The pursuing Ottoman forces under
Halil Pasha arrived on 7 December 1915. Once it became clear the Ottomans had enough forces to lay siege to Kut, Townshend ordered his cavalry to escape south, which it did, led by Lieut. Colonel
Gerard Leachman. The Ottoman forces numbered around 11,000 men and were increasing steadily with additional reinforcements arriving constantly. They were commanded by the respected but elderly German general and military historian
Baron von der Goltz. Goltz knew the Ottoman army well, as he had spent 12 years working on modernizing it, from 1883 to 1895. After three attacks in December, Goltz directed the building of siege fortifications facing Kut. He prepared for an attack from Basra, using the
Tigris River, by building defensive positions further down the river designed to cut off a river-borne relief. The Ottoman
XVIII Corps that consisted of the 45th and 51st divisions was assigned to besiege Kut while the
XIII Corps that consisted of the 35th and 52nd divisions was assigned down the Tigris river to block any relief force coming up from Basra. After a month of siege, Townshend wanted to break out and withdraw southwards but his commander, General
Sir John Nixon saw value in tying down the Ottoman forces in a siege. Nixon had ordered transports from London, but none had arrived. The War Office was in the process of reorganizing military command; previously the orders had come from the Viceroy and India Office. However, when Townshend—inaccurately—reported that only one month of food remained, a rescue force was hastily raised. It is not clear why Townshend reported he only had enough food for one month when he actually had food for more than four months (although at a reduced level), but Townshend would not attempt an infantry retreat unprotected through hostile tribal lands without river transport. Nixon had ordered this with reinforcements, commanded by his son, but by December they were still only in the Suez Canal. The confusing communications would prove to be a critical delay. Medical facilities in Kut were headed by Major General
Patrick Hehir.
Relief expeditions The first relief expedition comprised some 19,000 men under Lieutenant-General
Aylmer and it headed up the river from Ali Gharbi in January 1916.
Battle of Sheikh Sa'ad The first attempt to relieve Kut (the Battle of Sheikh Sa'ad) came on 6 January by troops under the command of
Major-General George Younghusband. Troops under Lieut. Gen. Aylmer's command joined the British forces with two brigades the next day following which Aylmer took over the command. The following day, on 7 January, Aylmer arrived with the main body of his forces and ordered a general attack. Younghusband led the attack on the left bank and Major-General
Kemball took the right. After heavy fighting all day, Kemball's troops had overrun Ottoman trenches on the right bank, taking prisoners and capturing two guns. However, the Ottoman left bank held firm and they carried out supporting manoeuvres from the north. After little change on 8 January, renewed British attacks on 9 January resulted in the Ottomans retiring from Sheikh Sa'ad. Over the following two days the Ottomans were followed by Aylmer's force but heavy rains made the roads virtually impassable.
Siege As the siege continued, supplies started to run out for the besieged. Sergeant Munn reported: "About half-way through February the rations were sadly diminishing. Tobacco was first out, and we were smoking anything that would smoke, and green leaves (dried over a fire), tea leaves and sawdust mixed, ginger cut into small lumps. Tea ran out and we had ginger instead (ginger crushed and steeped in boiling water). Milk and sugar had given out long ago, likewise beef and mutton and all the bully was gone with the exception of two days' emergency rations which kept back until the very last". Dysentery and scurvy became common. At the beginning of March 1916, the Ottomans used their Krupp artillery to open a heavy bombardment of Kut, which destroyed much of the town. At the same time, three German aircraft bombed Kut, though the damage inflicted was only slight as compared to the artillery bombardment. At the time, the Ottomans were seen unloading metal cylinders from a barge in the Tigris, which were assumed to contain chemical weapons from Germany. Townshend in his diary called chemical warfare "a cowardly barbarism worthy of Chinese pirates". As both the garrison and population of Kut began to starve while the Ottoman guns continued to blast Kut, Townshend sent out a series of messages on the radio asking for a promotion from major-general to lieutenant-general on the account of his success advancing the Tigris in 1915, requests that reflected badly on him.
Later efforts At this point,
Khalil Pasha (the Ottoman commander of the whole region) came to the battle, bringing with him a further 20,000 to 30,000 reinforcements. Following the defeat of Aylmer's expedition, General Nixon was replaced as supreme commander by
Percy Lake on 19 January. More forces were sent to bolster Aylmer's troops. He tried again, attacking the
Dujaila redoubt on 8 March. This attack failed, at a cost of 4,000 men. General Aylmer was dismissed and replaced with General
George Gorringe on 12 March. In April, starvation within the British garrison at Kut forced Indian troops to abandon the vegetarian diet of their religion and eat horse meat. The relief attempt by Gorringe is usually termed the first battle of Kut. The British Empire's forces numbered about 30,000 soldiers, roughly equal to the Ottomans. The battle began on 5 April and the British soon captured
Fallahiya but with heavy losses,
Bait Isa was taken on 17 April. The final effort was against
Sannaiyat on 22 April. The Allies were unable to take Sannaiyat and suffered some 1,200 casualties in the process. In April 1916
No. 30 Squadron of the
Royal Flying Corps carried out the first air supply operation in history. Food and ammunition were dropped to the defenders of Kut, but "as often as not their parcels go into the Tigris or into the Turkish trenches!" and the food rations provided between the 11 and 29 April were only enough for three days. All the relief efforts had failed, at a cost of around 30,000 Allied killed or wounded. Ottoman casualties are believed to have been around 10,000. The Ottomans also lost the aid of Baron von der Goltz. He died in April 1916, supposedly of
typhoid about a week before the British surrendered on 29 April. The British also asked for help from the Russians. General
Nikolai Baratov, with his largely Cossack force of 20,000, was in Persia at the time. Following the request he advanced towards Baghdad in April 1916, but he turned back when news of the surrender reached him. General Townshend arranged a ceasefire on the 26th and, after failed negotiations, he simply surrendered on 29 April 1916 after a siege of 147 days. Around 13,000 Allied soldiers survived to be made prisoners. The Turkish writer
İlber Ortaylı states that "
Halil Pasha acted like a gentleman to the surrendering British officers" and offered "to take the
POWs up towards the north in river boats in case fuel could be provided from British bases nearby." The French historian
Marc Ferro suggested a different image. According to Ferro, the surrendered British and Indian forces were forced to march around the city of Baghdad while being maltreated by the Ottoman troops supervising their march. After the surrender, the Ottomans agreed to an exchange of sick and wounded soldiers for an equal number of POWs of the
Ottoman Empire that were held by the British. Around 1,500 incapacitated prisoners were exchanged. The Anglo-Indian sick and wounded were taken to hospitals by ships and barges of the Tigris River. The men of the 6th Division suffered terribly as Ottoman prisoners. On the day of the surrender, the Ottomans handed out biscuits for the POWs. The British historian Russell Braddon wrote that after eating the biscuits "The following morning, they began to die. Frothing at the mouth, their bowels and stomachs disintegrating into a greenish slime, dehydrated and moaning, they died one after the other". The British and Indian POWs were afflicted by
enteritis from contaminated biscuits. The British historian Paul Knight wrote: "The treatment of the Kuttities was similar to those of the Allied prisoners of war taken by the Japanese, which is of course a far more familiar story to a modern audience. Whether or not there was a deliberate state policy to murder the Kuttities through overwork, underfeeding, or both, or whether murder was a by-produce of negligence, neglect and official incompetence is a moot point. It made little difference to the Kuttities. Their captivity took place against the backdrop of the Armenian massacres, which are still denied by the modern Turkish state. Again, whether or not the death of thousands of Armenians was the result of a state policy, or whether it was the by-produce of negligence, neglect and official incompetence is a moot point. It made little difference to the Armenians". One British POW, Sergeant Long, wrote about the long march from Kut to the POW camps in
Anatolia: "No words can adequately describe the appalling misery of that scene. Here were men who had suffered and fought the long months of the siege, although they were gradually starved and were not fit to do a day's march, yet they were being driven across the pitiless waste under a scorching sun, herded along by a brutal and callous escort of
Arab conscripts. Limping and staggering along they all finally arrived, some of them being assisted along by comrades, who themselves were in dire need of assistance". Other sources say many died en route. The Ottoman guards constantly whipped the POWs to encourage them to move faster. The Indian Muslims were able to bring themselves some protection by saying "
Islami, Islami" while the Gurkhas and Sikh POWs were abused for their religions. After reaching
Mosul, the POWs entered into areas where the population was
Kurdish while the desert terrain was replaced with the mountains of Anatolia. Long described the
Kurds as being more kindly disposed to the POWs than the
Arabs, which together the cool summer mountain air made conditions more bearable. At the
Ras-el-Ain camp where Indian POWs were being held, Long described the Indians as being in a "...condition that was truly pitiful they resembled animated skeletons hung about with filthy rags. No tents or other shelter had been provided and they were living in holes in the grounds like pariah dogs". Townshend himself was taken to the island of
Heybeliada on the
Sea of Marmara, to sit out the war in relative luxury. The author
Norman Dixon, in his book
On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, described Townshend as being "amused" by the plight of the men he had deserted, as if he had pulled off some clever trick. Dixon says Townshend was unable to understand why his friends and comrades were ultimately censorious over his behaviour. In British Army
battle honours, the siege of Kut is named as "Defence of Kut Al Amara". ==Aftermath==