Genesis of a Quagmire: The Debate Over Advancing to Baghdad, 1915: Part I

It has been some time since we looked at the British campaign in Mesopotamia (Iraq) a century ago. But in the last days of September and first days of October 1915, or a century ago right now, the British government in London, the British government of India in its summer capital in Simla, and some of the commanders on the ground (not all) made a hasty decision that, over the six months that would follow, would lead to the surrender of a British Empire army. Even as Britain was realizing its failure at Gallipoli and preparing to withdraw its Australian, New Zealand, and British troops from that particular disaster, it was creating another along the Tigris. Gallipoli wasted lives and accomplished little, but the British were able to withdraw and evacuate in late 1915 and early 1916. But in Mesopotamia, or "Mespot" as the soldiers named it, they would blunder into a months-long siege and ultimately surrender an Army at Kut. In this current series I want to look at how the fateful decision to take Baghdad was made, largely on political grounds rather than military (in fact, the plan was to take Baghdad and then withdraw). I will leave it to your own conclusions what parallels might be drawn with later foreign decision making in Mesopotamia.

First we should review some of the background so far. Even before the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, Britain had determined to use Indian Army troops to protect the oilfields and refinery around Abadan in Iraq, and to do so, determined to take the port city of Basra in Ottoman territory.

For those wishing to refresh their memories, past blogposts on the beginnings of the campaign:

October 1914: Anglo-Ottoman Maneuvering in the Gulf, Part I

1914: Pre-War Maneuvering in the Gulf, Part II:Contesting the Shatt and the Dispatch of Force "D"

First Fights on the Road to Basra, November 6-12, 1914

The British Take Basra, November 21-23, 1914

The Battle of Shaiba, Iraq, April 12-14, 1915 

After each stage the British would test Ottoman defenses and move forward up the Tigris. further securing their Basra operational base. After Shaiba, the Ottoman leadership did not try to recapture Basra: the bulk of the Turkish fleet (and some German and Austrian vessels, were concentrated in the Mediterranean defending the Straits, or in the Black Sea against the Russians. British naval supremacy in the Gulf remained unchallenged. But as the British moved upriver, the big Royal Navy combatants could not follow, only riverboats. The original goal of securing Basra soon faded under the lure of Baghdad. (Remember the 1,001 Nights were widely read in 19th and early 20th century Britain.)

Dramatis Personae

Gen. Sir John Nixon, upstaged by his hat

In April of 1915, General Sir John Nixon had taken over as overall commander of the Mesopotamian campaign. An Indian Army officer and veteran of the small colonial wars of the Victorian era, Nixon was considered experienced, but not in wars against a major power.

The Ottoman commander on the Iraq front at this time was Nureddin Pasha (Nurettin PaÅŸa). A member of the Committee on Union and Progress (the Young Turks) and a veteran of the occupation of Yemen and the Balkan Wars, he also took up his Iraq in April 1915 after his predecessor committed suicide.

Nureddin Pasha

Mesopotamia, particularly southern Mesopotamia, was not a priority for the Ottoman Minister of War, Enver Pasha. Constantinople itself was threatened by the Allied Forces at Gallipoli, and Russian troops were on Turkish soil on the Caucasus Front. Nureddin, who would later play a major role in the Turkish war of independence, was a fighter but the priority given to other fronts meant he lacked resources, particularly the farther he was from Baghdad.

Townshend

General Nixon was the overall theater commander, but the commander of the army column advancing upriver was Major General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, Commander of the 6th Indian Division, a veteran of war in Sudan (decorated at Omdurman), in India, and in the Boer War. In June his column had reached ‘Amara. In September the advance had been resumed.
 

 On September 28 1925 at Es-Sinn near Kut al-‘Amara on the Tigris, the British Indian Army defeated an Ottoman force and occupied Kut. I won't go into the tactical details of the battle here, which Wikipedia handles fairly well; on September 29, the expedition occupied Kut, a place that will forever be linked (and not in a good way), with Townshend's name.

The fall of Kut was not an unalloyed success. Though Nureddin had lost, he was able to retreat safely upriver to the ruins of Ctesiphon. Indian Army casualties had been higher than anticipated, supply lines from Basra were now stretched thin, as was medical support. But there was another temptation before Nixon and Townshend: Kut was only 100 miles downriver from Baghdad.

The Bulgarian Factor
In the debate about advancing further to Baghdad that was to follow, British and Indian government officials had to take into account some broader geopolitical and strategic factors.

After the failure of the Suvla landings and the August offensive in Gallipoli to make any progress off the beaches, it was obvious to most that the forces would eventually have to be evacuated. A Western success, even a limited one, against the Ottomans might redeem a bit of the failure of Gallipoli. But there was a major strategic shift in the making.

Even only a year into the Great War, it was probably easy to forget that the war had begun over the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Austria's demand for revenge against Serbia. Austria had been kept quite busy dealing with Russia in the east and, from earlier in 1815, with Italy, which had entered the war on the Allied side. But it had also fought on the Serbian front and the Serbian Army was in serious trouble.

Bulgaria had been neutral in the war. It had pan-Slavic sympathies with Russia, but had lost territory to Serbia in the Second Balkan War. But by the Fall of 1915 the Central Powers had successfully wooed Bulgaria with temptations of recovering lost territory from Serbia, Romania (which would soon enter the war on Russia's side), and Greece. Bulgaria's Tsar Ferdinand cut a deal and at the time we are discussing, was poised to enter the war and invade a weakened Serbia from the south as Austria-Hungary pushed in from the north.

1915 German or Austrian postcard

But there was a big implication for the Ottomans. A pro-Central Powers Bulgaria and a defeated Serbia could mean unimpeded rail connections between Berlin and Vienna and Constantinople. German assistance could flow directly overland, and that would be a boon to the Ottomans. The German-language "Bulgarien mit uns!" postcard, while a bit of a step down from the Hohenzollern motto "Gott mit uns," reflects this. Bulgaria's entry would eventually bring Romania and Greece unto the fight, and tie down an Allied landing force at Thessalonika.

So in the debate over the "On to Baghdad" question, the impending entry of Bulgaria on the other side was also a factor in the Anglo-Indian calculus.

In Part II, we'll look at the debate itself.

For the Day the Mesopotamian Campaign Began, Kipling's "Mesopotamia (1917)"

In 1917, Rudyard Kipling, infuriated by the surrender of a British Army at Kut and the lack of accountability thereafter, as well as the overall debacle of the British campaign in Mesopotamia (or "Mespot", as the British Tommies nicknamed it), wrote his grim poem, "Mesopotamia (1917)," a far cry from his usual tone of celebrating Empire. The Mesopotamian campaign began a century ago today, with a British landing at Fao; I'll be discussing that shortly in a separate post.  But it also seems an appropriate time for Kipling's poem, which may have application to other, later or future, adventures in Iraq:

Rudyard Kipling

Mesopotamia

1917 

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

    The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:

But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,

    Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain

    In sight of help denied from day to day:

But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

    Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide—

    Never while the bars of sunset hold.

But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,

    Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?

    When the storm is ended shall we find

How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power

    By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,

    Even while they make a show of fear,

Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,

    To conform and re-establish each career?

Their lives cannot repay us—their death could not undo—

    The shame that they have laid upon our race.

But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,

    Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

The Surrender of Kut, Part III: Siege, Failure of the Relief Expeditions, and Townshend's Surrender

Fast-moving developments on the contemporary scene have slowed down my finishing my three-part series on  the 1916 surrender at Kut in Iraq, the largest British surrender ever at the time it occurred. Part I, devoted mainly to the background and introducing the cast of characters, appeared June 25; Part II, describing the campaign through Townshend's investment bu the Turkish 6th Army and the beginning of the siege, appeared last Friday. This takes the story through the failed relief expeditions,the surrender, and its tragic aftermath, and includes an appearance by a not-yet-prominent T.E. Lawrence aimed at bribing the Turkish commander.

The more I see of this foul country, the more convinced I am that we are a seafaring people, lured to disaster by this river. The River Tigris has been a disaster and a delusion to us. These lines are untenable without two railways, one across to Nasriyah and the other up to Baghdad. At the present moment, we can be cut off if the river falls or if they manage to put in guns anywhere down the river and sink a couple of our boats, or even one, in the narrows, and so block the channel. We have got no policy. We came here and we saw the Tigris and we said: "This is as good as the sea, and up we will go," and now it will dry up and we shall get left.

— Aubrey Herbert, Diary near Kut, April 1916, in Herbert, Mons, Anzac, and Kut

Field Marshal von der Goltz

At the end of Part II, Townshend found himself besieged in Kut in December 1915. German Field Marshal von der Goltz had arrived on the scene to take overall direction. (For profiles and photos of all the commanders, see Part I.) Though Townshend had supplies for a siege of several months, he understated them, hoping for early relief.

After the war, Townshend wrote a memoir,  My Campaign (also called My Campaign in Mesopotamia); the second volume of which, dealing with the material covered in this post, is available free online. Like all generals' memoirs it is self-serving and self-justifying, and at times almost delusional towards the end, when Townshend claims credit for the Mudros armistice.

Aylmer

The British Commander in Mesopotamia, General Nixon, designated Sir Fenton John Aylmer, 13th Baronet of Donadea.
to lead the first relief expedition. Aylmer had won a Victoria Cross in one of the local Indian Wars, but he was no Marlborough or Wellington. He started up the Tigris in January 1916. He fought battles at Sheikh Sa‘ad, "the Wadi," and Hanna, and after taking some 2,700 casualties, finally fell back.

Gorringe

The failure of Aylmer's relief expedition also spelled doom for General Sir John Nixon, who had dispatched Townshend to Baghdad and supported the idea of the siege at Kut to "hold the Turks in place." He was replaced with General Sir Percy Lake, another Indian Army officer who had also been Chief of the Canadian General Staff. To command the next relief expedition, he chose General George Gorringe. That was in March.

Khalil Pasha

In the meantime the odds had shifted considerably. The overall Ottoman area commander, Khalil Pasha (known in modern Turkish as Halil Kut after taking his greatest victory as a surname), took command of the Kut front. He also brought 20,000 or more reinforcements, greatly enhancing Ottoman strength.

Townshend's troops were running low on supplies,and various attempts by British vessels to run up the Tigris by night were defeated by Ottoman artillery. Townshend was suffering from fever; but von der Goltz, ae 70, was also ill and would die of typhus before the end of the siege.

Gorringe's advance made progress, fighting three battles from April 5-17, but were unable to adanc past Sannaiyat. That left Townshend with little hope.What apparently was the first use of air drops of supplies took place in April, but the early aircraft could carry too little relief, and several attempts to run British supply ships upriver to Kut failed.

On April 19, too late to help Townshend, Baron von der Goltz died in Baghdad, reportedly of Typhus.Some sources say typhoid; rumors at thew time said poison; but various fevers were rampant on the Tigris front.) Goltz missed his greatest success by two weeks, but the 70-year old Prussian Field Marshal and military historian who had trained the Ottoman Army had his victory nonetheless.

It was clearly time to treat for terms. Townshend, who had managed to maintain telegraphic contact with the relief forces, was apparently the origin of the idea that a "ransom" might be paid to free his troops under parole. (The idea that this was essentially a bribe, either to Khalil Pasha or to the Ottoman authorities generally, seems obvious.) Townshend suggested £1 million sterling. London upped the ante: it authorized its negotiators to offer £2 million.

The three negotiators, mostly intelligence officers of company rank, would include two who would go on to greater fame:

Aubrey Herbert

Aubrey Herbert, Member of Parliament and a traveler and linguist and a well-known Turcophile who spoke Turkish and other eastern languages, was attached by the War Office to Naval Intelligence in the Mesopotamian campaign, though he had links to other branches. He would eventually be a champion of Albanian independence and was reputedly offered the Albanian throne.

T.E. Lawrence, 1915

T.E. Lawrence,  an intelligence officer attached to the Arab Bureau in Cairo. Later in 1916 he would be closely associated with the Arab Revolt in the Hijaz, and if you don't know who Lawrence of Arabia was, why are you reading this blog?

The third member was Col. Edward Beach, representative of Indian Army Intelligence. By this time London was blaming the Indian Army and the India Office for the debacle in "Mespot," Though Beach outranked the two captains with him, his role is a little vague.

The fullest description of the negotiations is in Herbert's diary, reproduced in his Mons, Anzac and Kut. The Kut material is online here, and the whole book is available here. 

The negotiations failed. Enver Pasha, the Ottoman War Minister, had vetoed the ransom; he wanted Britain humiliated. Townshend, ill and seemingly a bit out of control, had apparently already decided he would surrender unconditionally. Attempts to negotiate for the safety of the Arab population of Kut went nowhere (many were killed after the surrender).

And that was the end. Townshend surrendered unconditionally. In the campaign Britain had lost between 23,000 and 30,000 killed and wounded and surrendered some 12,000.

It was a devastating defeat, worse by far than Gallipoli, though the fact that many of the dead and captured were British Indian soldiers made it less well known. It was the largest surrender of British Empire forces ever (until Singapore 1942); the longest siege on record, longer than Ladysmith in the Boer War or Plevna in the Russo-Turkish War (again until Leningrad in WWII). Townshend got to spend the war in a nice villa on the Prinkipo islands near Constantinople, where the Byzantines used to exile their deposed Emperors. His men were not so lucky. The British officers were treated decently but the Indian rank an file were sent to work on prisoner chain gangs drilling railroad tunnels in he Taurus for the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway. It's been estimated that at least 70% of the Indian Army POWs were dead by the end of the war.

Townshend was released at last during the armistice negotiations; in his memoir he claims a role in making the peace, which is a bit delusional, and he was later elected to Parliament.

His men were not so lucky.

Townshend and Khalil with their officers after the surrender:

The Surrender at Kut, 1916, Part II: Townshend Advances, Retreats, and is Besieged

This is Part II of my post on the British military disaster at Kut in Iraq in 1916. Part I, introducing the various British and Ottoman officers in the Mesopotamia campaign, appeared on Wednesday.

The maps in this post are from the West Point historical series via Wikimedia Commons. For photos and profiles of the participants, see Part I.

Britain had occupied Basra and its oilfields with Indian Army troops in December 1914, after Turkey had entered the war in late October. After taking Basra and Qurna, the British settled in for a while, but after defeating an Ottoman assault at Shaiba on April 12-15, the British became overconfident. Sir John Nixon was named overall commander, while on the Turkish side Nureddin Bey took over after his predecessor killed himself following defeat at Shaiba, (For Nixon and Nureddin, see part I.) Note that the victory at Shaiba was in April 1915. Ten days after it, British and ANZAC forces landed at Gallipoli.

Nixon felt that the ineffective Ottoman resistance might make it possible to advance up the rivers, and turned to General Charles Townshend and his 6th Indian (Poona) Division, ordering him to advance to Kut or, if possible, even to Baghdad.

Townshend set out and on June 3 took ‘Amara; he reached Kut (also known as Kut al-‘Amara) on September 24 and captured it on September 28.

Townshend referred to remain at Kut. But things were not going so well on the Eastern Fronts.The Gallipoli campaign was stalled; in the Balkans Austria had defeated Serbia, and Bulgaria had entered the war on the side of the Central Powers; the Turks had overland links to their allies. German Field Marshal von der Goltz (See Part I) was en route to take over the Mesopotamian campaign but had not yet arrived. Townshend was ordered to advance the less than 100 miles or so to Baghdad; even if after taking it, he had to withdraw, it would be a symbolic demonstration.

Townshend had one Indian Division advancing up the Tigris with some naval and logistical support; Nureddin had four divisions, but under strength (about 18,000 total to Townshend's 12,000-13,000). Two of Nureddin's divisions were recruited in the Arab provinces, and two were ethnically Turkish.

Turkey had belatedly realized the Anglo-Indian threat in Mesopotamia. Not only was von der Goltz dispatched to the theater, but reinforcements were on the way and on October 5, the Turkish 6th Army was constituted in Mesopotamia.

In the meantime, Townshend's push up the Tigris had continued. Near the town of Salman Pak and some 40 miles upriver from Kut, lay the ruins of the ancient Parthian and Sassanian Persian capital at Ctesiphon, al-Mada'in ("the cities") in Arabic. Only 20 miles or so from the outskirts of Baghdad, it was there that Nureddin chose to make his stand. Within a fortified line within a loop of the Tigris, with well-positioned artillery and his freshest division across his front, Nureddin was in a strong defensive position..

The Arch at Ctesiphon

The two-day battle, known to the British as the Battle of Ctesiphon and to the Turks as the Battle of Salman-i-Pak, was tactically indecisive but strategically a defeat for the British. Though Turkish casualties were higher, Townshend lost roughly 40% of his effective fighting strength (4,600 men) in killed, wounded, or captured, and decided to retreat. The wounded were gathered at the great Arch of Ctesiphon, the Taq Kisra or Arch of Chosroes.

On November 24, Townshend, too weakened to continue to Baghdad, withdrew towards Kut.

The Battle of Ctesiphon, though militarily a draw, was a strategic victory for the Turks. British soldiers, puzzled at how to pronounce "Ctesiphon," reportedly nicknamed it "Pistupon."

Townshend reached Kut December 3. Nureddin, and the by now real commander Field Marshal von der Goltz, arrived December 7.

Kut lay in a loop of the Tigris and appeared to be an eminently defensible position (the literal meaning of "Kut" is "fort"), since the British had thus far controlled river access. Townshend decided to await relief there and make a stand.

It was a mistake. Logistics were already an issue, the Ottoman forces were reinforcing, and the campaign was now under the command of a veteran German field marshal and military historian fully at home with Ottoman troops, and Townshend was soon fully encircled by the Turkish Sixth Army, with the river blocked by artillery positions and mines.

Part 3 will address the multiple failed relief expeditions, the failed attempt by British intelligence (represented by T.E. Lawrence and Aubrey Herbert) to bribe the Turkish commander to release Townshend, and finally the surrender itself and the subsequent imprisonment of the garrison.

Turkish 6th Army entrenchments during the Siege of Kut, 1916: 

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Remembering "Mespot" and an Earlier Military Disaster in Iraq: The Surrender of Kut, 1916, Part I

Note: This is Part I of what will be (at least) a three part post.

Those who do not remember history, it is said, are condemned to repeat it. With Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliott Abrams, and various Kagans telling us why we need boots on the ground, many seem to assume Americans have severe short-term memory loss. One of the big mistakes in the Iraq war was the lack of understanding of Iraq's history. In early 2003, I spoke to a senior Pentagon planner and remarked that if we went in, I hope we didn't make the kind of mistakes that Britain made in 1920. This senior Pentagon official, just weeks before the war started, asked me what had happened in 1920.

I suppose he found out eventually: a widespread insurgency against the occupier, just like happened to us, and in many of the same places.

But 1920 was not Britain's worst moment in the Middle East. Kut was. It was to remain the largest surrender of British Empire troops in history, 12,000, until the fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942. (For US readers: Cornwallis had 9,000 at Yorktown.) And it was the Ottoman Army, long derided as corrupt and untrained, representing the "Sick Man of Europe," that took their surrender. (Though earlier in 1915, those perceptions began to change, at least to those British and Anzac troops stuck in Gallipoli.)

The whole Mesopotamian Theater of Operations acquired the soldiers' nickname "Mespot," pronounced "mess pot," and a reminder of the usual perceptiveness of the ordinary infantryman.

There is a frequently quoted (though variously attributed) story of a dialogue by German or other generals about the British: "The British soldiers fight like lions." "Yes, but they are lions led by donkeys." When it comes to British generalship in Mesopotamia in 1915-16, that is a slur on a determined and reliable beast of burden. The main British general in question, Major General Sir Charles Townshend, managed to get his force totally surrounded and cut off, and a succession of other generals, one after the other, failed to relieve him. The story is largely forgotten, but the surrender was a huge defeat, and though Townshend himself would sit out the war in a nice Turkish villa and his officers were also well attended to in captivity, the Indian enlisted men died in huge numbers in less well-appointed Turkish prisons, often of starvation.There are even some celebrity cameos, including T.E. Lawrence (not yet a celebrity and not yet "of Arabia"), as "the Negotiator."

Dramatis Personae

Townshend

Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend came from a military and political family; his great-great-grandfather, George, First Marquess Townshend, had served in the Seven Years' War, was third under Wolfe at Quebec, and after Wolfe's death and Monckton's wounding, took command. He rose to the rank of Field Marshal. Apparently the Field Marshal gene didn't pass down. The younger Townshend's memoir of the war is even more divorced from other accounts than most generals' memoirs, which are always self-serving, but more about that anon.

When Turkey entered the war, the India Office felt that it would be wise to seize the oilfields north of Basra for the war effort. Led by the British Indian Army combined with the Royal Navy's dominance in Gulf and Indian waters, Britain moved to seize Basra and its oil-laden hinterland. It was, to use a term from a later era, a cakewalk.

Basra was taken in November 1914, less than a month after Turkey formally became a belligerent and six months before Gallipoli, and the largely absent Ottoman resistance led to overconfidence and, in time, what a future generation would call "mission creep."

Overlooking the fact that the Royal Navy could hardly operate in force on the Tigris and Euphrates, it was decided to use the Army to take Baghdad. It could have worked; British and Indian troops in the overall theater greatly outnumbered Ottoman; Turkey was preoccupied in Gallipoli, the Caucasus front with Russia, and Sinai-Palestine. But the Turks had interior lines of communication, some decent commanders and experienced troops, and, in this theater, General Feldmarschall Colmar Freiherr [Baron] von der Goltz (Goltz Pasha) of the German Army. Von der Goltz, who had trained the Ottoman Army since the 1870s, had been recalled from retirement at the beginning of the war, and sent to his old Ottoman turf. But he did not get on well with the head of Germany's Military Mission in Turkey, Gen. Liman von Sanders, and also was not a favorite of the Minister of War, Enver Pasha. Von der Goltz was accordingly stuck in what looked initially to be  backwater theater of the war, Mesopotamia.

Field Marshal von der Goltz

But whatever his flaws, Goltz was a Prussian Field Marshal who had joined the Prussian Army in 1861 (over 50 years before), served against Austria in 1866 and in the Franco-Prussian War, taught military history in the Prussian and later Imperial German military academy, and trained the Turkish Army during and after the Russo-Turkish war. And whatever Enver or Liman von Sanders may have thought of this 70-year-old man, a Prussian Field Marshal of the old school was still a Prussian Field Marshal of the old school.

Nureddin Pasha

From April 1915 the Ottoman military commander had been Nureddin Ibrahim Pasha (known as Nurettin PaÅŸa in modern Turkish orthography), who took command of the Iraq Area Command when his predecessor committed suicide. A member of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP, the "Young Turks") and a multilingual figure with experience in the Arab provinces and a command of Arabic, he was the commander when Townshend began his advance.

Khalil Pasha

Nureddin Pasha's superior in Baghdad, and later successor at the front, was Khalil Pasha (later known as Halil Kut in modern Turkish, since he took his greatest victory as a surname).

An uncle of Enver Pasha, Khalil Pasha has also long been accused in complicity and active involvement in both the Armenian and Assyrian massacres. As governor of Baghdad Province and from April of 1916 commander of the Ottoman Sixth Army, he would be the man to accept Townshend's surrender. He would lead an interesting life in Moscow and Berlin until returning to Turkey after the Republic in 1923; he lived until 1957.

Gen. Sir John Nixon, upstaged by his hat

These were the frontline commanders. But Townshend's superiors were hardly Marlboroughs or Wellingtons either. Lieutenant General Sir John Eccles Nixon, Commander-in-Chief of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force, had gained most of his military experience in the Second Afghan War and other British Indian conflicts around the periphery of the Raj. His experience seems to be all colonial Indian, except for a cavalry command in the Second Boer War. He was not a match for a Prussian Field Marshal van der Goltz, even if Goltz was 70.

Aylmer

Nixon's first effort to relieve Townshend would be led by Sir Fenton John Aylmer, 13th Baronet of Donadea.

He had won the Victoria Cross in a local campaign in India and, as a baronet, obviously had clout in society. He was less impressive in he field, and was soon turned back by the Turks. (The details will be recounted in the future parts of this post.)

Lt. Gen Sir Percy Lake

After Aylmer's failure, Nixon himself was replaced with Lt. Gen. Sir Percy Lake, who had mostly colonial experience and had served as Chief of the Canadian General Staff, though not Canadian. His knighthood dated from early 1916 as he was being posted to save Townshend.

Gorringe

When Lake took command, he tried another relief mission: General George Gorringe replaced Aylmer, and had slightly more military success, but still failed to relieve Townshend. Gorringe may have been a better general, but he still fell short.

In the end, Townshend surrendered, and all these British generals were sacked, kicked upstairs, or otherwise shunted aside. General Maude, who both succeeded to authority and succeeded in the field, is a story for another day.

But while I've introduced the dramatis personae, I still need to tell the tale. Please stay tuned.