In August Sir Percy Lake was succeeded by Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, who carefully and thoroughly proceeded to prepare for an expedition which should capture Bagdad. A dispatch from General Maude dated July 10, 1917, gives a full account of this expedition. It was thoroughly successful. This time with a sufficient army and a thorough equipment the British found no difficulties, and on February 26th they captured Kut-el-Amara, not after a hard-fought battle, but as the result of a successful series of small engagements. The Turks kept up a steady resistance, but the British blood was up. They were remembering General Townshend’s surrender, and the Turks were driven before them in great confusion.
The capture of Kut, however, was not an object in itself, and the British pushed steadily on up the Tigris. The Turks occasionally made a stand, but without effect. On the 28th of February the English had arrived at Azizie, half way to Bagdad, where a halt was made. On the 5th of March the advance was renewed. The Ctesiphon position, which had defied General Townshend, was found to be strongly intrenched, but empty. On March 7th the enemy made a stand on the River Diala, which enters the Tigris eight miles below Bagdad. Some lively fighting followed, the enemy resisting four attempts to cross the Diala. However, on March 10th the British forces crossed, and were now close to Bagdad. The enemy suddenly retired and the British troops found that their main opponent was a dust storm. The enemy retired beyond Bagdad, and on March 11th the city was occupied by the English.
The fall of Bagdad was an important event. It cheered the Allies, and proved, especially to the Oriental world, the power of the British army. Those who originally planned its capture had been right, but those who were to carry out the plan had not done their duty. Under General Maude it was a comparatively simple operation, though full of admirable details, and it produced all the good effects expected. The British, of course, did not stop at Bagdad. The city itself is not of strategic importance. The surrounding towns were occupied and an endeavor was made to conciliate the inhabitants. The real object of the expedition was attained.
BAGDAD THE MAGNIFICENT FALLS TO THE BRITISH
Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, Commander-in-Chief of the British Mesopotamian Army, making his triumphal entry into the ancient city at the head of his victorious army on March 11, 1917.
CHAPTER VIII
Immortal Verdun
FRANCE was revealed to herself, to Germany and to the world as the heroic defender of civilization, as a defender defying death in the victory of Verdun. There, with the gateway to Paris lying open at its back, the French army, in the longest pitched battle in all history, held like a cold blue rock against the uttermost man-power and resources of the German army.
General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff and military dictator of the Teutonic allies, there met disaster and disgrace. There the mettle of the Crown Prince was tested and he was found to be merely a thing of straw, a weak creature whose mind was under the domination of von Falkenhayn.
For the tremendous offensive which was planned to end the war by one terrific thrust, von Falkenhayn had robbed all the other fronts of effective men and munitions. Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his crafty Chief of Staff, General Ludendorff, had planned a campaign against Russia designed to put that tottering military Colossus out of the war. The plans were upon a scale that might well have proved successful. The Kaiser, influenced by the Crown Prince and by von Falkenhayn, decreed that the Russian campaign must be postponed and that von Hindenburg must send his crack troops to join the army of the Crown Prince fronting Verdun. Ludendorff promptly resigned as Chief of Staff to von Hindenburg and suggested that the Field Marshal also resign. That grim old warrior declined to take this action, preferring to remain idle in East Prussia and watch what he predicted would be a useless effort on the western front. His warning to the General Staff was explicit, but von Falkenhayn coolly ignored the message.