On the Road to Bagdad: A Story of Townshend's Gallant Advance on the Tigris

by F. S. Brereton

"Defeated!" exclaimed Geoff; "you mean that the Expeditionary Force has captured Kut, really?"

"They stormed those positions; they outflanked the Turks," the Jew told him, his listless eyes wandering for one moment from the wall opposite to our hero's face and to Philip's, and then back to the old position. "They captured the town of Kut-el-Amara and pursued the fleeing Turks. And then, my masters, they followed——"

"Followed towards Bagdad?" asked Geoff, rising to his feet in his eagerness. "Followed in this direction? Then they are near already?"

Benshi waved him back to his seat with a listless movement of one hand, and went on with his story.

"Nay," he said, and sighed as if he were sorry that it was not so. "Nay, my master, the force of which we are speaking advanced in small numbers up the River Tigris towards Bagdad, till indeed but within a few leagues of it, till they reached the old tomb of the Caliph at Ctesiphon, where once more the Turks were awaiting them in prepared positions, where, indeed, they had amassed large numbers of soldiers—so much so that they outnumbered the British by at least three to one. There was a battle then in which the Turks suffered heavily and the British also, a battle which disclosed to your friends the strength of the enemy before them, and which made a retirement imperative. That was days ago—days ago; and now they are back, those British and Indian soldiers, back in Kut-el-Amara, having carried out an orderly and skilful retreat. Back in Kut, where my information tells me that they are surrounded."

He left Philip and Geoff with their mouths wide open with amazement at what they heard, their faces showing first delight at the prowess of their comrades, and then disappointment at their enforced retreat, and a greater disappointment that they too were not beside them to take their share in the fighting.

Yet Benshi did not tell all there was to be told about Asiatic Turkey, all that had to do with the British and other forces. We have intimated already in the course of this narrative how a force employed in one quarter of the world, if sufficiently powerful, may well affect the fortunes of other troops engaged in a different area altogether. We told of how the coming of Turkey into this world-conflict in partnership with Germany and Austria affected the fortunes of Russia on her European front, because of the need to hold her Caucasian frontier, and there is no need to enter into details of the fighting which took place in those mountains, almost in perpetual snow, where Turks and Russians faced one another. It will suffice if we say that, well-armed, well-equipped, and officered by Germans in numerous instances, the army corps which Turkey sent to the Caucasus at the commencement of hostilities, that is to say, during the first winter of this widespread warfare, suffered many a reverse at the hands of the Tsar's gallant soldiers. They failed to advance, failed to invade southern Russia, and indeed had their work cut out to prevent the Muscovite armies from invading Asiatic Turkey, and from pouring down into the land south of the Caucasus range—land itself some six thousand or more feet in elevation.

Indeed, the country south-west of the Caucasus range is broken up by innumerable ranges of hills and mountains, and presents large numbers of upland plateaus. It is the country in which the unfortunate race of Armenians were fostered, where they have dwelt for centuries, and on one of those upland plateaus, perched in a situation of natural strength, and defended by forts and gun emplacements, cunningly designed by German engineers, lies the city and fortress of Erzerum, the main base of those Turkish armies operating against the Russians—a fortress deemed impregnable, and one upon which the Turks and their German masters had placed the utmost importance. As that British force was fighting its way back to Kut-el-Amara, and was besieged in that little township on the River Tigris, the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, he who had led the Tsar's armies into Galicia a year previously, was mustering his forces and preparing his arrangements for a dash into Armenia—a dash made in the height of winter, through snow-drifts ten or more feet in depth, and in an atmosphere well below freezing. Such was the impetus of that dash, so good and careful were the preparations for it, and so great the courage and the élan of the armies of the Caucasus that, in spite of Turkish resistance, in spite of batteries cunningly placed, in spite of every obstacle, human and natural, the Russians poured down upon the fortress of Erzerum, and to the amazement of all—of the Turks and of the Germans, not less than of the others, captured it, its guns, and a goodly part of its garrison. Then, flooding over this upland plateau, carving their way westward and south-east, they rapidly forced their way in the direction of Trebizond—that port on the Black Sea by which Turkey had reinforced and revictualled her Caucasian army. To the south-east, Russian troops, in smaller numbers, pushed along the frontier of Persia, striking towards Mesopotamia, until patrols of horse and companies of foot were within measurable distance of Bagdad. Yet they were not near enough to seize the city, not in sufficient force at present to advance across the desert, not able, in fact, to lend assistance to the British force beleaguered in Kut-el-Amara, and to that other force, since organized, and sent up the River Tigris to relieve it—a force of British and Indians again, which, willing enough and eager to relieve their comrades, had, for weary weeks now, been held up by rains and floods in the country.

A narrative of the incidents of the Mesopotamian operations may be truthfully said to be one of brilliant actions, of most gallant fighting on the part of our soldiers, and of a display of soldierly virtues which equalled, if it did not surpass, those fine qualities shown by British troops in days gone by. This desert warfare was so different from that which had now fallen upon the armies battling in Flanders against the Germans. There, in the absence of forts constructed of masonry as formerly, there was nevertheless a species of fort running from Switzerland north to Verdun, and running in a north-westerly direction to the Belgian coast. A fort consisting of muddy trenches, delved deep in the soil, sheltering hosts of soldiers, and strengthened and supported in thousands of places by earthworks, by machine-gun redoubts, and supported in rear by an array of guns on either side, the number of which had never been seen before, had never even been nearly equalled in any warfare. But the desert of Mesopotamia gave opportunity for other fighting. Troops, both British and Turkish, were not sufficiently numerous to man a line running right across the country, and thus there was an opportunity to manœuvre, the chance of outflanking an enemy, and every now and again an opening for a charge, often enough brilliantly executed, by the British.

Yet the main line of advance must, because of that desert, of that arid country, follow the winding channel of the Tigris River, on which the troops were dependent for their water-supply. And that river itself was bounded in numerous places by marsh land, which often enough obstructed the march of troops, and which, in the neighbourhood of Kut, produced positions similar, on a very small scale—to those in Flanders and in France; that is to say, just as the sea bounds that line to the north in France, so marsh land in the neighbourhood of the Tigris River obstructed the advance of the British force marching to the relief of the beleaguered garrison at Kut-el-Amara. They could not easily get round those marshes, for the need of water held them to the river, and advancing along its banks they came upon a part where those marshes, coming close together, left but comparatively narrow space through which they could make progress, a space deeply trenched by the Turks, and fortified in similar manner to those trenches in France, held by a numerous and well-armed enemy, flanked by redoubts, and supported by machine-guns and artillery. A position, indeed, of formidable strength, more particularly as to outflank it was impossible, and a frontal attack must be undertaken. Add to these difficulties atrocious weather—rains which poured upon the British force, which drenched the men to the skin, bitterly cold rains, which, stopping at last, left the troops stewing in a watery atmosphere under a blazing sun, wading knee-deep in a muddy marsh which covered the country.