chance of victory.




BRITISH TROOPS CROSSING THE RIDGE BETWEEN DELI ABBAS AND KIFRI

The glare and dust and heat of marching in the daytine in Mesopotamia can better be imagined than described.
Often where a man's pith helmet ceased its shade, his face was blistered as by fire. In this campaign the services
of mule drivers, whose jerky carts were compelled to act as ambulances in the early advance, were heroic.



harness or creaking of a transport cart,
the host of 20,000 men moved like a
great machine across the desert. Time
after time men in the ranks and officers
at the heads of columns reached for a
pipe but remembered just in time, and
soon in the still air the soldier moved
like one asleep over the illimitable
level beneath the stars. At dawn the
columns diverged, General Keary lead-
ing his men against the left face of the
redoubt, and General Kemball against
the right. It was evident that the
Turks were yet unalarmed for the
relief force passed silently through the
Arab fires in the cold light of the after
dawn. Daylight was growing, but



General Keary had been ordered to
wait until General Kemball's force
came up. His route was longer and he
was two hours after time. By the delay
and enforced wait, the element of
surprise was lost and the attack fore-
doomed to failure for Kemball and
Keary had no advantage in numbers, the
Turk was infinitely better placed, and
the relieving force was compelled to
seek a rapid decision through the
exigencies of desert, waterless country.
After marching all night the troops
fought on through long sun-baked
hours, yet at half-past four no progress
had been made, and withdrawal was
ordered and effected in good order.

627



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



Again the casualties were severe
3,476 officers and men and nothing
had been gained to balance this loss.

THE CASE OF THE KUT GARRISON
BECOMING HOPELESS.

The reverse of March 8 made
Townshend's case almost hopeless;
whatever action was now taken the
waters would have to be reckoned with.
After failure to break through El
Hanna, January 21, trench warfare had
begun on the left bank and continued
until the capture of the position on the
morning of April 5. There was little
resistance - at this spot but the Turk
was playing for time time to starve
out Kut, time to wear the British
down as they advanced and he fell
back, three miles beyond the El Hanna
lines, on to what was known as the
Falahiyeh position. This was rushed
at night, and the attackers pushed on
straight to Sannaiyat where the enemy
held three lines, all with their flanks
resting on river and marsh. Six miles
behind this again lay his strongest
position of all, the Sinn line, which he
had been building up for months.
Two attacks were delivered on San-
naiyat, but both failed, and at the end
the elements themselves enlisted for the
Turk, and with the rains the Tigris
rose and the marsh spread. On the
night of the eleventh a thunder storm
of extraordinary violence followed by
a water-spout, a hail storm and a
hurricane set the spray leaping four
feet in the Tigris and the water in the
marsh rising visibly.

For a time all movement on the left
bank was impossible, and the relieving
force put its energies into clearing up the
network of trenches and the two difficult
lines of Beit Aiessa and Chahela.
Though the Turks counter-attacked
determinedly with twelve battalions,
flinging into the assault the famous
2d Division of Constantinople, veter-
ans of the Balkan War and of Gallipoli,
they were repulsed and put out of
action with a loss of the best part of
two divisions. But the attack had not
yet carried the Sannaiyat position,
and to go forward with the possibility
of the Turk letting in the Tigris upon
the rear was not to be thought of and

628



once more, April 22, when the floods
had somewhat abated the Mesopo-
tamian Army attacked, with no success.

A FINAL EFFORT TO RELIEVE THE GAR-
RISON IS MADE.

One more effort was made to prolong
the struggle. On the night of April 24,
the paddle steamer Julnar with a cargo
of provisions sufficient to feed the
garrison for three weeks attempted to
force the blockade. Eyewitness says:
"The Julnar started her voyage at nine
on a moonlight night. A surprise was,
of course, impossible; she awoke the
whole camp with her engines and screw;
and it was not long before we heard the
fusillade she drew from the Turks.
She ran a terrific gauntlet of rifle
and machine gun fire from both banks
as she passed through the enemy's
position at Sinn, but she was well
plated and sandbagged and steamed
through. She was nearing Magasis,
within four miles of Kut, when she
struck the steel wire hawsers which the
Turks had stretched across the stream.
Her rudder became entangled and she
was held up. . . . With a nice calculation
the Turks had laid their trap for their
prize at the one point on the river
where she would be out of range of the
guns both of the Kut garrison and of
the relieving force. The next morning
an airman sighted her moored to the
bank by Magasis fort, intact and
floating on her own keel. The Turks
drew rations from her the same day,
and christened her 'The Gift'. "

j^ENERAL TOWNSHEND IS FINALLY
\Jf FORCED TO SURRENDER.

The drama of Kut which had cost
the relieving force 22,500 lives was
played out; only the epilogue remains
to be told. On the morning of April 29,
Townshend sent a wireless: "Have
destroyed my guns and am destroying
most of my munitions and have sent
out officers to Khalil to say am ready
to surrender. Khalil is at Madug. I am
unable to hold on any more. I must
have some food here. I have told
Khalil today, and have sent launch
with deputation to bring food from
Julnar." Nine thousand fighting men,
nearly 3,000 British and 6,000 Indians
surrendered at Kut. The Turks were



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



much impressed by Townshend and
allowed him to retain his sword, and
made his captivity as little irksome as
possible. At the time of surrender the
Kut garrison was well treated by the
enemy; it was only in the terrible
march northwards in June that the
desert and inhuman guards took such
fearful toll of the survivors.

The happenings in beleaguered Kut



tained 6,000 civilians and to this Arab
civilian population General Townshend
issued the same rations as were given
to British soldiers and sepoys. Very
little doubt existed as to the certainty
of relief. Townshend himself was the
chief fount of the optimism and steady
courage which characterized the gar-
rison. At the end of January he
issued an address that his men might




MAP SHOWING THE TURKISH DEFENSES BEFORE KUT

Sheik Saad and Orah were evacuated by the Turks during the first ten days of the British advance. Frontal
attack failed against the Umm-El-Hanna lines, but a diversion against the enemy's strongest position at Es-Sinn
was almost successful. In the first week in April both Umm-El-Hanna and Falahiyeh fell, but the enemy still held
Sannai-Yat and Es-Sinn; floods precluded further advance and Townshend was forced to surrender, April 29.



can be but briefly touched upon.
They fall under two phases': first a
determined siege, then a protracted
investment. For the first month Turk-
ish pressure was very heavy upon the
invested city, but with the advance of
the relieving force, it relaxed and the
question of ammunition was less press-
ing. Food was the great problem and
not until after the costly actions of
January 7, 13, and 22 had been fought
by insufficient forces were hidden
stores found in Kut which gave three
months' supplies to the besieged on
a gradually reduced scale. Kut con-



know how things stood. "I have
ample food for eighty-four days," he
said, "and that is not counting the
3,000 animals which can be eaten. I
expect confidently to be relieved in the
first half of the month of February.
Our duty stands out clear and simple.
It is our duty to our Empire, to our
beloved King and country, to stand
here and hold up the Turkish advance
as we are doing now, and with the
help of all, heart and soul together,
we will make the defense to be re-
membered in history as a glorious one
. . . We will succeed ;mark my words

629



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



but save your ammunition as if it were
gold."

-rpAMINE DEPLETED THE VITALITY OF THE
P TROOPS.

Scurvy set in in February and a
vegetable garden was planted from
seeds dropped by aeroplane. Midway
through the month a message from
King George, and news of the capture
of Erzerum cheered the troops though
privations were now beginning to be
seriously felt. Many of the Indians



a further reduction of food. On March
31 a further decrease was necessary,
and April 8 the mill stopped working
for want of fuel. Two weeks more and
the flour ration was again cut down.
On April 21 even the 4-ounce ration
gave out and the troops subsisted on
two days' reserve rations held since
January. When after the third battle
of Sannaiyat, immediate relief was
hopeless, Kut was fed by aeroplane.
When the Julnar was captured the




CAMELS FROM EGYPT ON THEIR WAY

The scope of the Tigris as a line of communication was limited to the number of vessels that could move at one
time up and down stream through the narrows. At Basra there was a model like a war game showing the position
of every ship on the river with its distinguishing flag, and with this map before him the controller of navigation at
the end of the wire regulated the movements of the fleet.

garrison was on the verge of starvation,
and on the day of surrender the men
in the trenches were too weak to carry
back their kits. To an heroic defense
of five months succeeded two and a
half years of captivity with all its
hardships and humiliations, and more
than half of the rank and file suc-
cumbed to the hard conditions of exile.
When the armistice was concluded
it was found that of 2,680 N. C. O.'s
and privates taken at Kut over 65 per
cent had perished. Of the 10,486
Indians, combatants and followers,
1,290 died and 1,773 were untraced.
Most of the Kut prisoners perished
in the terrible crossing of the desert



would not eat the bullocks or oxen,
and scurvy took heavy toll of them;
in the hospitals, milk gave out, and
the patients' diet was confined to
cornflour or rice water for the sick,
and ordinary rations for the wounded.
Early in March it was clear that the
vitality of the troops was almost ex-
hausted, the recuperative power of the
sick was low, and skin and flesh had
lost the power of renovation. The
disappointments of the failures of
January and March 8 left them weary
with exhausted expectancy. Again
on the tenth Townshend issued another
communique sympathizing with his
men but inviting their co-operation in
630



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



between Samarrah and Aleppo in June.
They were separated from their officers
and if too weak to march left by
callous guards to perish by the way-
side, exposed to the depredations of
marauding Arabs.

A RENEWED RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE IN
ARMENIA BEGINS.

\Ve must now turn to the efforts of
the Russians in Armenia to relieve the



The latter, little suspecting the
possibility of attack at this time, were
badly placed. Because of British
advance up the Tigris they had held
many reinforcements in Bagdad, and
German influence in Constantinople
had succeeded in retaining a number
of men in Thrace and Syria. Not until
the Cossacks appeared in the neighbor-
hood of Erzerum were Turkish divisions




CAMEL TRANSPORT IN THE NEAR EAST

During the war the camel has been the steed of the German and the Turks, the Arab and the Indian, the Anzac
and the South African. Because the desert is his home, he can bear its glare and dust and sandstorms, and carry
heavy burdens for long distances without food or water. He is not swift like motor transport, but he is valuable
in that he can penetrate through trackless sandy wastes.



pressure upon the Tigris. In January,
1916, Townshend was shut up, and on
the Qth of the month the evacuation
of Gallipoli had been completed. Be-
fore the Turkish troops released from
this area could be redistributed on the
Saloniki Bagdad, and Caucasian fronts,
Grand-Duke Nicholas decided to
advance, although the difficulties of
winter righting among the plateaux and
mountains of Armenia might have
deterred a bolder man. In December,
1915, the Russian Caucasian army had
been reinforced by 170,000 men, and a
new expeditionary force under General
Baratov sent to clear Central Persia
of Turks.



directed in haste towards Angora, and
Sanders Pasha made commander of
the Army of Armenia.

THE NATURAL DEFENSES OF ERZERUM
VERY STRONG.

The Turkish line from the Black Sea
to the neighborhood of Lake Van
extended through a very difficult
tangled mass of mountain and ravine.
The ranges of Taurus and Anti-Taurus
lift the central Armenian country into
a tableland, crossed in its turn by
many mountain ranges. From the
Black Sea the ascent is by a continual
chain of latitudinal ridges which rising
one behind and higher than the other

631



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



lead up like a ladder to the edge of the
plateau. On this plateau and in a
depression lies Erzerum, the centre of
the Turkish defense, fortified by Na-
ture and man in a way that seemed to
preclude all possibility of capture. To
the south of the city the Palanteken
Mountains tower more than 3,000 feet,
crowned by advance forts. To the
north of this range and forming the
only approach to the city from the
east lies the Passain Plain. North of
this again a tangled mass of mountains
guards the northern and eastern flanks
of Erzerum, and is only pierced by the
ravine of the so-called "Georgian
Gates."

The Turkish problem then was to
guard the Passain Plain, where they
stationed their Qth and part of their
loth Army Corps; and to block the
gap in the mountains on the north-east,
where their nth Corps accordingly
intrenched.

THE PLAN OF THE RUSSIAN ASSAULT ON
ERZERUM.

Duke Nicholas' plan, which he
entrusted to the execution of General
Yudenitch, was a main attack upon
the Turkish centre, along the Passain
plain, while the Second Turkestan
Army Corps at Olti in the Chorok
depression was to divert the Turks in
the north, and another column to
threaten the flanks of the Turks at
Azak Keui and Gey Dag.

According to the Russian calendar
the simultaneous attacks on Olti,
Tortoum, and Kepri-Keui were de-
livered at the New Year. They were
immediately successful and Abdulla
Kerim Pasha, January 16, ordered a
general retreat upon the last line of
defenses the forts of Erzerum. "Then
followed," writes Mr. Morgan Price,
special correspondent for the Manches-
ter Guardian who was with the Russian
army, "what is frequently met with in
Turkish retreats and is very charac-
teristic of that race. The Turk has all
the stubbornness and endurance of a
highlander and an agriculturist. He
does not see at once when he is out-
mastered; but when he does, the
untrained Oriental comes out strong in
him; he throws everything away and

632



bolts in a general sauve qui pent. In
this case he just ran till he reached
Erzerum." Thus the Russians reached
Kupri-Keui on the i8th, and on the
1 9th the last Turkish column dis-
appeared behind the Deve-Boyun range.
The Cossacks pursued right up to the
outer chain of forts under cover of
darkness and secured 1000 prisoners.
The rout of the centre was complete;
and the attack on Erzerum which
followed was so rapid that fractions of
the Turkish army on the wings could
not retreat upon Erzerum, but fell
back in the north by the Chorok valley
on Baiburt, and in the south upon
Mush.

ERZERUM IS TAKEN IN SPITE OF GREAT
OBSTACLES.

Yudenitch decided to attack Erzer-
um at once, for he had intercepted a
wireless from the commander of the
fortress to Enver Pasha stating, "Con-
dition of the Third Army is serious;
reinforcements must be sent at once
or else Erzerum cannot be held."
He knew, furthermore, that a siege
in winter was impossible; that the
Caucasus Tiflis-Kars railway only ran
to Sari-Kamish and that it would be
impossible to bring up siege guns over
the snowy mountain roads. Russian
papers of the day describe how the
soldiers took apart field and mountain
guns and toiled with them up the steep
slopes covered with snow in a tem-
perature of 25 below zero. Sometimes
the drifts lay six feet deep and the men
could only save themselves from being
buried by spreading their coats before
them every three feet of the way. When
they came to storm the outer forts
of Erzerum they found that the Turk-
ish soldiers had poured water down the
slopes and they had to hack their way
up over fields of ice.

The garrison defended itself with
fury, even making violent counter-
attacks. But nothing could stay the
Russian advance and after five days
and nights of continuous fighting the
Cossacks swept through the city and
threw themselves upon the booty
which the Turks had. left, before pur-
suing the remnants of the Third Army
fleeing upon Baiburt and Erzhingian.



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



Such was the rapidity of the capture
that Grand-Duke Nicholas was not up
to the front in time for the final
triumph.

THE PORT OF TREBIZOND IS ATTACKED
FROM LAND AND SEA.

Yudenitch allowed no time for the
Turks to reform ; his left wing delivered
an attack in the neighborhood of Lake
Van, capturing Mush and Akhlet,



the great Black Sea port, and the sea-
gate for Armenia, Kurdistan and
Northern Persia. In order to capture
it, Russian naval and land forces
worked in conjunction. The Russians
were almost supreme on the Black Sea
by now, though the sporadic appear-
ances of Turkish submarines and the
partially-crippled Breslau, which acted
as an escort to transports bringing




WITH THE TURKS IN DESERT LANDS

The woman shown in the picture is Dr. Koch, a plucky German woman who ventured far from the Fatherland and
risked unknown perils with the Turks in the desert. Because of Mohammedan traditions and conservatism the
Turks were for the most part deprived of the ministrations of women in their hospitals.



while the right pursued the Turks in
the difficult Chorok valley. The fruits
of the victory at Erzerum were not
slight: a Turkish fortress of the first
rank together with all its stores of arms,
munitions, signaling, telegraph and
telephonic material. In addition the
enemy lost some 12,000 men and the
key to the trade route from the port
of Trebizond into Persia by way of
Erzerum. The Turkish communiques
first delayed, then falsified the news
of the disaster, announcing that for
military reasons the garrison had
withdrawn without suffering loss to a
position to the west of the city.
Yudenitch's goal now was Trebizond,



reinforcements to Trebizond, still con-
stituted a danger. Thoroughly roused
by the fall of Erzerum the Turks
strained every nerve to save their port,
rushing up two army corps for its
defense and reconstructing their whole
line. By sea the Russians advanced
from Batum, and by land across the
steep chain of Lazistan, under General
Liakhov. They met stiff resistance at
the line of Kara Dere but forced its
passage in ten days' fighting aided by
their fleet. Then all was easy. The
ships sailed on to Platana and effected
a landing which threatened the Turks
in the rear. After this manoeuvre
Turkish defense collapsed, and by

633



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



April 18, their army was streaming
along the Gumush-khane road.

THE TURK STRUGGLES TO REGAIN HIS
LOST POSITIONS.

Meanwhile in the south, Bitlis, one
of the posterns of the Armenian Taurus
opening the route into Mesopotamia,
had fallen; Mush was occupied and
the whole region around Lake Van
quickly cleared up. But the Russian
line was now extended on its flanks
dangerously beyond its centre, and
when, April 29, Kut surrendered, its
fall made vain all efforts of Yuden-
itch's left wing and Baratov's Persian
army to reach the British. Yudenitch
then pursued a slower advance towards
the west, endeavoring to straighten
his line and gain the cornlands of Sivas
in the plain.

In the meantime, the Turk himself
assumed the offensive at various points
through May, in an effort to regain his
hold upon Erzerum. Some of his
attacks were upon Bitlis and Mush in
an attempt to get in the rear of the
Russians and cut their communications.
Yudenitch began his advance July 2,
and it rolled as irresistibly forward as
the attacks upon Trebizond and Er-
zerum. Baiburt fell and Gumush-
khane, the road to Erzhingian lay
open, and the city was entered July 26,
three weeks after the campaign had
opened. In that time the Russian
front had advanced seventy miles and
added some two to three thousand
square miles of territory to its con-
quests in Armenia.

SOME OF THE CAPTURED POSITIONS ARE
REGAINED.

The Turkish force routed in this
advance did not, as in the previous
retreats, move westward, but turned
south-east on the Lake Van country
in an endeavor to cut the Russian
communications. Railway communica-
tion could supply reinforcements from
the Levantine coast much more easily
around Lake Van than in Anatolia,
and from this quarter the Turkish
troops were now a constant threat to
Mush and Bitlis.

During the last days of July and
early August the enemy prepared a
powerful counter-stroke to the Russian

634



advance upon Erzhingian. Planned
and executed by an able young German
officer, Major-General Gresmann, its
object was to rupture the Russian
centre east of Erzerum by a rapid
advance northwards from Mush, re-
capture the city, hurl back the right
wing on the Black Sea and the left
on Lake Van. Severe fighting took
place and the Turks recaptured Mush
and Bitlis. The latter was important
for its narrow gorge is the only passage
through the difficult country west of
Lake Van, and its capture constituted
both a threat to Mush and a bar to
communication with Bagdad in the
event of a British advance upon that
city. Reinforcements reached the Rus-
sians at the end of the month and they
retook Mush in the exhaustion of the
Turkish counter-stroke, but Bitlis re-
mained in the enemy's hands through-
out the autumn of 1916.

GENERAL BARATOV AND HIS COSSACKS
IN PERSIA.

The scope of this chapter forbids
more than a brief outline of the fighting
in Persia caused by wide-spread Ger-
man propaganda, set on foot also in
Baluchistan, Afghanistan and among
the Pathans on the Indian border.
Through the activities of Prince Reuss,
the German Minister at Teheran, and
other agents, anti-Russian and anti-
British riots took place throughout the
country, and chaotic anarchy became
chronic. The government under the
youthful Shah and swiftly-changing
ministries was helpless. So critical had
things become in November, 1915, that
a Russian force marched from Kazvin
to within a day's march of the capital
to protect the Allied legations. After
this coup d'etat the Shah decided to
throw the Germans overboard. North-
ern and Western Persia were cleared
as the Russians swept south defeating
the irregular bands of tribesmen,
Turks and gendarmerie at Kum (De-
cember 15), and Hamadan (December
21), finally driving them west through
the passes bordering on Mesopotamia
back to their own frontier from Ker-
manshah. Baratov's, spirited advance
was a demonstration intended to re-
lieve the pressure upon Kut and Yu-



HISTORY OF THE WORLD WAR



denitch. In January the Turks ad-
vanced again and occupied Kermanshah
but again Saratov smote them heavily
back into the mountain passes.

Meanwhile in the south the British
were active. Sir Percy Sykes arrived
at Bundar Abbas in March and or-
ganized a police force for Southern
Persia, to rid the country of German
and Turkish bands and rebel gen-



cavalry and 4,000 infantry continued
his march upon Khanikin, twice at-
tacking the Turks and inflicting losses
upon them. Then he withdrew to the
Persian frontier and engaged the enemy
in an eight days' battle in the Taq-i-
Garra Pass, before falling back in
orderly retreat upon Kerind, Kerman-
shah and Hamadan. He had effected
his purpose and relieved the pressure




SCENE ON THE ROUTE OF THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE THROUGH PERSIA

The conformation of Persia is interesting. Most of the country consists of a plateau, with an average height of
4,000 feet above sea-level, surrounded by lofty ranges of mountains. The tableland has a diversified surface;
parts are desert, others highlands or lakes of immense size. Transport is di.ficult even on ancient caravan routes.