In the Spring of 1915, Townsend was promoted to the rank of Major-General and appointed to the command of the
6th (Poona) Division in Mesopotamia, tasked with protecting British Empire's oil production assets in Persia from Ottoman Imperial attack. He arrived in
Basra from India in April to assume command of the Division. As he sailed up the
Tigris in a steamer named the
Dwarka, Townshend often wrote in his diary about
Belisarius, "the Roman general who gave a last flicker of glory to the expiring Eastern Empire" by conquering Mesopotamia from the Persians in 541, going on to write: "Who knows that I shall not eventually become governor of Mesopotamia?".
Mesopotamian Campaign 1915–1916 General Townshend was ordered by his commanding officer, General
John Nixon, to advance the 6th (Poona) Division from
Basra along the north-westerly course of the River
Tigris in a large river flotilla consisting of a variety of vessels, with the strategic objective of capturing the town of
Amarah and destroying in the process all Ottoman Imperial military forces present in its path in Lower Mesopotamia. Townshend's relations with Nixon were not good, and within four days of first meeting him, Townshend was writing letters to Nixon's superiors in India attacking him as incompetent and suggesting that he was a better man to lead Force D. In his 1920 book
My Campaign in Mesopotamia, Townshend wrote about Nixon's plans: I was always of the opinion that as Mesopotamia was a secondary Theatre of War. We should have held Basra and its provinces on the defensive by a disposition similar to the Manoeuvre of a Central Position...I should have occupied the towns of Kurna [Al-Qurna] on the Tigris, in the bifurcation of the Tigris and the Euphrates, Nasiriyeh [An Nasiriya], and Ahwaz [Ahvāz] on the Karun River...with minimum forces strongly entrenched and with ammunition and provisions for six months...in this way I should have secured Mesopotamia at a minimum cost to England and in absolute security until such time as the Government decided I should take the offensive-preferably when the decisive offensive was assumed in the theatre in France-and gave me adequate forces to do so. At the time, Townshend was all for an advance up the Tigris, through he believed that taking Baghdad was strategically pointless. The purpose of the British Force D was to protect the oil wells of southern-western Persia (later Iran) which supplied Britain with almost all of its oil from being attacked by the Ottomans. By occupying in late 1914 the Ottoman
vilayet (province) of Basra (now southern Iraq), the British had achieved their strategic purpose of preventing the Ottomans from launching any offensive into the
Khuzestan Province of Persia where all of the British-owned oil fields of Persia were located. There was no real strategic need for the British to advance up the Tigris to take
Baghdad, but both Nixon and Townshend were all for it for reasons of prestige. Townshend, who was hungry for glory as usual, resented being sent to a backwater like Mesopotamia instead of France, where the decisive fighting was taking place, and was determined to make the most of his posting by taking Baghdad, which he hoped would lead him to being given what he really wanted, namely the command of a corps on the Western Front. Regan wrote that the "Baghdad" that Townshend spoke of was a "mythical" place that had nothing to do with the real city. From 762 to 1258, Baghdad had been the capital of
Abbasid Caliphate, during which time it became known in both the Middle East and Europe as a city of fabulous wealth and high culture. In 1258, Baghdad had been sacked and razed to the ground by the Mongols under
Hulagu Khan, and the new city that had been built on the ruins was a pale shadow of the old Baghdad. The old Baghdad lived on in folk memories as an enchanted place that sadly was no more but that grew more and more beautiful as time went on. Subsequently, the popularity of books like
One Thousand and One Nights and other "Orientalist" literature in the West inspired by
The Arabian Nights had built on folk memories of Abbasid Baghdad to depict it in lushly romantic terms; a fantastically exotic, mysterious, beautiful and sensuous city of tremendous wealth and languid eroticism. The
Indian Army and all of the British troops in India, was responsible to the Viceroy of India, not the War Office in London, which in practice meant that it had a considerable degree of autonomy from London. Through London had the ultimate say in the deployment of the Army of India, the Viceroy
Lord Hardinge fought hard to preserve his control of his forces, and the War Office had to negotiate with him when it came to the deployment of his forces as if they were dealing with an allied nation instead of a Crown Colony. Most of the revenue used to fund the Army of India came from selling opium to China, and the end of opium sales to China in 1910 had cost the Indian government about £4 million (about £50 million in 1984 values) without any replacement. For Lord Hardinge, having to operate on reduced means and whose mandate dictated that securing the North-West Frontier was his primary responsibility, the demand to send troops to Europe was unwelcome, and he fought hard to keep the Army of India in India. Failing that, Hardinge wanted the Persian Gulf to be the exclusive responsibility for the Raj, since this was considered a quiet theatre that would not drain away too many troops and by having the Raj protect Britain's oil supplies, allowing him to say that India was making a major contribution to the war effort. The
India Office in London wanted the operations in Persian Gulf to be managed by the Raj as a way of showing off how well-run India was under their watch. Most of the oil Britain used came from a series of oil fields around the city of
Abadan in Persia-which happened to be very close to the border with the Ottoman Empire-and as most of the British Army was engaged in Europe, the War Office asked Lord Hardinge to provide the troops to take Basra and thus prevent the Ottomans from violating Persian neutrality to seize Abadan. In exchange for giving up control of the Indian divisions sent in the fall of 1914 to join the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, Hardinge had the entire Persian Gulf region made the exclusive responsibility of the Army of India. As a consequence, Force D with its headquarters in Basra that was operating in Mesopotamia took its orders from the Indian Army's headquarters in
Shimla, while the Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) with its headquarters in Cairo that was operating in the Sinai took its orders from the CIGS in London. Despite the fact that both Force D and the Egyptian Expeditionary Force were engaged against the Ottoman Empire, co-operation between the two forces was very poor, with for example, two intelligence services operating in the Near East that refused to share information with one another under the grounds that the other service was a "rival". Likewise,
Beauchamp Duff, the commander of the Army of India, lived in Shimla, which was a long way from Basra and simply had no interest in Mesopotamia, being known as the "hermit clerk", owing to his reclusive nature and his obsession with paperwork at the expense of everything else. Because the War Office in London had no operational control over the forces in Mesopotamia until 1916 and Lord Hardinge and Duff lacked the willingness to assert their authority, officers on the ground had much freedom to conduct their policies. The War Secretary, Field Marshal Sir
Herbert Kitchener, was opposed to the idea of an advance to take Baghdad, arguing that it would drain away resources needed for the Western Front to take a target of no real military value for prestige, but the Persian Gulf was Lord Hardinge's area of responsibility, and Kitchener could not convince the cabinet to stop the operation. The Prime Minister
H. H. Asquith was overwhelmed with the responsibilities of leading his nation during a world war, and under his leadership cabinet meetings tended to drag on and on, as he sought a consensus between opposing factions instead of deciding for one course or another. The Asquith cabinet reached a compromise: allow Force D to advance on Baghdad, but give first priority to supplying the Western Front. Force D, to which Townshend's 6th Division was attached, was a mostly Indian force that had a major shortage of artillery with no heavy guns and was deficient in supplies of transport for clean drinking water, wire-cutters, telephones, lights, tents, signal rockets, mosquito nets, telescopic sights, flares, helmets, hand grenades, periscopes and blankets. Most seriously of all, Force D lacked proper medical supplies, lacking hospital ships or nurses assigned to it, drugs, dressings, and splints to treat wounds. He recalled that the
Espiegle was steered "by the old-fashioned hand wheel between decks", requiring that the officer on the bridge to shout down orders to the helmsman below, leading to the ship often running aground on the Tigris.
March to Baghdad The opening phase of the advance went spectacularly well against numerically superior opposition in difficult and hostile terrain and climate, most of the Ottoman forces fleeing or surrendering with comparatively little fighting. Townshend began his advance on 31 May 1915 when he had his 18-pounder artillery guns open fire on the Ottoman trenches while his men in the
bellums outflanked the Ottoman positions. He had a very low opinion of the
Marsh Arabs whom he regarded as "great scoundrels and even murderers" good only for looting, and he dismissively referred them as the "Salvation Army". In the Ottoman Empire, the state religion was Sunni Islam and the Marsh Arabs, being Shia Muslims, were oppressed by the Ottoman state; Townshend could have won the Marsh Arabs over to the Allied cause had he been willing to take the time to cultivate them. After taking Amarah, Townshend issued a press release-which completely ignored the role of his Indian soldiers-by claiming that a mere twenty-five British soldiers and sailors commanded by himself had taken Amarah. He was popular with his men. McKnight of Sandhurst stated in an interview: Occasionally his quirky sense of humor plays quite well with the men. There was an occasion early on in the siege where he does a snap inspection twenty-four hours earlier than was expected and discovers the officer in command of the particular redoubt desperately trying to change into something a little bit more formal with no clothes on. Townshend insists the guy accompanies him on the inspection then and there with no clothes on, which obviously the officer hated, but would have been loved by the men in the trenches! In a letter to his wife, he described his advance: ...such a rapid, hard-hitting pursuit after a victory has hardly a parallel. Eighty miles without stopping, and I was so excited and never going to sleep and so determined to destroy the Turks that I ate nothing! My constant watchword was 'Smite hip and thigh-the sword of the Lord and Gideon!' After taking Amarah, he, like his many of his men, fell ill after drinking dirty water, and suffering from severe diarrhoea and vomiting, he left his command for a modern hospital in Bombay to recover. It was not later in the summer of 1915 that Townshend returned to his command. He reported that if he could defeat the Ottomans at Kurna, he take Baghdad at once, which led Nixon to reply that he was looking forward to riding into Baghdad in triumph on a white horse. He noted that it was about 500 miles from where he was to Baghdad and that was "undermanned as regards land and water transport", lacking enough ships and wagons to supply a drive to Baghdad, but reflecting the optimistic mood, wrote "Sir John Nixon told me to send him a wire if I intended a rush into Baghdad, as he might be able to come on in time to enter Baghdad with me." The core of the Ottoman Army had always been Turkish peasant conscripts from Anatolia, well known for their toughness and tenacity in combat. As he was soon to learn, the ethnically Turkish units in the Ottoman Army were far tougher opponents than the ethnically Arab ones. After this, the campaign's objectives were extended to encompass the town of
Kut-al-Amara, further up the river, which was captured after a set-piece battle on 28 September 1915. The victorious passage of the campaign received much coverage in the British Empire's press, which was encouraged by a British Government anxious for good war news for the public to counteract the military difficulties it was experiencing in Europe on the
Western Front and at
Gallipoli. Strachan in a 2000 interview stated: Townshend in the first three months in Mesopotamia achieves a stunning series of successes. He was expected to break through Turkish defences and capture the town of Amara, but he was not expected to do this with a motley fleet of steamers pursuing the Turks in his own personal steamer and actually taking Amara with something like seventy men holding 1,000 prisoners. It was a spectacular advance, very bold, very imaginative and, of course, in 1915 nowhere else in the First World Was as there any similar spectacular success, so Townshend overnight becomes a British sensation. He's a success story and that something that he can build on to make his career go further. The ambitious Townshend desperately wanted to be promoted to lieutenant general and have the command of a corps, and he believed that taking Baghdad was the best means of achieving both. At this point, Townshend suggested halting at Kut-al-Amara to gather strength in men and material before attempting an advance upon the city of
Baghdad, but General Nixon was convinced by this time that the Ottoman Army was of a sufficiently inferior quality that there was no need, and dash was what was required rather than a more cautious strategy. Townshend reported, "These troops of mine are
tired and their tails are
not up, but slightly down". The Dorset regiment was down to only 297 men fit for combat, and he expressed worry about the quality of the Indian replacements being sent to him. Given his supply problems, his demands for another division or two would have increased his logistical difficulties, requiring landing additional supplies at Basra, which was already a hopelessly clogged bottleneck. Townshend told Nixon that he needed at least another division to take Baghdad and hence a promotion to command the newly created corps, which Nixon refused for reasons of spite rather than because of logistics. Townshend asked that Nixon send all of the British soldiers working as policemen, clerks and batmen in Basra up to the front to replace the Indian Muslims Townshend had sent away from the front, a request that Nixon refused. Supplies from Basra were brought up in
mahelas, a type of Arab sailing boat with enormous sails that moved very slowly at the best of times. On 24 October 1915, Townshend was ordered to take Baghdad. With the Battle of Gallipoli stalemated, 30, 000 battle-hardened Ottoman troops under the command of Khalil Bey to assist with the defense of Baghdad. Furthermore, the Tigris had become too shallow for the Royal Navy boats that had provided such useful fire support and Townshend would have to do without their services as he set out for Baghdad. Even through Townshend had advised against a further advance, his aggression and ambitions soon started to press him otherwise, especially as he had nothing but contempt for the enemy. Townshend claimed in
My Campaign in Mesopotamia to have been opposed to advancing on Baghdad after receiving the orders from Nixon, but at the time he expressed no opposition and was all for advancing onto Baghdad. At the time, Townshend reported meeting some stiff resistance from the Ottomans, but predicted that his men would advance rapidly once they had broken into the open country, which he stated would happen soon, further adding that a KCB was the greatest military honour that would please both himself and his family. sited within well-prepared defensive trench fortifications. General Nurreddin Pasha had the command of four divisions, namely the 35th, the 38th, the 45th and 51st which he had dug in at trenches built over the ruins of Ctesiphon. Townshend had divided his division into four columns. To Column A, he assigned the Dorset regiment, the 104th Rifles and the Thirtieth Composite Brigade to which he attached two Gurkha companies. To Column B, Townshend assigned the Norfolk regiment, the 7th Rajputs and the 110th Mahrattas. The battle began with Hoghton leading Column C in an attack in the early morning mist with the men of Column C using the outline of the Arch of Ctesiphon as their guide that quickly brought down murderous Ottoman fire on his men. In the meantime, General Delamain led Column A under heavy Ottoman fire to capture the Vital Point (V.P.) later that morning. After the capture of the V.P, Townshend believed that the battle was won, only to discover much to his shock that the Ottoman Army was much larger than he had thought and his forces were at the receiving end of a vigorous Ottoman counterattack. Once Boggis returned, Townshend stripped himself naked in full view of his men before putting on "a silk vest, silk underpants, a khaki shirt, his breeches, boots and sunhelmet and, picking up his binoculars, eating a piece of plum cake passed to him by a junior officer, resumed his inspection of the battle". As the Ottoman forces counter-attacked, Townshend was forced to pull back as his forces were outnumbered. He claimed that the withdrawal was due to the Indian troops under his command pulling back without orders, something which Townshend ascribed to significant numbers of their British officers being killed or wounded. After a hard day's fighting, he ordered what was left of his division to dig in while Nureddin Pasha ordered his troops to pull back; Townshend quickly began reorganising his men to defend against another Ottoman attack. Amid the ruins of Ctesiphon, Ottoman forces attacked the British and Indian defenders, with the fiercest fighting occurring at the Water Redoubt where about 100 men of the 22nd Punjabi Regiment and about 300 Gurkhas stood their ground and beat off successive attacks by the 35th Ottoman Division. One of Nureddin Pasha's staff officers, Muhammad Amin, later wrote that it was amazing that this "brave and determined little force" had stopped an entire Ottoman division and finally pushed them back to their second line of defence. On 1 December 1915 Nureddin caught up with Townshend at the village of Umm al-Tubul (the "Mother of Tombs") where a sharp action occurred that ended with the Ottomans being driven off with heavy losses. On 7 December the pursuing Ottoman force surrounded and besieged Kut-al-Amara, trapping the 6th (Poona) Division within its walls. Townshend could have retreated back to Basra if he had wanted to do so, but instead he chose to make his stand at Kut. Townshend chose to fortify Kut out of the hope of repeating his success at Chitral in 1895, knowing that if the Ottomans besieged him at Kut, then the British Army would have to send out a relief force to break the siege. General William Delamian, one of Townshend's subordinates was to later write that this claim was a lie and after a day's rest at Kut, the men of the 6th Division could have easily continued to march if only Townshend had given the order. Townshend claimed that Kut was strategic because it was at the intersection of the Tigris and Hai rivers, but in fact the "Hai river" was only a flood effluent of the Tigris. Kut was on a peninsula in the Tigris river allowed the Ottomans to by-pass it. Galbraith wrote that "Kut's great importance was not strategic, but political". As many of the boats and ships that used the Tigris had been sunk or captured by the British during their advance up the river, the Ottomans did not depend upon river transport to the extent that the British, and the location of Kut on a peninsula in the Tigris meant the Ottomans easily by-passed the town. On 8 December 1915, the Ottomans made their first major artillery bombardment of Kut, using their German-made Krupp guns. The 35th Ottoman division was unable to take Kut, but brought the Ottoman trenches closer to the town. In response, Townshend had the bridge of boats across the Tigris blown up to prevent the Ottomans from entering the town. Kut was besieged by the 38th, 45th and 51st divisions of the Ottoman Army. Townshend sent an appeal for help, saying that immediate relief was necessary as his men were suffering 150-200 casualties per day and that morale was collapsing. On 10 December 1915, General
Nureddin Pasha ordered his men to storm Kut, but Townshend repelled the Ottoman assaulting force with heavy losses, through the Ottomans seized enough ground to build another line closer to the walls of Kut. On Christmas Day 1915, the Ottomans made another attempt to storm Kut and at one point broke through to seize part of the old fort at Kut, before fierce British counter-attacks drove them out. Major Charles Barber, the chief medical officer at Kut recalled how the Anglo-Indian soldiers were tortured by "myriads" of lice, stating: "Our wretched patients would sit for hours picking them off their blankets and shirts". He indicated that he only had supplies for a month at full ration, however, in reality, his troops finally ran out of supplies near the end of April 1916, almost five months later. This led the British Government, under pressure from the London press's portrayal of Townshend as a hero once again surrounded by Oriental hordes in desperate circumstances (as he had been during the
Siege of Chitral 21 years before), to order the hasty dispatch of a military relief force from Basra, which was defeated on arrival at Kut by the unexpectedly strong Ottoman defenses under the direction of the newly arrived Prussian Field Marshal
Colmar von der Goltz. Shortages of firewood in Kut meant that a fire to warm one's bones became a luxury amid the heavy rains. At any given movement, there was a line of 14 ships waiting to unload their cargos at Basra and it took an average of six weeks for a ship to unload its cargo at Basra in 1915. Townshend spent almost all of his time either in his headquarters, a two-story mud house writing up messages or "gazing out across the Turkish lines from his observation post on the roof". In March 1916, the Ottomans began particular heavy bombardments of Kut, and the Ottomans were seen unloading mysterious canisters from a barge, which everyone assumed was poison gas from Germany. Morale began to collapse among the Indians as more and more Indians began to desert, there were several cases of Indian soldiers killing their NCOs and many Indians began to engage in self-mutilation to get themselves into the presumed safety of the hospital. Whenever news of German advances at the Battle of Verdun reached the Ottoman lines, the Turks would give a giant three cheers for Germany while Townshend was comforted when he received a message over the radio that the Russians had taken by storm the allegedly impregnable Ottoman city-fortress of Erzerum, which he believed meant the Russians would soon relief him. The fall of Erzerum, which allowed the Russians to advance into Asia Minor, brought Townshend more time as the Ottomans rushed troops into Anatolia to deal with the Russian advance, and to orders that there would be no more assaults against Kut. On the night of 5 April 1916, Townshend searched the skyline for any sign of the relief attempt by Gorringe, leading him to send a barrage of messages over the radio asking where Gorringe was. Townshend was informed that all of Gorringe's attacks had been beaten back by the Ottomans. On 10 April 1916, Townshend cut the rations of his men while sending a request for food to be air-dropped into Kut. Complicating matters for both the besieged and besiegers was that the Tigris rose by three feet in 24 hours, causing flooding in both Kut and the area around it. Townshend in a message on 11 April 1916 blamed that the fact that his men were starving to death due to the unwillingness of the Indian soldiers to eat horses due to religious reasons. By the end of March 1916, about 500 of Townshend's men were suffering from scurvy, which he blamed on the unwillingness to eat horses. On 16 April 1916, the Royal Flying Corps made their first airdrops on food into Kut. However, the airplanes could be flown at dawn or dusk owing to the extreme heat and dropped food from a height of 6, 000 feet to avoid anti-aircraft fire, which caused much of the food to land in either the Tigris or onto the Ottoman lines. Townshend's staff estimated that some 5, 000 pounds of grain needed to be airdropped per day while only 1, 600 pounds were airdropped. On 17 April 1916 and again on 22 April 1916, the last two attempts to relive Kut ended in failure, which led a strong sense of despair to emerge in Kut as it became apparent that the garrison was doomed. An attempt to run in food on the boat
Julnar ended in failure on 24 April 1916 with the boat being shot up and stranded on the Tigris. In late April 1916, Townshend came up with a desperate plan to bribe the Ottomans into letting him and his men leave Kut, an offer that Halil Pasha took up, engaging in talks with Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence of the Cairo Intelligence Staff, before publicising the British offer to humiliate them. Halil Pasha knew the Anglo-Indian garrison was starving to death, and he had the upper hand. When negotiating the surrender of Kut to General
Halil Pasha, Townshend's main concern was to make certain that the Ottomans would not mistreat Spot (who they promised they would send back to Britain, a promise that Halil Pasha kept). The German Emperor Wilhlem II praised Townshend's defeat in a press statement as a "shining monument to German-Turkish brotherhood in arms", claiming that it was Goltz who had done most of the work at Kut, a statement which offended his Ottoman allies who disliked the implication of the Kaiser's press statement that they would have failed at Kut on their own, and needed German officers to lead them to victory. and unidentified officers after the siege of Kut, 1916. On 2 May 1916, Townshend was taken in an Ottoman motor boat up the Tigris to Baghdad and was run past by his men, who cheered him as he saluted in return. Despite the whips of the guards who tried to keep their charges marching down the road, the POWs rushed to the bank of the Tigris to cheer their general on as he sped past them, shouting "Three cheers for our brave general! Hip-hip-hurrah!". It was the last time that most of Townshend's men were to see him. The Ottomans provided their POWs with a few hardened biscuits for food. This was the first and only time that Townshend ever expressed concern about how his men were being treated as POWs. However, the Ottoman forces at Kut were at the end of a long supply line in the form of camel convoys and even if they had wanted to march on the Persian Gulf, would have had to face British and Indian divisions well dug in further south, making the siege unnecessary to stop the Ottoman from trying to take Basra. About Townshend's behaviour in Constantinople, Dixon commented: "Underneath the agreeable veneer lay a fatal flaw that showed itself in a ravenous, self-destructive hunger for popular acclaim. Through its origins remain obscure, Townshend gave the impression of a man who at some time had suffered traumatic damage to his self-esteem, which resulted in an everlasting need to be loved" Townshend tried very hard to get his wife Alice to join him in his captivity, writing that he being allowed to live in an English-style country house, the Villa Hampson on the island of Prinkipo in the Sea of Marmara, telling her how very happy he would be if she were to join him on Prinkipo. During the First World War, the Ottoman state carried out mass deportation campaigns against the Armenian minority, which attracted widespread unfavorable publicity around the world. The favourable treatment of Townshend was largely because he served the public relations needs of the Ottoman state as Enver cannily manipulated Townshend's obsessive need to have the great and mighty pay attention to him for his own advantage. Townshend's willingness to praise Enver Pasha in public for his generous hospitality and to issue press statements attacking the British for alleged mistreatment of Ottoman POWs in Egypt served to distract attention from what the Ottomans were doing to the Armenians. At the war's end Townshend, as the most senior British imperial official in Istanbul at that moment, was involved in the negotiations for the Ottoman Empire's military surrender to the British Empire's advancing
Egyptian Expeditionary Force in October 1918. Townshend's claim made on his return to Britain that the entire Armistice of Mudros was all his work led to an annoyed Field Marshal
Edmund Allenby to issue a corrective statement saying that Townshend did indeed play a role in negotiating the Armistice of Mudros, but he had greatly exaggerated his role by claiming that the armistice was all his work. ==Post-war==