Iii the Baghdad Offensive

III. THE BAGHDAD OFFENSIVE Great developments took place on the Anglo-Indian line of communications, and at the base, during the summer. A reason able amount of heavy artillery was gradually accumulated. An additional division arrived from India. Landing facilities at the ports were vastly improved. A change, moreover, took place in the chief command, for, after replacing Gorringe in charge of the forces at the front in July, Gen. Maude a few weeks later be came commander-in-chief—vice Sir P. Lake, whose health had broken down. By the beginning of December Maude had been furnished with enough river craft, his supply system was suffi ciently advanced and he had the necessary war material at his command to justify his embarking on offensive operations of a far-reaching kind, and on Dec. 13 he struck.

Disposition of the Forces.

Von der Goltz had left Mesopo tamia and Khalil Pasha was now in command. It must be pointed out that Maude started his offensive with a force four times the strength of that which, under Townshend, had advanced to Ctesi phon a year earlier. His army astride of the Tigris was of neces sity disposed in echelon, with its left (the II. Army Corps under Gen. Marshall) about Es Sinn, and its right (the I. Army Corps under Gen. Cobbe) facing Sanniyat. Maude's plan was to push his left yet farther forward, to clear the right bank of the Tigris to well above Kut, and, when these dispositions should have taken effect, to force the lines of Sanniyat with his right.

Marshall opened the offensive by forcing the Shatt al Hai after a night march, and by capturing some of the Turkish de fences which formed a bridgehead south of Kut. During the struggles that ensued, which lasted some weeks, Khalil's troops offered a stout resistance, so that although Maude's operations on the right bank of the Tigris were almost uniformly successful, they proceeded slowly and by successive stages. By the middle of February the whole of the Turkish entrenched camp on that bank was in Anglo-Indian hands, and the Ottoman troops had all withdrawn to the farther side of the great river. No sooner had this part of the programme been accomplished than Cobbe on the 17th attacked Sanniyat. The effort failed for the moment ;

but when the assault was repeated five days later it proved suc cessful, and after a stern contest the formidable lines were at last carried. On the same day Marshall by a brilliant feat of arms forced a passage across the Tigris at Shumran, and no course was then left open to the Ottoman commander but to abandon Kut and retire in haste up the left bank of the river.' Maude's flotilla, hitherto blocked by Sanniyat, pushed up at once past Kut, and the Anglo-Indian army won a victory that went far towards wiping out the discomfitures of the previous year.

Turkish Retreat from Kut.

With his supplies guaranteed by the arrival of the water transport, Maude pressed on along the left bank of the Tigris on the heels of the fugitive Osmanlis. The river channel between Kut and Al 'Aziziya has many loops and bends, making it difficult for a naval force and a military force to act in concert; but on Feb. 26 the British gunboats after a smart action destroyed or captured practically the entire Turkish flotilla. The question of proceeding to Baghdad now arose. The army commander had from the outset contemplated the capture of that city after he should have expelled the enemy from Kut, and now received permission to carry out his plan. He found himself obliged to halt for some days at Al 'Aziziya, how ever, for fear of outrunning his supplies. On March 4 the Anglo Indian army resumed its advance, and it was found that the Turks had fallen back behind the Diyala. Maude threw a bridge across the Tigris, and by March 11 Baghdad was in British hands.

The Turks had withdrawn northwards, but Maude allowed no pause in the offensive to take place. Cobbe pushed up the right bank of the Tigris, along which a stretch of railway ran from Baghdad as far as Samarra, heavily defeated an opposing force at Mushahida, while Marshall conducted a most successful campaign on the Shatt al 'Adhaim. Cobbe, moreover, completed the opera tions on the right bank of the Tigris by the capture of Samarra.