Start of the march on Mosul

On the morning of 23 October 1918 the Anglo-Indian I Corps of Lieutenant-General Alexander Cobbe completed its concentration before the Turkish position at Fat-ha, where the Tigris breaks through the Jebel Hamrin range of hills, about 55 kilometres north of Tikrit. The British chronology of the war records briefly under that date: “Beginning of British advance on Mosul”. It was the last offensive of the Mesopotamian campaign. Its aim was to destroy the Turkish Tigris Group of the Sixth Army, which was covering Mosul, before the war with Turkey ended.

A race with the armistice

The order came from London on 2 October. After the capture of Damascus and the capitulation of Bulgaria the British government expected Turkey soon to ask for peace, and wanted the troops of General William Marshall to occupy as much ground up the Tigris as possible by then. The British were not wrong: at the beginning of October the cabinet of Talaat Pasha fell, and the new government turned to President Wilson to mediate a peace. Marshall, however, had a transport problem, because almost all his motor vehicles and pack animals were serving the road through Persia. He gathered about 200 Ford vans and a column of carts, brought troops up to the railway and for more than two weeks built up dumps ahead of the railhead at Tikrit. The troops were weakened by the influenza epidemic, and both divisions of the I Corps, the 17th and 18th, were new formations in which few units had seen battle.

Cobbe’s plan

The Turks had been fortifying Fat-ha for a year and a half. Their trenches ran along both banks of the river on the mountain slopes, and about 25 kilometres further on a second line waited on the Little Zab. The British estimated that there were about 2,600 Turkish soldiers with 28 guns at Fat-ha itself. Cobbe judged that a frontal assault would be costly and would decide nothing. He decided to outflank the Turks from the east through the Ain Nukhaila and Darb al-Khail passes, force the Little Zab and push the enemy onto the right bank of the Tigris, where he meant to cut them off. To deceive the Turks, the British openly built dumps near Jift, sent patrols towards the Turkish right wing and spread rumours through Arab informers of an attack from that side. They prepared water at the passes only at the last moment, bringing it up in tanks on camels. On the right wing the column of General A. C. Lewin from the III Corps was advancing on Kirkuk. On the very morning of 23 October it occupied the village of Tuz Khurmatu without a fight and pushed a Turkish detachment back towards the town.

The day before the attack

On 23 October the British artillery on both banks registered on Turkish batteries spotted from the air, and the Turks replied intermittently. The aircraft of No. 63 Squadron and one flight of No. 72 Squadron RAF, moved earlier to a landing ground at Tikrit, were to support the attack planned for 24 October. At 2 p.m. an infantry brigade with eight mountain guns set off along a narrow path on the crest of the Jebel Hamrin. The route turned out to be twice as long as the map suggested, but the successive positions were empty. During the night the 7th Cavalry Brigade went round the Turkish position from the east, and the 11th Cavalry Brigade of General R. A. Cassels set out on a long march towards the Little Zab. The Light Armoured Motor Brigade waited in the west, ready for a raid across the desert onto the road to Mosul.

When the moon rose at 9.30 p.m., a strong patrol of the 55th Brigade approached the Turkish trenches on the left bank. At one in the morning it reported that they were empty. Before dawn it turned out that the Turks had also abandoned the position on the right bank, blowing up the road through the gorge behind them. The retreat, a day earlier than expected, surprised the British, and Cobbe gained Fat-ha without a fight. For the following week his troops pursued the Turks up the river, until on 30 October the Turkish Tigris Group capitulated at Sharqat.