[ printer friendly version ]

The Scots at War Trust

A - Z Index Miscellany

My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. May I take this opportunity of welcoming you. In particular we are especially delighted to see teachers and pupils from the More House School, Veterans from the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the Scots Guards, the Seaforths, Camerons, Queen’s Own Highlanders and Highlanders and especially the Pensioners from the Royal Hospital. On a personal note I would like to welcome my former Orderly Room Sergeant and Driver who on numerous occasions of crisis saved me with piping hot tea and my favourite chocolate biscuits – you are very welcome Simon.

I would also like to pay tribute to our sponsors, in particular Turcan Connell, Solicitors. Douglas and Robert are celebrating their tenth year as the firm of Turcan Connell. Based in Edinburgh, they have recently opened a London office and I can personally vouch for the fact that they more than deserve their title as Scotland’s leading private client solicitors. They have supported the Scots at War Trust for more than eight years now and have provided our principal venue for this series of seminars and lectures. They are here to support us again this evening - thank you.

Brigadier Hugh Monro has provided us with some challenging and tantalising material in respect of modern Iraq. Deliberately he has raised more questions than answers and I am afraid that I will do the same, because while I will attempt to sketch out some of the complex events, situations and circumstances that took us some of the way to where we are in Iraq, the background is full of equally complex contradictions which include the mistakes of history which, of course, we can now look at with the benefit of hindsight.

Iraq, a name given by the British, or, as the greater part of it was called, Mesopotamia, is an area of some 170,000 square miles. Strategically placed in the Middle East between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea it is dominated by two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. Rolling deserts cover western and south-western Iraq with mountains in the north east. The northern plains are dry but the south, towards the mouth of the rivers at the Shatt al Arab waterway in the Persian Gulf, contains irrigated farmland and marshes. The climate varies from temperate to sub-tropical. The names of the principal places I will mention are shown on the detailed map.

For Christians it is a Biblical land, the legendary breadbasket of the Middle East, the land of the hanging Gardens of Babylon, of the Garden of Eden and of Noah’s Ark. For Moslems it is the site of some of their holiest shrines.

Invaded by the Persians and the Moguls, Islam was introduced here in 637 AD. The whole area was invaded by the Turkish, Ottoman Empire, in the 1534. The Turks ruled by dividing the country into districts or Vilayets, Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, names very familiar to us. They collected taxes by the principle of divide and rule, actively encouraging the cultural and ethnic differences of the people and their local leaders.

As the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries passed the Turkish Ottoman Empire, which extended over a vast area of the Middle East, went into gradual but irreversible decline. Mesopotamia, once hugely fertile was neglected. The complex drainage systems were left to decay creating rivers entirely dependent on the seasonal rains for navigation, impassable marshes and flat barren desert where temperatures range from below freezing to over 130 F degrees. The climate in some of these areas is one of the most inhospitable in the Middle East.

At the beginning of the 20th Century, with Turkey still the ruling power, Mesopotamia was populated by an estimated 2.7 million people. That population was then, as it is today, a complex mix which was also regionally based. Shi’ah Moslems, in the majority with 1.5million, dominated in Baghdad, Samarra and Mosul, Sunnis with just under a million held the majority in Kut-al-Amara, Diwaniya and Basra. Scattered throughout the whole area were significant minorities of Jews, Christians and other religions, who were, in the main, widely tolerated.

With loyalties divided amongst powerful families and local leaders the Arabs divided into three groups; the Bedouin, traditional, proud, hospitable and fierce tribesmen; the Marsh Arabs, and those who tilled the land along the fertile river banks and who were always prepared to rob and steal from anybody, at any opportunity.

In 1914 on the outbreak of the First World War the world was a very different place. The British Empire was at its height. India was the jewel in the crown that must be guarded at all costs. Turkey and its Ottoman Empire was in the last phases of its decline, the so-called “Sick Man of Europe”. Emerging German intrigue and plotting in the Middle East was rife causing alarm in the British and French Governments. German officers trained the Turkish Army and the Deutschbank financed the railway development that envisaged a direct link between Berlin and Baghdad.

But the British had been here in Mesopotamia for some time. Using what was called “the desert route to India”, along the old caravan route from the Mediterranean, a number of British travellers recorded their journeys in this region between 1745 and 1751. A British Residency had been established in Baghdad in 1768, we had obtained important concessions from the Turks, we had carried out an extensive survey of the river system but, most important of all, we knew about the oil.

It appeared as black sludge seeping out of the ground and lying in pools around Baghdad or as gas fires flaring off swamps in Mosul and was first noted by western travellers around 1606.

As interest in the oil resource grew, particularly in respect of fuel for the competing navies of the later 19th and early 20th centuries, European geologists visited Mesopotamia in the disguise of archeologists and in 1911 the Turkish Petroleum Oil Company was formed to exploit oil in the Mosul area.

This company was anything but Turkish and was in fact a consortium of the British Foreign Office, German Diplomats, British and German Banks and British, German and Dutch oil companies. Among the negotiators was the Armenian entrepreneur and consummate deal maker, Calouste Gulbenkian. As a result of these negotiations the British Government had a direct interest in oil in Mesopotamia. Nobody however was truly aware of just how big this oil and gas resource was and what a pivotal role it would play in world history.

On 28th June 1914 the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro- Hungarian Empire, were assassinated in Sarajevo. A pent up cascade of events followed. Russia mobilised against Austria, Germany declared war on Russia and France, Britain declared war on Germany, Germany formed an alliance with Turkey, Britain declared war on Turkey.

Britain now moved to protect its investment and the vital oil supplies. However, with the British Expeditionary Force committed to the Western Front in France and Belgium, with the Retreat from Mons in full flow, with the first Battle of Ypres about to commence, with the Territorial Force deemed unfit to take the field and Kitchener’s New Army yet to be recruited, the force that was assembled to protect the oilfields in Mesopotamia was drawn from the Indian Army.

This force was initially made up of the 16th Indian Infantry Brigade with two Indian Mountain Batteries and was known as Indian Expeditionary Force D. Comprising both British and Indian soldiers and officers they landed and captured the signal station at Fao at the mouth of the Shatt al Arab Waterway on 10th November 1914 and after a number of stiff but minor engagements the Turks retreated to Qurnah at the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates, leaving Basra unprotected.

Force D occupied Basra on 23rd November 1914 and made it their base. There were no plans at that stage to move further north. The area north of Qurnah was in fact outside the sphere of influence for which India was responsible and the General Staff in India did not provide for troops and general supplies beyond those deemed to be required for the occupation of Basra. In addition there were further complications.

The Chain of Command sadly read like the script of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera; The Force Commander was responsible to the Commander in Chief Indian Army, who answered to the Viceroy, who received orders from the Secretary of State for India, who was responsible to the War Council, which was commanded by the Imperial Staff which answered, finally, to the Cabinet in London.

Considerable numbers of Turkish troops officered by Germans now began to arrive in the area of Qurnah. The Sultan of Turkey preached “Jehad”, encouraging the local tribes to rise against the invading infidels.

The Anglo-British Force occupied Qurnah on the junction of the two rivers just before Christmas 1914 but, aided by 10,000 Arab tribesmen, 12,000 Turkish regular soldiers attempted to retake Basra in April 1915 and it was clear that they simply were not going to allow the British to occupy the area and secure the oil pipeline.

Despite the lack of logistical infrastructure, of suitable boats, maps, medical supplies, equipment and reinforcements, and in the face of the spring floods, mud, heat and flies, Force D continued offensive operations.

They were under command of General Sir Charles Townshend who energetically assembled every kind of craft available and, after a full dress rehearsal, set off up the swollen Tigris in an operation nicknamed “Townshend’s Regatta”. Amarah was captured on 31st May 1915 and a subsequent advance up the Euphrates captured Nasiriyeh at the end of June 1915.

Effectively the southern area of Mesopotamia had been secured but casualties were mounting and sickness and heatstroke were taking an enormous toll on all ranks, with still no really effective method established of evacuating them.

Gradually the Indian Expeditionary Force was being drawn further and further north. Afloat in a sea of command confusion, complacency and a failure to appreciate the real challenges and difficulties that this country and the enemy presented, the decision was taken to move further up the Tigris. Shallow draft boats were ordered from Britain, but Townshend did not wait for them. Kut-al-Amarah was captured by Townshend in September and the British moved on even further towards Baghdad.

Near the ancient arch at Ctesiphon on the banks of the Tigris, 25 miles south of Baghdad the Turks established a defensive position barring the way. In a two-day battle beginning on 22nd November 1915 the Anglo-Indian Force numbering only 11,000 suffered almost 45% casualties. Townshend was forced to break off the engagement and in a series of rearguard actions retreated on Kut-al-Amarah. The sufferings of the wounded were appalling.

At the beginning of December Kut was surrounded by the Turks and under siege.

Reinforcements to mount an operation to relieve Kut were now called for. With the Territorial Force and Kitchener’s New Army formations able to take the field on the Western Front, the Indian Army, Lahore Division, was sent from France to Mesopotamia. These reinforcements included the 2nd Battalion Black Watch, the 1st Battalion Highland Light Infantry and the 1st Battalion the Seaforth Highlanders, the old 72nd Duke of Albany’s Own.

These men, and the Indian Army Battalions of the Division, who had already fought at Neuve Chapelle, Aubers Ridge and the Battle of Loos, arrived in theatre at the end of December 1915. Without reorganisation, proper signalling, transport or medical equipment, or acclimatization, they immediately proceeded up river to relieve Kut.

In the next three weeks they were to fight in the open desert against a tenacious enemy, through heat, flies and the mirage at Sheikh Sa’ad on the 7th January 1916, at the Wadi on 13th January and at Hanna on 21st January.

This very unusual photograph of the Seaforth Highlanders lying down in what was called “artillery formation” in the open desert a few minutes before the start of the Battle at Sheikh Sa’ad illustrates the conditions under which these men fought. Here, the troops assaulted directly from the line of march with no supporting artillery or reconnaissance. Colonel Wauchope of the Black Watch, pleading for time to prepare, was simply told to advance, “wherever the bullets are thickest”.

In three weeks the 2nd Battalion Black Watch was reduced from 29 officers and 900 men to 2 officers and 130 men. The Seaforths suffered similarly and the remnants of the two Battalions were amalgamated to form the Highland Battalion on 4th February 1916.

It was at the start of these actions that on another war front, in Gallipoli, the Allied evacuation had taken place allowing battle hardened Turkish troops to be moved into Mesopotamia.

As the plight of the besieged Anglo-Indian force in Kut became more acute more British reinforcements arrived and three further battles were fought to try to get through, at the Dujaila Redoubt, Fallahiyeh and Sannaiyat in March and April 1916. At Sannaiyat, in mud as bad as any in Flanders, all ranks again advanced across open country and in this illustration you can just see the advancing infantry as they go forward across the horizon and into the mirage.

Two men of the Seaforths won Victoria Crosses in these actions, Corporal Sydney Ware and Sergeant Thomas Steele.

Although they got to within 10 miles of the town, all of these battles to secure the relief of the garrison at Kut were without success and British and Indian casualties in killed and wounded totalled 23,000. After attempts by Lawrence of Arabia to bribe his way to secure terms, and after gallant efforts failed to supply Kut both by river and by air, the garrison of around 9,000 surrendered on 29th April 1915. It was the greatest defeat and loss in British Military History up to that point. Figures vary but over half of the surviving Kut Garrison subsequently died in Turkish captivity on forced marches hundreds of miles overland into Turkey and in labour camps.

Public outrage led to the Mesopotamia Commission of Enquiry, the appointment of Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude to command military operations, change of overall command from India to the War Office in London, reinforcement, training and a massive logistics operation. There were resignations, voluntary and otherwise, and recriminations and those who tried to avoid their responsibility were fiercely and publicly criticsed by Rudyard Kipling in his passionate poem “Mesopotamia”.

Appointed as Inspector General of Communications was the distinguished and able Major General Sir George MacMunn and the unsung heroes of the logistical operation were the Royal Engineers of Inland Water Transport whose only memorial I know of is a small stained glass window in the Hall of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the River Thames.

Boats and barges with no more than 6 feet laden draft were ordered from all over the world, this from the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, this from Clyde. Some craft came in kit form like giant Mecano sets, and wharves, dry docks, wet basins and repair yards were constructed from scratch. The rivers were surveyed, buoyed and charted. Whole villages were built to house the British, Indian, West Indian and Chinese construction teams. Artillery, munitions, rations, railways, medical facilities, telephone cables all appeared as part of the military infrastructure.

General Maude launched his offensive on December 16th 1916. After three months of spectacular success a patrol of the Black Watch entered Baghdad on the morning of 11th March 1917, ninety years ago.

Although Maude died of cholera in Baghdad the advance continued. In fierce fighting at Istabulat, Private Melvin of Kirriemuir in Forfarshire threw his damaged rifle aside and charged forward to a Turkish redoubt with just bayonet and fists bringing three of the defenders to the ground and forcing the remaining six to surrender; he won the Victoria Cross. At Samarrah again the Black Watch were the first to enter the town and carried away the Samarrah Station Bell as a trophy. Tekrit was taken on the 5th of November 1917.

At this point while the Highland Light Infantry remained in Mesopotamia, the Seaforths and the Black Watch moved to Palestine. Operations continued in Mesopotamia culminating in the surrender of the 6th Turkish Army on 30th October 1918 after which British troops marched unopposed into Mosul on 14th November.

The campaign had cost 92,000 British and Indian casualties. By the end of the war there were over 410,000 men serving in Mesopotamia the vast majority recruited from India.

The peace process was in many ways even more challenging than the war. To say to someone like Sir Percy Cox of the Indian Political Department, formerly an officer of the Cameronians, with 30 years experience in India, the Persian Gulf and Somalia, and a participant in the Mesopotamian Campaign from the outset, “We don’t do reconstruction”, simply would never have occurred. Of course they did reconstruction this was the British Empire!

As in the Second World War, such as at Yalta, there were a number of agreements that were made between the Allies while the First World War was in progress as to what was to happen when Allied victory was achieved.

In May 1916 a British diplomat, Sykes, and a French diplomat, Picot, negotiated the secret post war settlement in the Arab world, known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement. What we now know as Lebanon would go to France, the British would take control of the area around Baghdad and Basra, Palestine would be under international administration and what was left, Syria, Mosul and Jordan, would have their own local Arab chiefs, supervised by the French in the north and the British in the south.

No sooner had this agreement been concluded than the British regretted it. They wanted their sphere of influence to include Palestine and Mosul, and the oil. The French became suspicious when the British force entered Jerusalem and subsequently refused to co-operate with them in discussions of a handover.

At the Peace Conference in 1919 there was actually very little discussion about Mesopotamia. The Arab world represented primarily by Emir Feisal, who with Lawrence had led the Arab Revolt against the Turks, expected independence and self-determination. The Americans, who had no interest in the Middle East whatsoever, through President Wilson in his “Four Principles” speech advocated that “decisions must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned".

Closely involved in the final decisions and strongly promoting the Arab cause was not only TE Lawrence but also the indomitable Gertrude Bell; explorer, Arabist, the first woman to work for British Military Intelligence and the only woman officially part of the British Expedition to Mesopotamia.

Taking a paternalistic line, at best, which has an eerily contemporary ring to it, that the Arabs required time to gain the knowledge and experience of modern government, the powers proceeded to award themselves mandates, the British over Palestine and Mesopotamia and the French over Syria.

The resulting nationalist revolt in Iraq was sternly surpessed with considerable loss of life using aircraft and armoured cars. Sir Percy Cox returned as High Commissioner to form a provisional government and in 1921 an Iraqi Government was installed in Baghdad and the Hashemite ruler Feisal, under the tutelage of Gertrude Bell, became King of Iraq, under British supervision and protection.

The British set about training the Iraqis for government, administration and law and order. These are Iraqi Policemen at the British Training School in Baghdad in 1922.

The ten volumes of the Iraq Administration Reports which gather dust in the old India Office Library, testify to the massive British efforts to set the country on its feet, but it has to be said at enormous cost. In 1932 the Mandate ended and Iraq joined the League of Nations. A year later 600 Assyrians were massacred by the jubilant Iraqi army and it was clear that the story was not yet over.

Sir Henry Dobbs who succeeded Cox as High Commissioner in Iraq concluded in 1933, “So now to reconstruct this Iraq we have squandered blood, treasure and high ability. We have bound debts and taxes on the necks of generations of our descendants. We have seemed by the abandonment of the Assyrians and Kurds to sacrifice our very honour. We have suffered the accusation that on the scene of their agony, we living have betrayed the hopes of our dead. You ask, for all this, shall we have our reward?”

“I answer that I cannot say”.

Dr D M Henderson

Buchanan, Sir George, The Tragedy of Mesopotamia, William Blackwood & Sons Ltd, Edinburgh, 1938.

Carruthers, Douglas (Ed), The Desert Route to India, Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, 1996. Dane, Edmund, British Campaigns in the Nearer East 1914 – 1918, Hodder and Stroughton, 1919. Hall, Lieutenant Colonel L J OBE, The Inland Water Transport in Mesopotamia, Constable and Company Ltd, 1921.

Howell, Georgina, Daughter of the Desert, the Remarkable life of Gertrude Bell, Pen and Sword Books.

Iraq Administration Reports 1914 – 1932.

Lake, Lieutenant General Sir Percy, Dispatch, printed in the Fourth Supplement to the London Gazette, 12th October 1916.

Lawrence, Lieutenant Colonel T E, A Report on Mesopotamia, The Sunday Times, 22nd August 1920.

Long, P W, MM, Other Ranks of Kut, Williams and Norgate Ltd, London, 1938.

MacMillan, Margaret, Peacemakers, John Murray, London, 2001.

MacMunn, Lieutenant General Sir George F, History of the Great War Based on Official Documents.

Mesopotamia Commission. Report of the Commission appointed by Act of Parliament, Cd.8610, 1917.

Neave, Dorina L, Remembering Kut, Arthur Barker Ltd, London, 1937.

Nunn, Vice Admiral Wilfred, Tigris Gunboats, Chatham Publishing, London, 2007.

Sym, Colonel John, Seaforth Highlanders, Gale and Polden, Aldershot, 1962.

Townshend, C V, My Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1920.

Wauchope, Major General A G, CB, A History of the Black Watch in the Great War 1914-1918, The Medici Society Ltd, London, 1925.

Wilcox, Ron, Battles on the Tigris, Pen and Sword Books. Wilson, Sir Arnold T, MP, Loyalties Mesopotamia 1914 – 1917, OUP, London, 1930.

www.scotsatwar.org.uk  |  The Scots at War Trust  |  ©2004 Dr Henderson