Battle of Ctesiphon (1915)

Background

Indian Expeditionary Force D landed at the head of the Persian Gulf in November 1914, chiefly to protect the oil refinery at Abadan. Through 1915 it pushed up the rivers, and on 28 September Major-General Charles Townshend's 6th (Poona) Division beat Nur-ud-Din's army at Kut al Amara. The pursuit halted at Aziziya on 5 October.

The question then was Baghdad. General Sir John Nixon, commanding in Mesopotamia, urged an advance from 3 October; Townshend preferred to consolidate at Kut. In London the War Office, the Admiralty and a Cabinet committee weighed occupation against a raid. The case for going on was that Baghdad would deny the Turks their base, raise British prestige, offset failure at the Dardanelles and hamper German schemes in Persia and Afghanistan. Nixon wired that he was confident he could beat Nur-ud-Din and occupy Baghdad with the force he had. On 23 October the Cabinet authorised the advance, and two Indian divisions from France were promised, though they could not arrive for weeks.

The British advance from Aziziya began on 11 November and reached Lajj, about twelve miles short of the Ottoman position, on the 19th. Nur-ud-Din had used the seven-week pause to train his troops and dig. Nixon put the Turks at about 13,000 regular infantry with 38 guns and dismissed reports of large reinforcements. In fact the 51st Division had arrived from the north. On 21 November Major Reilly flew over the Turkish rear, saw the new camp and was shot down and captured; the Turkish account says his map showed the 51st Division. Nobody on the British side saw it.

The armies

Townshend had 13,756 combatants, 30 guns and 46 machine guns, about four-fifths of them Indian: three British infantry battalions (2nd Dorsets, 2nd Norfolks, 1st Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry) served beside Punjabi, Mahratta, Rajput and Gurkha battalions, the 6th Cavalry Brigade and 'S' Battery RHA. He split them into four columns and kept no reserve: Column A (Delamain, 3,650 rifles) for the decisive blow; Column B (Hamilton, 2,693) for the turning attack; Column C (Hoghton, 3,154) to pin the front; and Melliss's Flying Column of cavalry, guns, armoured cars and the 76th Punjabis to swing round the open flank. Gunboats and 4.7-inch guns in horse boats on the river were to support him, and only two aircraft were fit to fly.

Nur-ud-Din had four divisions. The 35th and 38th were largely Arab, with poor morale by the Turkish account; the 45th was newly raised but contained good material; the 51st, Anatolian Turks, had a fine fighting reputation and formed his general reserve at Qusaiba. Field Marshal von der Goltz had been appointed to command a new Sixth Army but was still on his way. The first line ran over six miles on the left bank: fifteen low-sited, wired redoubts joined by trench, with two strong redoubts on mounds at the northern end that Townshend called 'Vital Point' ('V.P.'). A weaker second line lay two to three miles behind, and a third on the Diyala.

The battle

Night march (21–22 November). Column C marched in the afternoon to a point north-east of Bustan; Columns A, B and the Flying Column left Lajj at about 19:30 and filed north along an old canal bank, halting between midnight and 03:00 around the open Turkish left. The night was bitterly cold. At dawn mist hid the river and the southern trenches.

Opening moves (22 November, 06:00–09:00). Hoghton's Column C felt forward towards the Arch from about 06:00, and the flotilla opened fire at 07:00, but Turkish heavy guns on the right bank kept the gunboats from rounding the bend at Bustan all day. With no sound from Hoghton, Townshend let Hamilton and Melliss start the turning attack early, at about 08:30. Nur-ud-Din sent most of the 45th Division's reserve and five battalions of the 51st, with the Iraq Cavalry Brigade, to meet them. Seeing what looked like a Turkish retreat, Delamain asked to advance, and Column A went for V.P. just before 09:00.

Vital Point (09:00–11:30). Led by Climo's 30th Brigade, the Indian infantry crossed some 5,000 yards of open plain in artillery formation, extended at 1,000 yards and went on by rushes without firing, under cover of their guns and machine guns. Held up by wire forty yards short, they worked through it and took V.P. shortly after 10:00; the 142nd Regiment broke. Climo pushed on west, taking eight abandoned Turkish guns by about 11:30. Meanwhile Hamilton's and Melliss's columns had been stopped by 10:00 by the 45th and 51st Divisions, the 76th Punjabis digging in with heavy losses. Townshend rode to V.P. and ordered Hoghton to swing his brigade north across the Turkish front; it marched across the open under the heaviest fire and lost heavily. With Delamain's last half-battalion it took the redoubt north of Water Redoubt, then Water Redoubt itself, and the 38th Division fled towards Ctesiphon village.

Turkish counter-attack (13:00–17:00). By 13:30 the Turks had lost their whole first line. But Nur-ud-Din sent his last reserve, two battalions of the 51st under Jevad Bey with guns, at V.P. from about 13:00. Climo was wounded, and his mixed firing line, short of British officers, gave way slowly and abandoned the captured guns. Delamain's scratch attack with sixty signallers and orderlies and the 7th Rajputs, and Hoghton's with 250 men from six battalions, got no further. The 51st attacked the 76th Punjabis again at 16:00. Shortly after 17:00 Townshend broke off and concentrated at V.P.; he found Hoghton could muster 700 men, Delamain about 1,000 and Hamilton 800 or 900.

Night battle (23–24 November). Townshend drew in towards the river on the 23rd. Nur-ud-Din, judging the British shaken, ordered a counter-attack for 14:30. It went in late: the XIII Corps broke under fire from Gurkha Mound, a post of about 400 men of the 2/7th Gurkhas and 24th Punjabis with machine guns, which then held off the 35th Division until 04:00. Jevad Bey's battalions made at least six attacks on Water Redoubt from 21:00; the 45th Division pressed V.P. until about 02:00; the 51st lost its way in the dark and never attacked. At 02:00 Nur-ud-Din called it off.

Mutual retreat (24–25 November). Townshend concentrated at High Wall on the 24th and evacuated his wounded. That night a false report of a British flank march led Nur-ud-Din to order a retreat to the Diyala at 04:00 on the 25th; his cavalry reported the British gone from V.P., and at 14:00 he turned the army round. Seeing two large columns coming back, Townshend withdrew to Lajj after dark, starting at about 19:30.

Aftermath

Townshend lost 4,593 men, about a third of his force: 130 of 317 British officers were killed or wounded, the 24th Punjabis, 104th Rifles and 110th Mahrattas each lost about 60%, and four field ambulances equipped for 400 wounded dealt with over 3,500. Evacuating them downstream in crowded, unprepared steamers and barges caused great suffering, and the arrangements were sharply criticised by the commission later appointed to investigate them. The Turks lost 6,188 by Muhammad Amin's count, over 9,500 with deserters, and the 45th Division about 60% of its strength.

The retreat went by Lajj and Aziziya. At Umm at Tubul on 1 December the Turks caught up and were shaken off, and after a final 44-mile march in 36 hours the division reached Kut on 3 December. The Turks invested it on 7 December; von der Goltz reached Nur-ud-Din's headquarters on the 12th. Relief attempts failed, and on 29 April 1916 the garrison surrendered, about 13,000 men going into captivity.

The official historian judged that the dearly bought tactical success became a strategic defeat, and noted how many decisions on both sides rested on false intelligence. The battle is also remembered as proof that the Ottoman army, well entrenched and led, could stop a British-Indian force in open country; Wikipedia credits Nur-ud-Din with doing so without German help.

Wargaming it

Ctesiphon is an attack on a modern entrenched line with no reserve, and a fine test of nerve for both players. At brigade or battalion level, with a turn of an hour or so, the 22nd makes a full day's scenario: four British columns converging over open plain, a wired redoubt line that is invisible until close range, mirage and mist that limit observation, and guns on the river that cannot get round the bend. The British player has to decide when to launch the decisive attack and what to do with no reserve once V.P. falls; the Turkish player has three poor or untried divisions and one good one, and must decide where to commit the 51st and when to throw in the last two battalions.

The night of 23–24 November suits a smaller game: Gurkha Mound against the 35th Division, or Water Redoubt against Jevad Bey's battalions, with ammunition supply, lost direction and command breakdown as the key rules. At operational scale the campaign from Aziziya to Kut is a logistics game: river transport, aircraft for reconnaissance and the wounded.

What ifs: Reilly gets home with his map; Hoghton is held back as a reserve instead of swinging across the front; the 51st finds its way on the night of the 23rd; Townshend stays at Ctesiphon on the 25th, as Nixon wished, while the Turks are still retreating to the Diyala.

Maps and pictures