Townshend prepares the defence of Kut

On 5 December 1915 the whole of General Charles Townshend’s division took up spades. Two days earlier it had entered Kut, where it was to wait for relief. The British soldiers had begun digging on 4 December, but the Indians, exhausted by the retreat, the piercing cold and the rain, were in Townshend’s words fit only to eat and sleep. From 5 December, as the British official history (Moberly) records, the whole garrison was at work, day and night. On the same day the first Turkish shells fell on the town, on the fort and on the men digging.

A peninsula in a bend of the Tigris

Kut lay on a peninsula in a tight loop of the Tigris, about three kilometres long and a kilometre and a half wide. On three sides it was protected by the river, 250–450 metres wide. The little town itself, in the south-western part of the peninsula, consisted of about 650 houses and mud huts, a covered bazaar and a few wool presses. It had about 6,000 inhabitants, mainly Arabs, but also Jews, Mandaeans and Nestorians. The divisional doctor later called it the most insanitary place the British had occupied in Mesopotamia.

The only ready-made defence was a barrier across the neck of the peninsula, built when Kut was still a depot on the road to Baghdad. It consisted of a fort with mud walls in the northern corner, above the bend of the river, and four blockhouses linked by barbed wire. The blockhouses were pulled down, as they would not have withstood artillery fire, and four redoubts were built in their place. Townshend would have preferred a shorter line, but he could not give up the fort: it commanded the river and was full of stores that there was no time to remove. The worst feature was a line of sandhills just north-west of the peninsula, too far away to be included in the defences and close enough to give cover to the enemy.

The defence plan

The first line was based on the fort and the redoubts. Behind it a middle line and a second line were to be built across the peninsula, about a kilometre and a half from its southern tip. The defence was divided into three sectors. The north-eastern sector, with the fort, went to General Hoghton’s 17th Brigade, the north-western to the 16th Brigade, and the southern, with the town and the village of Woolpress on the other bank, to the 18th Brigade. Woolpress was to be held by two Indian battalions, the 110th Mahrattas and the 120th Infantry. General Melliss’s 30th Brigade formed the reserve. The town itself was prepared for defence as the last point of resistance, while the quartering of the troops, hospitals in the covered bazaar, shelters and roads required an enormous amount of work.

Townshend initially wanted Kut to serve him as a pivot from which he could move troops across a bridge to one bank or the other and attack. A bridge of planks and the remains of a dismantled Turkish bridge was completed near the fort on the evening of 5 December. It was intended above all for the cavalry brigade. That day, after a night-time exchange of telegrams with Nixon, who advised sending away everything that might encumber the besieged, Townshend decided to send the cavalry downstream to Ali al-Gharbi. Earlier, on 4 December, almost all the steamers and barges had already left with the more seriously wounded and sick. Only the small steamer Sumana, a few motor launches and barges remained.

People and supplies

The hardest decision concerned the inhabitants. Townshend believed that according to military rules the population should be expelled from a besieged town, and he asked the opinion of Sir Percy Cox, the expedition’s chief political officer. Cox pointed out that in winter, on freezing nights, most of the women and children expelled would die in the desert of hunger and cold. Townshend therefore allowed all permanent residents and their families to stay and expelled only about 700 newcomers. More than 6,000 civilians remained in the town. It was calculated that their own food would last them at least three months. Cox left for Basra on the evening of 4 December, as there would have been nothing for him to do in the besieged town. Townshend later regretted his leniency: he suspected the inhabitants of being in contact with the Turks and of hiding weapons.

According to the calculations of the time, the troops’ supplies were to last roughly two months, except for fuel, medicines and vegetables. In his telegram of 5 December Townshend was more cautious: a month’s rations for the British and 55 days for the Indians. He announced that the stocks in the bazaar would be requisitioned. For the time being he did not reduce rations, because he was counting on a speedy relief and wanted to keep up the soldiers’ strength. There were about 800 rounds per rifle and about 600 shells per gun. Townshend ordered the officers to see that the soldiers did not fire unnecessarily. According to his telegram of 5 December, the number of combatants was 10,398, including only about 7,500 infantrymen. Nixon’s message that relief would arrive “within two months” worried him. He replied that he hoped to see it within a month.