aving
small, unsupported groups of men in angles and corners of the Tigris.
Maude destroyed these, and between the 22nd and the 25th launched his
final attacks simultaneously on both banks. A badly managed attack on
Sannaiyat had failed on the 17th; but now, on the 22nd, the lines were
stormed. Fighting continued here, and the river was crossed and bridged
behind the Turks, above Kut, at Shumran. The Sannaiyat garrison fled
precipitately, and the 7th Indian Division occupied successively the
Nakhailat and Suwada lines with no opposition worth mentioning. Kut
fell automatically, the monitors steaming in and taking possession. The
infantry had no time to bother about it. Kut had become a symbol only.

So the infantry swung by Kut and on to Baghdad. The cavalry and
gunboats hunted the enemy northward, till he made a stand on the
Diyaleh, a large stream entering the Tigris a few miles below Baghdad.
Very heavy fighting and losses had come to the 13th Division, and the
7th Division would be the first to acknowledge that the honour of
first entering Baghdad, for whatever it was worth, should have fallen
to them. But, in spite of desperate attempts to cross, they were held
on the Diyaleh. The 7th Division therefore bridged the river lower
down, and after two days of battle in a sandstorm, blind with
thirst--for the men had one water-bottle only for the two
days--captured Baghdad railway-station, and threw pickets across the
river into Baghdad town. This was on March 11. The 13th and 14th
Divisions then crossed the Diyaleh, and were in Baghdad almost as soon
as any one from the 7th Division. The 7th and 3rd Indian Divisions
passed by Baghdad on opposite sides, as they had passed by Kut, and
engaged the enemy's rearguards at Mushaidiyeh and in the Jebel Hamrin.
They then concentrated again towards Baghdad.

This book deals first with the April campaign as it affected the right
bank of the Tigris. Between Baghdad and Samarra was a stretch of eighty
miles of railroad, the only completed portion, south of Mosul, of the
Berlin-Baghdad Railway. If we could capture this the Turk would have to
supply his troops from Mosul by the treacherous and shallow Tigris. The
Samarra fighting, these railhead battles, was the last organized
campaign which the Turk fought. Our First Corps, consisting of two
Indian divisions, the 3rd and the 7th, operated against railhead; while
the Third Corps, consisting of the 13th Division, the only all-British