Start of the British offensive on Kut

On 13 December 1916 the British artillery on the Tigris shelled the Turkish trenches on the left bank of the river for two hours, while I Corps feigned crossings and preparations for an assault on the Sannaiyat position. It was a ruse. After dark the troops of General Frederick Stanley Maude began a night march on the right bank towards the Shatt al-Hai canal, south of Kut. The British chronology of the war records the start of the offensive on the Tigris under 13 December. The British official history (Moberly, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, vol. III) dates the start of the battle to 14 December, when before dawn the cavalry and infantry crossed the Shatt al-Hai. Both days belong to the same operation: 13 December was the day of the feint and the move off, and 14 December the first day of the attack.

Eight months after the surrender

Since the surrender of Kut on 29 April 1916 the front on the Tigris had stood still. Maude, who had taken supreme command in August, spent the autumn putting the rear in order: he expanded river transport and the base at Basra, laid a light railway from Sheikh Saad towards the front, brought new pontoons from England and formed a division from two cavalry brigades. According to the official history he now had at his disposal about 3,500 cavalrymen, 45,000 infantrymen and 174 guns in two corps: I Corps under General Alexander Cobbe and III Corps under General William Marshall. He estimated the Turkish forces on the Tigris at about 20,000 rifles and 70 guns. According to the Turkish general staff, XVIII Corps in fact had only about 10,500 rifles and 50 guns.

On the right bank the Turks held two bridgeheads: trenches across the Khadairi Bend north-east of the town and a salient south of Kut, on the lower course of the Shatt al-Hai. Their communications ran along the front, up the Tigris. Maude judged that if he established himself on the Shatt al-Hai he could threaten these communications without exposing his own. On 10 December he issued the operation order, and for the next three days the weather favoured the preparations. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General William Robertson, agreed to the operation, but forbade Maude actions that would bring heavy losses without corresponding gain.

The night of 13/14 December

On 13 December the artillery of both corps and the river gunboats shelled the positions on the left bank, and I Corps cut the wire in front of Sannaiyat as if preparing an assault. At 5 p.m. Maude’s advanced headquarters was set up near Sinn Abtar. The tents were to stay up until dark so as not to betray the movement, and at night General Crocker’s cavalry division moved from Arab Village to a bivouac south of Sinn Abtar. At midnight the 14th Division held a line along the Dujaila depression, and the 13th Division, newly arrived from Amara, stood near Imam al-Mansur.

Before dawn on 14 December the cavalry reached the ford at Basrugiyah and the 40th Brigade reached Atab, and both crossed the Shatt al-Hai without meeting resistance. In many places the canal proved shallow, and by noon the sappers had put two bridges across it. The cavalry pushed north and in the afternoon came up to the Turkish bridge over the Tigris at Shumran, upstream of Kut. Airmen who had tried before dawn to bomb this bridge had missed. During the night, however, the pilot of a British aircraft saw that the Turks were dismantling the bridge and towing it upstream with a steamer. He bombed the tug until morning, and boats kept breaking loose and drifting ashore. The Turks were left without a bridge over the Tigris until 17 December.

The first days cost little. By the evening of 15 December the British had lost 398 men, almost all of them on the second day, when patrols felt out strongly held trenches in the Khadairi Bend and on the salient on the Shatt al-Hai. There was no quick decision. Maude had to drive the Turks from the right bank trench by trench, in rain and mud, throughout the winter. Only on 23 February 1917 did his troops force the Tigris at Shumran, and the next day the Turks abandoned Kut.