Trechos de Eden To Armageddon: World War I In The Middle East (2011), de Roger Ford.
Mesopotamia - "the land between the rivers" - was the name given to the lowland regions of the joint basin of the Rivers Euphrates and Tigris. Flat and featureless, the Tigris at Baghdad, some 560 kilometres from the sea, is at a mean elevation of under 40 metres.
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The climate, too, is one of extremes. The hot weather, when daytime temperatures seldom fall below 37°C and frequently reach well over 50°C, lasts from May to October; in contrast, night-time temperatures during the cold season are often below freezing.
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And as to the social climate in 1914, Brig.-Gen. FJ Moberly, the author of the British Official History of the Mesopotamia Campaign, wrote: "Tribal law and customs reign ... and the Turkish administration was wont deliberately to foster tribal jealousies from sheer inability to exercise effective control ... The Arab is used to continual warfare of a guerilla type. He frequently commits acts of treachery and is generally ready to rob or blackmail a weaker neighbour." A complete lack of sanitation meant that the region was "a hotbed of ravaging diseases. Plague, smallpox, cholera, malaria, dysentery and typhus, if not actually endemic, are all prevalent." Things had clearly changed somewhat since the expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden, which, tradition has it, was located where the Tigris and the Euphrates met, to become the Shatt al Arab at Qurna.
Mesopotamia and neighbouring Persia were of little account to the British until the latter part of the nineteenth century.
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By the time war broke out in August 1914, events had taken an important turn for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, as the concessionaires now styled themselves: they were about to be bought out by the British government. [...] Strictly speaking it was of no real importance to the Ottoman Empire, whose energy needs were met from coalfields near the coast not far from Constantinople, and by oil from Baku, shipped across the Black Sea.
As soon as it became clear that the Ottoman army was being mobilised, in the first week of August, parties at the civil/military interface in London and in Delhi, the government of India having responsibility for the Persian Gulf region, had begun working up contingency plans in case the Turks should come out openly for Germany, and it had been decided as early as the third week of September to send land forces (from India) to the region in that event, to safeguard oil production.
- - -
Under the Turkish Primary Campaign Plan adopted in September, they were deactivated, their troops reassigned to other regions (the 35th and 36th Divisions to Syria, and the 37th to Armenia) and responsibility transferred to a newly created Iraq Area Command, which was to comprise a single newly constituted infantry division, the 38th, plus Frontier Guards and nine Jandarma (militarised police) battalions. On the outbreak of hostilities the 38th Division, which relied heavily on local recruitment, and was thus largely Arab in character, was still in the throes of formation, with just six (of nine) battalions in being. Discipline was poor, the men's loyalty to the Constantinople government questionable, and their equipment deficient.
- - -
On 13 November the 18th Brigade, together with the divisional staff, arrived in the Shatt al Arab and Barrett assumed command of the expeditionary force. Delamain's brigade fought an action at Saihan on the morning of 15 November, driving the Turks back towards Sahil with little effort. Two days later Delamain, now reinforced by Fry's brigade, attacked again, and this time the British inflicted a significant defeat on the Turks, killing or wounding 1,500 or more by the their estimate, before advancing on Basra.
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On 8 December the Tigris was crossed, and the following day the garrison at Qurna surrendered. Forty-two Turkish officers and around a thousand troops were taken prisoner, together with eight guns, but many more managed to escape. British troops of the 17th Infantry Brigade, brought up later to garrison the town, were not overly impressed, a disgusted Tommy opining that it would have required no angel with a flaming sword to have kept him out of the Garden of Eden.
- - -
Before the end of the month the Turks went onto the offensive, with sporadic artillery fire aimed at Qurna. The shelling continued for ten days, but then the focus shifted abruptly to Shaiba, and cavalry patrols reported the enemy in large numbers some six kilometres west of the camp, at a scrubby area referred to as Barjisiya Woods, on 10 April.
- - -
It was clear that the operation would have to be an amphibious one. The orders for the advance up the Tigris were issued on 11 May; boats were assembled, and as many as possible were provided with rudimentary armour consisting of iron plates (which proved to be an encumbrance; the shields would be dumped before the advance entered its second day), while barges and rafts were outfitted as floating gun and machine gun platforms and as water-borne ambulances and casualty clearing stations.
- - -
In the event, Townshend decided to push on past Ezra's Tomb. The armed tug Shaitan soon came up with a mahaila packed with Turkish troops who begged to be taken prisoner rather than left to the Arabs, and soon after with the half-submerged wreck of the Turkish steamer Bulbul. Sheltering in the lee were two lighters she had been towing, and they, too, were packed with Turkish troops. When Shaitan dropped anchor in the gathering darkness she had taken some two hundred prisoners, and captured three guns.
- - -
On entering the Akaika Channel, the flotilla was confronted by two Turkish gunboats - launches supplied by the British firm Thorneycroft, each armed with two one-pounder Maxim "pom-poms" - above the irrigation dam, but they were soon driven off by gunfire. Sappers and pioneers laid a sixty-pound explosive charge which, after three false starts, eventually breached the dam, but the torrent of water which issued proved beyond the meagre power of the stern-wheelers.
- - -
The men attempted to push out from the waterway but were soon stalled, the impasse continuing for twenty-four hours until a drive by the 76th Punjabis up the left bank, with the support of the guns of the Shushan, eventually subdued the resistance and they were able to cross the river in boats. It took a further eight hours for the navy to clear the mines from the channel, and it was late that evening before the transports could be brought up and the troops re-embarked.
- - -
The battle for Kut cost the Turks around four thousand men, of whom 1,153 were made prisoner, together with fourteen guns and a large quantity of stores. British losses were just ninety-four killed, but over 1,200 were hospitalised. This large number of wounded put a severe strain on the medical teams operating with the army, and even more on the scant resources allocated to evacuating the injured men to Basra and the single hospital ship available there.
Mais:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17584/17584-h/17584-h.htm
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeVykHGOiVhpnHsv64c9rFKG
- - -
The climate, too, is one of extremes. The hot weather, when daytime temperatures seldom fall below 37°C and frequently reach well over 50°C, lasts from May to October; in contrast, night-time temperatures during the cold season are often below freezing.
- - -
And as to the social climate in 1914, Brig.-Gen. FJ Moberly, the author of the British Official History of the Mesopotamia Campaign, wrote: "Tribal law and customs reign ... and the Turkish administration was wont deliberately to foster tribal jealousies from sheer inability to exercise effective control ... The Arab is used to continual warfare of a guerilla type. He frequently commits acts of treachery and is generally ready to rob or blackmail a weaker neighbour." A complete lack of sanitation meant that the region was "a hotbed of ravaging diseases. Plague, smallpox, cholera, malaria, dysentery and typhus, if not actually endemic, are all prevalent." Things had clearly changed somewhat since the expulsion of Adam from the Garden of Eden, which, tradition has it, was located where the Tigris and the Euphrates met, to become the Shatt al Arab at Qurna.
Mesopotamia and neighbouring Persia were of little account to the British until the latter part of the nineteenth century.
- - -
By the time war broke out in August 1914, events had taken an important turn for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, as the concessionaires now styled themselves: they were about to be bought out by the British government. [...] Strictly speaking it was of no real importance to the Ottoman Empire, whose energy needs were met from coalfields near the coast not far from Constantinople, and by oil from Baku, shipped across the Black Sea.
As soon as it became clear that the Ottoman army was being mobilised, in the first week of August, parties at the civil/military interface in London and in Delhi, the government of India having responsibility for the Persian Gulf region, had begun working up contingency plans in case the Turks should come out openly for Germany, and it had been decided as early as the third week of September to send land forces (from India) to the region in that event, to safeguard oil production.
- - -
Under the Turkish Primary Campaign Plan adopted in September, they were deactivated, their troops reassigned to other regions (the 35th and 36th Divisions to Syria, and the 37th to Armenia) and responsibility transferred to a newly created Iraq Area Command, which was to comprise a single newly constituted infantry division, the 38th, plus Frontier Guards and nine Jandarma (militarised police) battalions. On the outbreak of hostilities the 38th Division, which relied heavily on local recruitment, and was thus largely Arab in character, was still in the throes of formation, with just six (of nine) battalions in being. Discipline was poor, the men's loyalty to the Constantinople government questionable, and their equipment deficient.
- - -
On 13 November the 18th Brigade, together with the divisional staff, arrived in the Shatt al Arab and Barrett assumed command of the expeditionary force. Delamain's brigade fought an action at Saihan on the morning of 15 November, driving the Turks back towards Sahil with little effort. Two days later Delamain, now reinforced by Fry's brigade, attacked again, and this time the British inflicted a significant defeat on the Turks, killing or wounding 1,500 or more by the their estimate, before advancing on Basra.
- - -
On 8 December the Tigris was crossed, and the following day the garrison at Qurna surrendered. Forty-two Turkish officers and around a thousand troops were taken prisoner, together with eight guns, but many more managed to escape. British troops of the 17th Infantry Brigade, brought up later to garrison the town, were not overly impressed, a disgusted Tommy opining that it would have required no angel with a flaming sword to have kept him out of the Garden of Eden.
- - -
Before the end of the month the Turks went onto the offensive, with sporadic artillery fire aimed at Qurna. The shelling continued for ten days, but then the focus shifted abruptly to Shaiba, and cavalry patrols reported the enemy in large numbers some six kilometres west of the camp, at a scrubby area referred to as Barjisiya Woods, on 10 April.
- - -
It was clear that the operation would have to be an amphibious one. The orders for the advance up the Tigris were issued on 11 May; boats were assembled, and as many as possible were provided with rudimentary armour consisting of iron plates (which proved to be an encumbrance; the shields would be dumped before the advance entered its second day), while barges and rafts were outfitted as floating gun and machine gun platforms and as water-borne ambulances and casualty clearing stations.
- - -
In the event, Townshend decided to push on past Ezra's Tomb. The armed tug Shaitan soon came up with a mahaila packed with Turkish troops who begged to be taken prisoner rather than left to the Arabs, and soon after with the half-submerged wreck of the Turkish steamer Bulbul. Sheltering in the lee were two lighters she had been towing, and they, too, were packed with Turkish troops. When Shaitan dropped anchor in the gathering darkness she had taken some two hundred prisoners, and captured three guns.
- - -
On entering the Akaika Channel, the flotilla was confronted by two Turkish gunboats - launches supplied by the British firm Thorneycroft, each armed with two one-pounder Maxim "pom-poms" - above the irrigation dam, but they were soon driven off by gunfire. Sappers and pioneers laid a sixty-pound explosive charge which, after three false starts, eventually breached the dam, but the torrent of water which issued proved beyond the meagre power of the stern-wheelers.
- - -
The men attempted to push out from the waterway but were soon stalled, the impasse continuing for twenty-four hours until a drive by the 76th Punjabis up the left bank, with the support of the guns of the Shushan, eventually subdued the resistance and they were able to cross the river in boats. It took a further eight hours for the navy to clear the mines from the channel, and it was late that evening before the transports could be brought up and the troops re-embarked.
- - -
The battle for Kut cost the Turks around four thousand men, of whom 1,153 were made prisoner, together with fourteen guns and a large quantity of stores. British losses were just ninety-four killed, but over 1,200 were hospitalised. This large number of wounded put a severe strain on the medical teams operating with the army, and even more on the scant resources allocated to evacuating the injured men to Basra and the single hospital ship available there.
Mais:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17584/17584-h/17584-h.htm
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeVykHGOiVhpnHsv64c9rFKG
