"Flank guards were sent out. They passed among the Arab tents without a shot being fired. Soon the growing light disclosed our formidable numbers. Ahead of us there was a camp in the nullah itself. An old man just in the act of gathering fuel walked straight into us. He threw himself on his knees at my feet and lifted his hands with a biblical gesture of supplication crying out, 'Ar-rab, Ar-rab,' an effective, though probably unmerited, shibboleth. As he knelt his women at the other end of the camp were driving off the village flock. Here I remembered that I was alone with the guide of a column in an event which ought to have been as historic as the relief of Khartum."
After this unsuccessful attempt at relief comparative quiet reigned for about a week, interrupted only by occasional encounters between small detachments. On March 11, 1916, English outposts had advanced again about seven miles toward Kut-el-Amara to the neighborhood of Abn Roman, among the sand hills on the right bank of the Tigris. There they surprised at dawn a small Turkish force and made some fifty prisoners, including two officers. Throughout the next two or three days intermittent gunfire and sniping were the only signs of the continuation of the struggle. On March 15, 1916, two Turkish guns were put out of action and during that night the Turks evacuated the sand hills on the right bank of the river, which were promptly occupied by English troops in the early morning hours of March 16, 1916.
During the balance of March, 1916, conditions remained practically unchanged. The siege of General Townshend's force was continued by the Turks along the same lines to which they had adhered from its beginning—a process of starving their opponents gradually into surrender. No attempt was made by them to force the issue, except that on March 23, 1916, the English general reported that his camp at Kut-el-Amara had been subjected to intermittent bombardment by Turkish airships and guns during March 21, 22, and 23, 1916. No serious damage, however, was inflicted.
As spring advanced the difficulties of the English forces attempting the relief of General Townshend increased, for with the coming of spring, there also came about the middle of March—the season of floods. Up in the Armenian highlands, whence the Tigris springs, vast quantities of snow then begin to melt. Throughout March, April, and May, 1916, a greatly increased volume of water finds the regular shallow bed of the Tigris woefully insufficient for its needs. The entire lack of jetties and artificial embankments results in the submersion of vast stretches of land adjacent to the river. Military operations along its banks then become quite impossible, although in many places this impossibility exists throughout the entire year, because the land on both sides of the river for miles and miles has been permitted to deteriorate into bottomless swamps, through which even the ingenuity of highly trained engineering troops finds it impossible to construct a roadway within the available space of time.
These natural difficulties were still more increased by the fact that the equipment of the relief force was not all that might have been expected. This is well illustrated by the following letter from a South African officer, published in the "Cape Times:"
"The river Tigris plays the deuce with the surrounding country when it gets above itself, from melting snows coming down from the Caucasus, when it frequently tires of its own course and tries another. The river is the only drinking water, and you can imagine the state of it when Orientals have anything to do with it. A sign of its fruity state is the fact that sharks abound right up to Kurna.
"We have all kinds of craft up here, improvised for use higher up. His Majesty's ship Clio, a sloop, was marked down in 1914 to be destroyed as obsolete, but she, with her sister ships, Odin and Espiegle, have done great work in the battles to date. Now that we have got as far as Amara and Nassariyeh, the vessels that give the greatest assistance are steam launches with guns on them, flat-bottomed Irrawaddy paddle steamers. For troops we have 'nakelas' a local sailing vessel, and have 'bellums,' a long, narrow, small cone-shaped thing, holding from fifteen to twenty men; barges for animals, etc. Rafts have been used higher up to mount guns on. Here we have also motor boats.
"The difficulties as we advance are increased to a certain extent, though country and climate are improving. Our lines of communication will lengthen out, and we shall have to look out for Arab tribes raiding. Our aerial service is increasing; we have now a Royal Navy flight section, which has hydroplanes as well."
In spite of these handicaps, however, General Lake, in command of the English relief force, reported on April 5, 1916, that a successful advance was in progress and that the Tigris Corps at five o'clock in the morning of that day had made an attack against the Turkish position at Umm-el-Hannah, and had carried the Turkish intrenchments. Umm-el-Hannah is at a much greater distance from Kut-el-Amara than Es-Sinn which was reached on March 8, 1916, but from where the relief force had to withdraw again that same night to a position only a short distance beyond Umm-el-Hannah. However, it is located on the left bank of the Tigris, the same as Kut-el-Amara, and the success of taking this position, small as it was, promised therefore, once more an early relief of General Townshend.
This successful attack against Umm-el-Hannah on April 5, 1916, was carried out by the Thirteenth Division, which had previously fought at the Dardanelles. It now stood under the command of Lieutenant General Sir G. Gorringe who had succeeded to General Aylmer. The most careful preparations had been made for it. For many weeks British engineering troops had pushed forward a complicated series of sap works, covering some sixteen miles and allowing the British forces to approach to within 100 yards of the Turkish intrenchments. With the break of dawn on April 5, 1916, bombing parties were sent forward, whose cheers soon announced the fact that they had invaded the first line of Turkish trenches. Already on the previous day the way had been cleared for them by their artillery, which by means of incessant fire had destroyed the elaborate wire entanglements which the Turks had constructed in front of their trenches.