MAUDE, Sia Stanley, English soldier, commander of the British Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia 1916-17. He was born in 1864, entered the army at the age of 20 and saw his first active service in the Egyptian campaign of 1885. He fought in several battles in the South African war and later served as mili tary secretary to the governor-general of Canada, 1901-04. He next became private secretary to the Minister for War in London, and was subsequently connected with the or ganization of the newly-formed Territorial Army. He was on the General Staff of the 5th Division when the European War broke out, and took part in all the early operations of the campaign. While in command of the 14th Infantry Brigade he was severely wounded. On his recovery he was promoted major-general in 1915, and transferred to the Dardanelles, thence to Egypt and afterward to Mesopotamia, where he took over the chief command in succession to General Sir Percy Lake in August 1916. The military situation in that theatre of war was critical. On 29 April General Townshend had been forced to surrender at Kut with 8,000 men owing to lack of resources. It was the task of General
Maude to retrieve the disaster. After some months of preparation and reorganization he marched out with all his forces in December and pushed right up to Kut, where the Turks were strongly entrenched on both banks of the Tigris. With hard fighting he dislodged the enemy, drove him back into Kut, and launched his main attack across the river at Shumran. The Turks broke and fled; Kut fell again to the British, and Maude pursued with such vigor that he entered Bagdad on 11 March 1917. Another long period of preparation fol lowed, and on 28 Sept. 1917 General Maude attacked the Turks at Ramadie, carried the advanced positions and encircled them with his cavalry, compelling the whole division to surrender. On 6 November he captured Tek rit, the riverhead on the Tigris, and the whole of the Turkish forces withdrew from 30 to 50 miles northward. Before he was able to achieve anything further, General Maude died, after a very brief sickness, at Bagdad on 18 Nov. 1917.