During the retreat the river gimboats tan (Devil), Comet and Firefly were run ashore and had to be abandone& Townshend at once took steps to withstand a siege in Kut until the arrival of reinforcements which were coming from overseas. Two Indian divisions had arrived in Egypt from the Western Front en route for Mesopotamia. The defenses of Kut were improved; sick and wounded and 1,350 Turkish prisoners were sent by water to Basm, leaving only an armed tug with Town shend. On 6 Decenzber the cavalry brigade and a convoy of transport animals were marched down to Ali Al Gharbi; on the same day the Turks closed the northern front, and on the 7th the investment of Kut was complete. On the 8th the Turks began bombarding Kut from three sides and Nureddin Pasha called upon Townshend to surrender. The British position lay in a U-shaped loop of the Tigris; the town stands at the southenstnost end of the penin. stile (about a mile -wide) thus formed, while the northern defenses were some 3,200 yards from the town. The Britiah cavalry now at Ali AI Gharbi was reinforced with infantry and guns from Basra; behind this advanced de tachment a relief force was organized under Major-General Aylmer, who on 4 Jan. 1916 ad vanced along both banks of the Tigris from Ali Al Gharbi toward Sheilch Saad and at tacked the Terks three-iusd-a-half miles east of the latter place. Heavy fiethitingledeveloped on both banks, and on the enemy was forced from his positions at Sheilch Sand, re tiring upstream about 10 tniles to another forti fied line at the junction of the Tigris with the Wadi River, 25 miles from Kut. Aylmer drove the Turks from this line on the 14th, compelling a further retirement of five miles. eral Nixon, the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force in Mesortamia, resigned, owing to ill-health, on 10 anuary and was succeeded by Lieut-Gen. ir Percy . Lake. Throughout these operations heavy rain and high wind caused gre,at discomfort to the troops and made movement most difficult, both by land and river. The Turks had established across the river a series of very strong posi tions. Neare.st to Kut, eight miles away, was the Es-Sinn position; farther down, toward the British, came successively the Sanna-i-Yat, Fel lahieh and Utrun-el-Hanna defenses. Flanking these last-named positions on both sides of the river were marshes, and the entire country was roadless. Three further itnportant attempts were made to relieve Townshend's beleaguered army. Between 19-23 Jan. 1916 Aylmer endeav ored to force a defile held by the Umm-el-Hanna lines on the left bank. The enemy front trenches were actually rushed, but supporting troops lost direction and under heavy fire failed to reach the objective, when a counter-attack caused the abandontnent of the conquered ter rain. A period for rest and reorganization fol lowed in February. On 7 March Aylmer de cided, in view of the possibility of his troops being flooded out by the cutting of the dikes, to leave the three lower lines of Turkish defense and to drive against the stronger but final line at Es-Sinn. With this object two coluntns made a difficult forced night-march through the desert right across the enemy's front. One column reached the appointed spot unobserved, the other came too late to achieve the purpose — the capture of the Dujailah redoubt After a whole day's fighting almost within view of Kut the attempt failed and the columns retired again to the Wadi lines. Fresh troops began to arrive up-river during March and a renewed at tack was planned on the left bank. Major-Gen eral Gornnge took over the command of Ayl mer's corps on 12 March. On 4 April General Maude's division stortned the Utnm-el-Hanna position, 23 miles from Kut During the night of 8-9 April an assault was made on the Sanna i-Yat lines, but without success.
The third desperate effort to relieve Kut had failed. Within the town itself matters looked black Heavy Turkish bombardments had be gun 10 Dec. 1915, followed by infantry charges, which were repulsed. On the 23d and 24th Nureddin Pasha made a furious attempt to storm the place, and even succeeded in piercing the British line. Throughout the winter the Turks maintained an impenetrable ring around the besieged garrison. Food grew scarce; the natives and ffie dealers in Kut hid all their stocic of foodstuffs and lived on the rations served out by the British until a systematic search unearthed large quantities of provisions. Aeroplanes from the relief cohunna outside the ring flew high over Kut, but could not descend owing to the close proximity of the Turkish guns. There was but one flour mill in Kut, and from that the Turks had removed the millstones when they abandoned the place. The deficiency was remedied by British aviators carrying a set of millstones in their areoplanes and dropping them within the lines. During the cold weather firewood was doled out by the half-pound. It became necessary to slaughter the horses and battery bullocks for food. The native population was fed by public soup kitchens. Scurvy broke out among both the military and the civilians. While the three attempts at relief were being carried out the Turks kept up a stream of high explosive bombs, which they fired into the town from trench mortars. Enemy aero_planes began in February to drop bombs on the town, not on the military works. The natives were the prin cipal sufferers by these raids; nor did the mark ing of hospital buildings with conspicuous Red Cross signs avail, for a bomb was dropped on the main hospital, killing 30 of the sick and wounded inmates. On 8 March 1916 the Turk ish (or German) commander sent an officer under the white flag to demand surrender —in vain. Rations were still further reduced; Town shend was nearing the end of his resources when a heroic but vain attetnpt was made to break the blocicade of the river. The hamar, one of the fastest steamers on the Tigris, manned by a volunteer Royal Navy crew under Lieutenant Firman, R. N., and Lieutenant Commander Cowley, R.N.V.R.,. started in the dark from Fellahieh on 24 April with 270 tons of supplies on board. Under fierce fire from both banks the devoted °forlorn hope° ran the gauntlet through the Sanna-i-Yat and Es-Sinn defenses to the vicinity of Megasis fort, a total distanc.e of some 15 miles. Both officers fell on the deck, Cowley at the wheel; at full speed the unguided vessel rushed on in a sinking con dition and grounded on a mudbank. For the next few days Kut was provisioned by sacks of flour and food dropped from aeroplanes, a measure which, had it been adopted earlier, might have enabled Kut to hold out till the arnval of relief. The provisions thus supplied
were far short in quantity of what was needed; they were doled out in quarter rations. On 27 April General Townshend, acting on wireless instructions, went out to treat with the Turkish commander, Khalil Pasha, who demanded un conditional surrender. There was nothing else to do. The 28th was spent in Kut preparing for the inevitable: guns and rifles were smashed, officers and men snapped their swords under their feet; field glasses were destroyed and re volvers thrown into cesspools; ammunition was dumped into the Tigris in the night, and on 29 April 1916 the British flag was hauled down and the white flag took its place. A weary, half-starved and broken force laid down its arms after a gallant resistance of 143 days. It consisted of 2,970 British and 6,000 Indian troops, with an artny of xbout 5,000 camp followers.
The fall of Kut created a painful impres sion among the Allies in general and through out the British Empire in particular. A parlia mentary conunission was appointed in August 1916 to inquire into the operations in Mesopo tamia and to report thereon. The commission, which was invested with many of the powers of the British High Court of Justice, examined crn oath over 100 witnesses, including Mr. Austen Chamberlain and Lord Crewe, respectively sec retary and late secretary of state for India, Lord Hardinge, viceroy of India, two ex-com manders-in-chief in India, General Nixon, and all the chief officials concerned in the Meso potamian campaign up to the summer of 1916. General Townshend, being a prisoner of war, naturally could not testify. The commission consisted of Lord George Hamilton, chairman, Lord Donoughmore, General Lyttelton, Ad miral Bridge, Lord Hugh Cecil, M.P., and three other members of Parliament. The commis sioners issued a voluminous report in June 1917. They found that while the conditions of the campaign in Mesopotamia required a standard of preparation and equipment above the ordi nary, the Indian army was not even up to the ordinary standard in these matters on the out break of the war. This was dut to the cam paign of military economy which, by agreement between the home and Indian governments, had been pursued in India for many years before the war. The supply of artillery had been cut down both in quantity and quality; the number of troops available for immediate mobilization was reduced, and the army generally was only equipped for frontier warfare against savage tribes, The Indian army was, therefore, in all respects in a less favorable position to confront modern troops than it was at the time of the South African War, 1899-1902. The commis sion placed the chief responsibility upon the Indian government and recommended certain alterations in the administrative system to in sure closer co-operation between the military and civil departments. The undertaking of the expedition was not condemned : °Up to the date of the advance on Bagdad (says the report) continuous victory has been achieved . . . are of opinion— reviewing the operations as a whole— that it may now [1917] be truly as serted that, in the many parts of the world in which the Allied forces have been engaged, no more substantial results or more solid victories have been achieved than those won by the gal lantry of the British and Indian armies on the stricken plains of Mesopotamia.* VVhile the events so far described in this chapter were being unrolled in the southeastern theatre of war, other things, partaking of the nature of a sideshow, were hapnening farther east, in Persia. That country was neutral, and remained so during the war. But the German minister in Teheran, Prince Reuss XXXI, had been sowing the seeds of Pan-Germanism in Persia since the summer of 1914 and had suc ceeded in gaining the sympathies of several Persian ministers, the gendarmerie, under Swedish officers, and some of the tribesmen for the German cause. Risings were fomented throughout the country; Bntish civilians were arrested in Shiraz and Yezd, and there seemed every probability of Persia being dragged into the whirlpool in accordance with the Gertnan °Holy War* scheme. The revolt of the 6,000 gendarmes led to the murder of a British and a Russian vice-consul. Immediate steps became necessary to prevent the flame from spreading and to protect the legations. The Russians in Transcaucasia were nearest to the spot, and in the middle of November 1915 General Yudenitch dispatched two columns into the country; one, under General Baratov, pushed southwestward through Hamadan to Kermanshah, on the way to Bagdad. A small cavalry force established communication with the Bntish Mesopotamian force. The possession of Kermanshah was strongly disputed, and the Russian column was held up before reaching the southern plains. The second column advanced through Kum and Kashan to Ispahan, the ancient capital, on 20 March 1916. The first column entered Teheran at the end of November, but the German, Turk ish and Austrian ministers had departed from the city on the 14th, after endeavoring to induce the young shah to accompany them and thus put himself into German hands. Torn by conflict ing advice, the 17-year-old shah followed the wiser counsels of Prince Firtnan Firma and a few others and took a strong stand for the Al lies. He refused to go and join the Austro-Ger man-Turkish corps dtplomatique waiting for him six miles away at the village of Shah Abdul Azim. His decision led to an interesting sequel three years later, when he stepped from a spe cial train in London and was welcomed by- Kmg George and the Prime Minister on 31 Oct. 1919. On the following day (1 November) he was conducted in royal state to the Guildhall as the guest of the lord mayor, and in reply to the latter's speech of welcome Ahmed Shah re ferred in fluent French to °the strong bonds of friendship which have existed for so lono. be tween Persia and Great Britain.* To return to 1916. While the Russians were operating in northern Persia, Sir Percy Sykes. many years a resident in the country and author' of perhaps the best history of Persia, led the British column of intervention in the south. The native gen darmerie was disbanded in 1916 and the Persian government accepted a British offer to place at their disposal a number of British officers to organize a new force.