135

X. DOWN TO BUSRA 145

INTRODUCTION

On November 6, 1914, Brigadier-General Delamaine captured Fao forts,
and the Mesopotamian War began in the smallest possible way, the
proverbial 'corporal's guard' breaking into an empire.

The next twelve months saw a great deal of fighting, unorthodox in
every way, carried through in appalling weathers and with the most
inadequate forces.

In the three days' battle at Shaiba, in April, defeat was hardly
escaped.

In April and May General Gorringe conducted the Ahwaz operations, near
the Persian border, with varying success, and threatened Amara, on the
Tigris, midway between Busra and Baghdad.

In May Townshend began his advance up-country. By June 3 he had taken
Q'urna, where Tigris and Euphrates mingle; presently his miscellaneous
marine and a handful of men took Amara, in what was known as
'Townshend's Regatta.' Seventeen guns and nearly two thousand prisoners
were taken at Amara.

In the heats of July, incredible as it sounds, Gorringe was fighting on
the Euphrates, by Nasiriyeh, taking twenty-one guns and over a thousand
prisoners.

On September 28 Townshend won his last victory at Kut-el-Amara, taking
fourteen guns and eleven hundred prisoners. Every one knows what
followed: how Ctesiphon was fought in November, with four thousand five
hundred and sixty-seven casualties, and how his force raced back to
Kut. On December 7 Kut was invested by the Turks. Townshend's stand
here saved the lower country to us.

Relief forces disembarked at Ali Gharbi, between Amara and Kut, and
some of the bitterest fighting the world has seen began. Sheikh Saad
(January 6 to 8) was a costly victory. A gleam of hope came with the
Russian offensive in Northern Asia Minor. On January 13, at the Wadi,
six miles beyond Sheikh Saad and less than thirty miles from Kut, the
Turks held us up, but slipped away in the night.

All advancing was over flat ground devoid of even scrub-cover, through
a region the most desolate in the world. Above Amara there is a place
called 'Lone-Tree Village,' which has a small tree ten feet high.
Except for a handful of draggled palms at Sheikh Saad, this tree is the
only one till Kut is reached, on a river frontage of sixty miles.

On January 20 the British suffered a heavy repulse at Umm-el-Hanna,
five miles beyond the Wadi. For nearly seven weeks our troops sat down
in the swamps, and died