was happening only when, at about 11 a.m., survivors began coming back to the British line. When the fog lifted at about 3 p.m., it became clear how much had been lost. At 4.30 p.m. the artillery shelled the lost sector for a quarter of an hour, accurately and effectively, and by 5 p.m. the Manchesters had retaken and consolidated it. Meanwhile, on the left bank, I Corps bombarded the Sannaiyat position, made three raids and feigned crossings of the river.

The day cost the 8th and 9th Brigades almost 700 men. The Manchester battalion lost the most, 235. The British took 178 prisoners, and in a single communication trench about 270 metres long they counted 200 Turkish dead. According to Moberly the Turkish losses were probably heavier, all the more so as their artillery, much weaker than the British, replied only feebly to the bombardment.

Step by step

On the morning of 10 January patrols found that the Turks had given up some trenches in the northern part of the bend without a fight. They still held, however, a triangle of works by the river bank. On 11 January a battalion of the Highland Light Infantry took its line, but an immediate counter-attack threw it back, and that day the 8th and 9th Brigades lost over 650 men. The British concluded that Turkish reinforcements had crossed the river during the night. It was therefore decided to clear the bend methodically, in short bounds, under constant artillery fire. Meanwhile the cavalry division, whose way to the Turkish rear was closed by flooded ground, rode along the Shatt al-Hai to the small town of Hai. On 11 January the inhabitants received it in a friendly manner and sold it food, but when it left on 14 January the same Arabs set off in pursuit, which lasted several hours.

On 10 January the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, warned Maude that at the end of the month the Turks on the Tigris would probably receive strong reinforcements, and asked what he intended to do then. Maude replied the next day that he would keep attacking until he learned that the reinforcements were approaching, and would then go over to the defensive. On the night of 18–19 January, when the British line stood about 200 metres from the last Turkish trenches and the assault had been set for the morning, the Turks abandoned the bend and crossed to the left bank. According to Moberly they had defended themselves very bravely and suffered very heavy losses in those two weeks. The 3rd Division lost 1,639 men in eleven days of fighting. Maude’s next objective was the Turkish salient on the Shatt al-Hai, south of Kut.