Everybody has fun
367. Everybody has fun
China.
The political events in China were somewhat similar to those in Russia. President Yuan Shikai was obliged to conduct the elections to the National Assembly in February 1913 and they ended up with a victory of KMT – "Chinese Nationalist Party". Song Jiaoren, an appointee of the party leader Sun Yat-sen, proved to be a good organizer and KMT won 269 of 596 seats in the House of Representatives and 123 of 274 seats in the Senate. Song Jiaoren became a most probably candidate to the PM position and his proclaimed goal, unsurprisingly, was to limit the powers of the president’s position. Which, also unsurprisingly, was going contrary to the Yuan’s own ideas on this specific subject. It was, of course, a pure coincidence that Song had been shot by a lone gunman, which probably qualified as “self-inflicted wound”. A deadly one - some people simply don’t take a serious care of their own health. There was probably some kind of a minor epidemics as a result of which all people investigated either died or mysteriously disappeared (these viruses can be quite weird).
But learning on other’s experiences is not always working and after arriving in Peking, the elected Parliament attempted to gain control over Yuan, to develop a permanent constitution, and to hold a legitimate, open presidential election. These guys were also critical of Yuan’s handling of a national budget (he managed to authorize $100,000,000 “reconstruction loan” just before the Barmalei War started and before newly-elected Woodrow Wilson cancelled financial policy of his predecessor). To sum it up, the KMT was just looking for trouble and got it. Yuan successfully cracked on KMT y suppressing or bribing the parliamentarians and replacing pro-KMT governors with the loyal ones.
Sun Yat-sen behaved in his usual way: fled to Japan in August 1913, and from there called for a Second Revolution. Yuan Shikai also behaved in his usual way: used the army to dissolve the national and provincial assemblies and replace them with the newly formed "Council of State", with Duan Qirui, his trusted Beiyang lieutenant, as prime minister. Finally, Yuan had himself elected president to a five-year term, publicly labelled the KMT a seditious organization, ordered the KMT's dissolution, and evicted all its members from Parliament. The KMT's "Second Revolution" ended in failure as Yuan's troops achieved complete victory over revolutionary uprisings. In January 1914, China's Parliament was formally dissolved and Yuan got practically unlimited powers over China's military, finances, foreign policy, and the rights of China's citizens. Yuan justified these reforms by stating that representative democracy had been proven inefficient by political infighting. Probably not too smart move was to supply the provinces with the military governors, each with his own army but this worked for the time being.
Actually, with the “reconstruction loan” being provided not only by the neutral Russia and Japan but also by France, Britain and Germany, Yuan could expect that, no matter which side wins, loan from the losing one probably could be shrugged off and that the winner is going to be too busy with other issues to press the unpleasant parts of the loan conditions. Which, of course, still was leaving Russia and Japan and, while Russia already grabbed pretty much everything it wanted and was mostly interested in holding it, Japan’s appetite was seemingly on the initial stages of its development and the main hope was that the US with its current open doors policy may put enough pressure to keep Japanese demands within some reasonable limits. Anyway, as of now, China had certain degree of freedom of actions. “Within the reasonable limits”.
Barmalei War.
East Africa.
Going a little bit back in time for a broader picture.
Simultaneously with the British IEF “B”, which landed at Tonga with the intention to crush the German forces in the East Africa (see, earlier chapter), force “C” of approximately 4,000 mostly Indian troops landed in Mombasa as part of a two-pronged invasion of the German colony. This second prong would attack the German defences at Longido in the north around Kilimanjaro, then swing south and seize Neu Moshi, the western terminus of the Usambara or Northern Railroad. “The objective for the capture of Longido was to squeeze the German Schutztruppe in the upper end of a two-hundred-mile pincer."
As the plans go, this one was just as good as any other plan and, as with any other plan, but “no battle plan ever survives the first encounter with the enemy” [1]. Anyway, IMO, all these multi-prong plans require either (a) a complete idiot as an enemy, or (b) a “fail proof” huge advantage in strength or (c) a great skill of the leadership. The British commander, Major General Arthur Aitken, and his staff were not idiotic enough to have serious illusions regarding (a) or (c) but they sincerely expected to have (b). Well, they proved to be right on the (a) and (c) accounts and wrong on (b). Having it right on two out of three probably gives them reasonably high marks as the military planners [2]. Well, anyway, both him in charge of the Southern prong and Major Steward in the charge of the Northern one, regardless their planning abilities, definitely failed as the tacticians. The consolation prize for Major Stewart was that his superior lost a battle having 8:1 (or 10:1) numeric advantage while he achieved the same result with only 2:1 advantage.
To get to the point, the “C” force of 4,000 expected to met only 200 German troops but in a reality there were also 600 askaris and the colonial volunteers of 8th Schützenkompagnie [rifle company] of 86 young Germans on horseback. Totally, a whooping 886 opponents. A prudent commander would immediately order a retreat after getting news about this but Stewart, with more bravery than a common sense kept advancing loosing somewhere more than a half of his force in a process. Probably, these units also had been forming the prongs of their own or were implementing some other tricky maneuver. Anyway, “some 1,500 Punjabis of the British force came up the slope at night near Longido and, at daylight in the morning fog, were caught in the crossfire of a strong German defensive position. The large force of Indian infantry fought well when counterattacked, however, during the day the British attackers made no headway, but suffered substantial casualties.”
While they were fighting, a mounted patrol of the German 8th Rifle Company ambushed a British supply column; roughly 100 mules carrying water for the troops were stampeded away by the German horsemen. Some of the carriers in the column panicked and dropped their loads leaving food, ammunition and equipment behind. The British officers with their now widely scattered troops waited until darkness, determined their situation to be untenable, pulled out and down the mountain and marched back to British East Africa having accomplished nothing and losing over 300 vs. German 100. The German askari troops even had enough time to arrive by the train to the Battle of. Tanga.
Most of the “C” force managed to get to Mombasa and get the hell out of Africa before the French and German forces pretty much cut the colony out of the coast. The rest, remained inland but a double defeat by the much smaller forces cooled enthusiasm for war, especially among the British colonial volunteers most of whom had been Hindu colonists (there were more of them than the British settlers).
After securing the coast the Germans and French had been, for a while, just holding the perimeter waiting for the arrival of reinforcements and expecting the renewed British attempts to land in the area. On the far western end, Lake Tanganyika was dominated by the French and German small craft and even few airplanes had been present: the Germans had there 2 steamers, 1 ferry and some dhow boats, the French - 1 steamer, 1 armed boat, 1 armed barge and 4 planes against 2 British steamers, both of which had been eventually sunk.
Communication with Sudan was still possible from Uganda by the White Nile but this was not a big help in a long run because Sudan also was cut off the coast (and, anyway, both ends of the Red Sea were controlled by the Entente) and even put together these colonies/protectorates were not fully self-sufficient in the terms of maintaining colonial rule in a long run.
For the British government this situation posed a serious dilemma: just abandoning the region would be a major loss of the face and may have a serious negative domino effect upon other parts of the empire. OTOH, a successful relief effort would require a very serious naval redeployment involving assignment of at least 4 - 5 of the most modern battlecruisers or even the Queen Elizabeth battleships: no major relocation could pass unnoticed and the French had an advantage of a much shorter travel from the Med through Suez and the Red Sea and both German battle cruisers had been stationed in Batavia while the British squadron would have to sail all the way along the African coast. This was posing at least two problems:
Operations there reached standstill. With the exception of few forts, the British troops evacuated territory to the South of Limpopo River due to the shortage of the supplies. On the opposite side the problem was pretty much the same: with the British dominance on the Atlantic the supplies had to come in what was a convoluted route for the Dutch: by land across France and then via the Med and Red Sea by the Indian Ocean using the route which was not completely safe from the British cruisers. As a result, both sides had been limiting themselves to the occasional cavalry raids.
The German incursions into Bechuanaland Protectorate were of no serious significance due to the small numbers involved, huge distances and generally pro-British King Khama III.
It was looking like that the conflict which triggered the whole war is dying out by the natural reasons and, if it was not a small part of a greater game, the sides directly involved, probably could come to a mutual agreement even if it was absolutely unclear what such an agreement could look like because giving the British immigrants the equal rights would quite soon remove the Boers from power by aa sheer force of the numbers. OTOH, due to a general absence of Boers’ interest to anything but farming and hunting, pretty much all technical activities were conducted by these British immigrants who, even during the war, had been running the railroads, mines, etc.
Mesopotamian theater.
The British troops (mostly IDF “D”) under command of general Townshend kept advancing pretty much into a vacuum with an ambitious plan to take Baghdad [3] while the Ottomans had been forming the army and moving it into the theater. Eventually, the forces met each other at Ctesiphon on the Western bank of the Tigris River in the barren Iraqi desert, about 380 miles (610 km) upstream from Basra, 40 miles (64 km) and 16 miles (26 km) south-east of Baghdad.
The Ottoman forces had formed a well-camouflaged and formidable line of trenches crossing the river. There were two lines of trenches; there was also a 20-foot-high (6.1 m) ancient wall 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the main line, used for observation by the Ottoman forces under command of Lieutenant General Nureddin. The Ottoman amy consisted of approximately 18,000 men and 52 guns.
The British force consisted of the 6th (Poona) Division, at a strength of around 11,000 men. Some British troops had been left behind to garrison the recently captured town and river junction of Kut. Townshend's plan of attack was to separate his force into four columns. Three infantry columns, designated columns A, B, and C, were scheduled for a frontal attack on different points of the Ottoman lines. The other column, referred to as the flying column, was made up of a mix of cavalry and infantry, and was supposed to swing around the left flank of the Ottoman lines. [4] The attack was to be supported by two river boats, a gunboat and HMS Firefly.
Nureddin had 55 days to prepare his defenses and did it well. Townshend ordered a night attack, which happened on schedule but due to poor ground conditions on the west bank the British ended up attacking the much stronger east bank positions. [5] The advance was supposed to be supported by river gunboats, however two things prevented the gun boats from becoming a factor in the battle: the Ottoman artillery fired on them and the Tigris was mined. What a barbaric and uncivilized thing to do!
Probably to confuse the enemy, Townshend named his columns not A, B, C from right to left or left to right but C, A, B from left to right. This was definitely a neat tactical trick that would put any civilized opponent into a confusion but the Ottomans were too uneducated to bite. Anyway, A and C did not even reach the trenches. B took the 1st line and advanced to the 2nd but was stopped by Ottoman division brought from reserve.
Townshend then ordered C-Column to fall back, and try and exploit the breakthrough. This movement was rather complicated and the task was made difficult by Ottoman forces firing into their flank. Meanwhile, the flying column bogged down in inconclusive fighting against Turkish and Arab Cavalry. Here again Nureddin committed his reserves, in this case the 51st Division, to great effect, halting Townshend's flanking attack.
The next day Townshend repeated attacks without success after which the Ottomans counter-attacked, also without success. On the third day both generals ordered a retreat due to the high losses but when Nureddin realized that the British were retreating, he turned his army around and sent it in pursuit of the British-Indian forces. The Brits lost 4,600 and claimed that the Ottomans lost between 6,200 and 9,500. Townshend decided a retreat back towards Kut was necessary to rebuild the strength of his army. It is not quite clear how exactly he was planning to achieve this while sitting in Kut but this became unimportant because Nureddin advanced and besieged Kut.
__________
[1] This quote sometimes attributed to C.Powell but Field Marshal Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke said it much earlier: “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.”
[2] Definitely a higher mark than, say, general von Weyrother whose plan for Austerlitz battle was heavily relying upon (a) and (c). Or Varro, who at the Cannae relied exclusively on what he thought will be (b) (to think about it, perhaps Varro also was somewhat right regarding (a) and (c)? I got caught in my own logic). 😂
[3] Taking into an account that the primary goal was to protect Abadan refinery and that the British force was slightly more than a single division, wisdom of that strategy can be questioned unless it was heavily based upon (a)-factor (see above).
[4] “The 1st column is marching, the 2nd column is marching….” Weyrother would be proud.
[5] Doing a reconnaissance before preparing a plan would remove all fun from the following activities.
[6] The golden rule formulated by Suvorov is “never by shy about claiming the Turkish losses”.
“We are having fun!”
‘Kindergarten cop’
“The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity, they do not have national spirit… they are just a heap of loose sand.”
Sun Yat-sen
“Yuan Shikai thought that it was human nature to tremble before a flashing knife and to go crazy for yellow gold. Both of these weapons he used to rule the empire.”
Liang Qichao
“…must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.”
Woodrow Wilson
“Between France and England the best thing is English Channel.”
Douglas Jerrold
“English is just poorly pronounced French.”
Clemenceau
“We have no quarrel with the German nation,
One would not quarrel with a flock of sheep.
But, generation after generation,
They throw up leaders who disturb our sleep.”
Alan Herbert
‘Kindergarten cop’
“The Chinese people have only family and clan solidarity, they do not have national spirit… they are just a heap of loose sand.”
Sun Yat-sen
“Yuan Shikai thought that it was human nature to tremble before a flashing knife and to go crazy for yellow gold. Both of these weapons he used to rule the empire.”
Liang Qichao
“…must be impartial in thought as well as in action, must put a curb upon our sentiments as well as upon every transaction that might be construed as a preference of one party to the struggle before another.”
Woodrow Wilson
“Between France and England the best thing is English Channel.”
Douglas Jerrold
“English is just poorly pronounced French.”
Clemenceau
“We have no quarrel with the German nation,
One would not quarrel with a flock of sheep.
But, generation after generation,
They throw up leaders who disturb our sleep.”
Alan Herbert
China.
The political events in China were somewhat similar to those in Russia. President Yuan Shikai was obliged to conduct the elections to the National Assembly in February 1913 and they ended up with a victory of KMT – "Chinese Nationalist Party". Song Jiaoren, an appointee of the party leader Sun Yat-sen, proved to be a good organizer and KMT won 269 of 596 seats in the House of Representatives and 123 of 274 seats in the Senate. Song Jiaoren became a most probably candidate to the PM position and his proclaimed goal, unsurprisingly, was to limit the powers of the president’s position. Which, also unsurprisingly, was going contrary to the Yuan’s own ideas on this specific subject. It was, of course, a pure coincidence that Song had been shot by a lone gunman, which probably qualified as “self-inflicted wound”. A deadly one - some people simply don’t take a serious care of their own health. There was probably some kind of a minor epidemics as a result of which all people investigated either died or mysteriously disappeared (these viruses can be quite weird).
But learning on other’s experiences is not always working and after arriving in Peking, the elected Parliament attempted to gain control over Yuan, to develop a permanent constitution, and to hold a legitimate, open presidential election. These guys were also critical of Yuan’s handling of a national budget (he managed to authorize $100,000,000 “reconstruction loan” just before the Barmalei War started and before newly-elected Woodrow Wilson cancelled financial policy of his predecessor). To sum it up, the KMT was just looking for trouble and got it. Yuan successfully cracked on KMT y suppressing or bribing the parliamentarians and replacing pro-KMT governors with the loyal ones.
Sun Yat-sen behaved in his usual way: fled to Japan in August 1913, and from there called for a Second Revolution. Yuan Shikai also behaved in his usual way: used the army to dissolve the national and provincial assemblies and replace them with the newly formed "Council of State", with Duan Qirui, his trusted Beiyang lieutenant, as prime minister. Finally, Yuan had himself elected president to a five-year term, publicly labelled the KMT a seditious organization, ordered the KMT's dissolution, and evicted all its members from Parliament. The KMT's "Second Revolution" ended in failure as Yuan's troops achieved complete victory over revolutionary uprisings. In January 1914, China's Parliament was formally dissolved and Yuan got practically unlimited powers over China's military, finances, foreign policy, and the rights of China's citizens. Yuan justified these reforms by stating that representative democracy had been proven inefficient by political infighting. Probably not too smart move was to supply the provinces with the military governors, each with his own army but this worked for the time being.
Actually, with the “reconstruction loan” being provided not only by the neutral Russia and Japan but also by France, Britain and Germany, Yuan could expect that, no matter which side wins, loan from the losing one probably could be shrugged off and that the winner is going to be too busy with other issues to press the unpleasant parts of the loan conditions. Which, of course, still was leaving Russia and Japan and, while Russia already grabbed pretty much everything it wanted and was mostly interested in holding it, Japan’s appetite was seemingly on the initial stages of its development and the main hope was that the US with its current open doors policy may put enough pressure to keep Japanese demands within some reasonable limits. Anyway, as of now, China had certain degree of freedom of actions. “Within the reasonable limits”.
Barmalei War.
East Africa.
Going a little bit back in time for a broader picture.
Simultaneously with the British IEF “B”, which landed at Tonga with the intention to crush the German forces in the East Africa (see, earlier chapter), force “C” of approximately 4,000 mostly Indian troops landed in Mombasa as part of a two-pronged invasion of the German colony. This second prong would attack the German defences at Longido in the north around Kilimanjaro, then swing south and seize Neu Moshi, the western terminus of the Usambara or Northern Railroad. “The objective for the capture of Longido was to squeeze the German Schutztruppe in the upper end of a two-hundred-mile pincer."
As the plans go, this one was just as good as any other plan and, as with any other plan, but “no battle plan ever survives the first encounter with the enemy” [1]. Anyway, IMO, all these multi-prong plans require either (a) a complete idiot as an enemy, or (b) a “fail proof” huge advantage in strength or (c) a great skill of the leadership. The British commander, Major General Arthur Aitken, and his staff were not idiotic enough to have serious illusions regarding (a) or (c) but they sincerely expected to have (b). Well, they proved to be right on the (a) and (c) accounts and wrong on (b). Having it right on two out of three probably gives them reasonably high marks as the military planners [2]. Well, anyway, both him in charge of the Southern prong and Major Steward in the charge of the Northern one, regardless their planning abilities, definitely failed as the tacticians. The consolation prize for Major Stewart was that his superior lost a battle having 8:1 (or 10:1) numeric advantage while he achieved the same result with only 2:1 advantage.
To get to the point, the “C” force of 4,000 expected to met only 200 German troops but in a reality there were also 600 askaris and the colonial volunteers of 8th Schützenkompagnie [rifle company] of 86 young Germans on horseback. Totally, a whooping 886 opponents. A prudent commander would immediately order a retreat after getting news about this but Stewart, with more bravery than a common sense kept advancing loosing somewhere more than a half of his force in a process. Probably, these units also had been forming the prongs of their own or were implementing some other tricky maneuver. Anyway, “some 1,500 Punjabis of the British force came up the slope at night near Longido and, at daylight in the morning fog, were caught in the crossfire of a strong German defensive position. The large force of Indian infantry fought well when counterattacked, however, during the day the British attackers made no headway, but suffered substantial casualties.”
While they were fighting, a mounted patrol of the German 8th Rifle Company ambushed a British supply column; roughly 100 mules carrying water for the troops were stampeded away by the German horsemen. Some of the carriers in the column panicked and dropped their loads leaving food, ammunition and equipment behind. The British officers with their now widely scattered troops waited until darkness, determined their situation to be untenable, pulled out and down the mountain and marched back to British East Africa having accomplished nothing and losing over 300 vs. German 100. The German askari troops even had enough time to arrive by the train to the Battle of. Tanga.
Most of the “C” force managed to get to Mombasa and get the hell out of Africa before the French and German forces pretty much cut the colony out of the coast. The rest, remained inland but a double defeat by the much smaller forces cooled enthusiasm for war, especially among the British colonial volunteers most of whom had been Hindu colonists (there were more of them than the British settlers).
After securing the coast the Germans and French had been, for a while, just holding the perimeter waiting for the arrival of reinforcements and expecting the renewed British attempts to land in the area. On the far western end, Lake Tanganyika was dominated by the French and German small craft and even few airplanes had been present: the Germans had there 2 steamers, 1 ferry and some dhow boats, the French - 1 steamer, 1 armed boat, 1 armed barge and 4 planes against 2 British steamers, both of which had been eventually sunk.
Communication with Sudan was still possible from Uganda by the White Nile but this was not a big help in a long run because Sudan also was cut off the coast (and, anyway, both ends of the Red Sea were controlled by the Entente) and even put together these colonies/protectorates were not fully self-sufficient in the terms of maintaining colonial rule in a long run.
For the British government this situation posed a serious dilemma: just abandoning the region would be a major loss of the face and may have a serious negative domino effect upon other parts of the empire. OTOH, a successful relief effort would require a very serious naval redeployment involving assignment of at least 4 - 5 of the most modern battlecruisers or even the Queen Elizabeth battleships: no major relocation could pass unnoticed and the French had an advantage of a much shorter travel from the Med through Suez and the Red Sea and both German battle cruisers had been stationed in Batavia while the British squadron would have to sail all the way along the African coast. This was posing at least two problems:
- Serious weakening of the Grand Fleet based in Scapa Flow may encourage the Germans to attack if not the base itself then at least the coastal cities.
- The squadron will be looking for a trip 22 - 25,000 nautical miles. Taking into an account that a range of a Lion-class battlecruiser was approximately 5,600 nautical miles and of a battleship of Queen Elizabeth class 5,000, this meant numerous refuelings. Both new battlecruisers and new battleships had been using oil and Britain did not have the big oil supply bases down the Atlantic. The biggest one was on the Falklands, which was adding an extra hundreds miles to the route. As an alternative, the squadron could be followed by one or few tankers but this meant a much lower speed and a greater vulnerability along the route making protection of the tankers the main task of the squadron. The next problem was obvious: what’s the next? Even assuming that the squadron successfully accomplishes de blockade of the East Africa, how is it going to operate afterwards? Capacity of the tankers was not unlimited and the only available refinery was in Abadan on the Ottoman-Persian border. Which implied a need to sail even further, etc. And this also involved a need to have ammunition supplies and many other things, which could be hardly obtained even in India. Winston Churchill, the 1st Lord of the Admiralty, still was full of enthusiasm but the professionals were not too much so and so far the idea was not going anywhere drowning in the bottomless swamp of the planning and consultations. Running the supply convoys to South-Eastern Africa and across the Atlantic already was stretching resources of the cruisers and destroyers and adding to these convoys the tankers to provide an adequate oil storages on Madagascar or British Mozambique would stretch them even more, not to mentioning a need to create the necessary infrastructure.
Operations there reached standstill. With the exception of few forts, the British troops evacuated territory to the South of Limpopo River due to the shortage of the supplies. On the opposite side the problem was pretty much the same: with the British dominance on the Atlantic the supplies had to come in what was a convoluted route for the Dutch: by land across France and then via the Med and Red Sea by the Indian Ocean using the route which was not completely safe from the British cruisers. As a result, both sides had been limiting themselves to the occasional cavalry raids.
The German incursions into Bechuanaland Protectorate were of no serious significance due to the small numbers involved, huge distances and generally pro-British King Khama III.
It was looking like that the conflict which triggered the whole war is dying out by the natural reasons and, if it was not a small part of a greater game, the sides directly involved, probably could come to a mutual agreement even if it was absolutely unclear what such an agreement could look like because giving the British immigrants the equal rights would quite soon remove the Boers from power by aa sheer force of the numbers. OTOH, due to a general absence of Boers’ interest to anything but farming and hunting, pretty much all technical activities were conducted by these British immigrants who, even during the war, had been running the railroads, mines, etc.
Mesopotamian theater.
The British troops (mostly IDF “D”) under command of general Townshend kept advancing pretty much into a vacuum with an ambitious plan to take Baghdad [3] while the Ottomans had been forming the army and moving it into the theater. Eventually, the forces met each other at Ctesiphon on the Western bank of the Tigris River in the barren Iraqi desert, about 380 miles (610 km) upstream from Basra, 40 miles (64 km) and 16 miles (26 km) south-east of Baghdad.
The Ottoman forces had formed a well-camouflaged and formidable line of trenches crossing the river. There were two lines of trenches; there was also a 20-foot-high (6.1 m) ancient wall 3 miles (4.8 km) south of the main line, used for observation by the Ottoman forces under command of Lieutenant General Nureddin. The Ottoman amy consisted of approximately 18,000 men and 52 guns.
The British force consisted of the 6th (Poona) Division, at a strength of around 11,000 men. Some British troops had been left behind to garrison the recently captured town and river junction of Kut. Townshend's plan of attack was to separate his force into four columns. Three infantry columns, designated columns A, B, and C, were scheduled for a frontal attack on different points of the Ottoman lines. The other column, referred to as the flying column, was made up of a mix of cavalry and infantry, and was supposed to swing around the left flank of the Ottoman lines. [4] The attack was to be supported by two river boats, a gunboat and HMS Firefly.
Nureddin had 55 days to prepare his defenses and did it well. Townshend ordered a night attack, which happened on schedule but due to poor ground conditions on the west bank the British ended up attacking the much stronger east bank positions. [5] The advance was supposed to be supported by river gunboats, however two things prevented the gun boats from becoming a factor in the battle: the Ottoman artillery fired on them and the Tigris was mined. What a barbaric and uncivilized thing to do!
Probably to confuse the enemy, Townshend named his columns not A, B, C from right to left or left to right but C, A, B from left to right. This was definitely a neat tactical trick that would put any civilized opponent into a confusion but the Ottomans were too uneducated to bite. Anyway, A and C did not even reach the trenches. B took the 1st line and advanced to the 2nd but was stopped by Ottoman division brought from reserve.
Townshend then ordered C-Column to fall back, and try and exploit the breakthrough. This movement was rather complicated and the task was made difficult by Ottoman forces firing into their flank. Meanwhile, the flying column bogged down in inconclusive fighting against Turkish and Arab Cavalry. Here again Nureddin committed his reserves, in this case the 51st Division, to great effect, halting Townshend's flanking attack.
The next day Townshend repeated attacks without success after which the Ottomans counter-attacked, also without success. On the third day both generals ordered a retreat due to the high losses but when Nureddin realized that the British were retreating, he turned his army around and sent it in pursuit of the British-Indian forces. The Brits lost 4,600 and claimed that the Ottomans lost between 6,200 and 9,500. Townshend decided a retreat back towards Kut was necessary to rebuild the strength of his army. It is not quite clear how exactly he was planning to achieve this while sitting in Kut but this became unimportant because Nureddin advanced and besieged Kut.
__________
[1] This quote sometimes attributed to C.Powell but Field Marshal Helmuth Carl Bernard von Moltke said it much earlier: “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main strength.”
[2] Definitely a higher mark than, say, general von Weyrother whose plan for Austerlitz battle was heavily relying upon (a) and (c). Or Varro, who at the Cannae relied exclusively on what he thought will be (b) (to think about it, perhaps Varro also was somewhat right regarding (a) and (c)? I got caught in my own logic). 😂
[3] Taking into an account that the primary goal was to protect Abadan refinery and that the British force was slightly more than a single division, wisdom of that strategy can be questioned unless it was heavily based upon (a)-factor (see above).
[4] “The 1st column is marching, the 2nd column is marching….” Weyrother would be proud.
[5] Doing a reconnaissance before preparing a plan would remove all fun from the following activities.
[6] The golden rule formulated by Suvorov is “never by shy about claiming the Turkish losses”.
