Enemy on the Euphrates (41 page)

For Major General G. A. J. Leslie, commander of the 17th Division and Haldane’s second in command, the 1st of July commenced much as any previous day in this tedious and uncomfortable posting. In the morning he played polo, after which he returned to his Baghdad office to deal with paperwork; then, after a light lunch, he removed most of his clothing and, for much of the afternoon, dozed under an electric fan until it was time to dress for dinner in the mess.
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The fifty-two-year-old Leslie was an Indian Army officer ‘born and bred’. Born in Cawnpore, Bengal in 1867, he had obtained his commission in the Royal Engineers in 1887, proceeded steadily up the ladder of command and served in Iraq during the Great War, where he had taken part in General Maude’s successful advance up the Tigris in 1916–17. He had recently been promoted from lieutenant colonel to major general.

During the last two weeks of June, Baghdad had been appallingly hot but relatively quiet and in his dual capacity as Chief Steward of the Races and president of the Sporting Club Committee, General Leslie had been able to pursue the project currently closest to his heart. On 15 June 1920 he wrote to his wife, Edith, about his recent success in persuading the Sporting Club to relinquish control over horse racing and agree to the formation of a separate Baghdad Racing Club. He had also managed to establish a new racecourse at Hinaydi, a few miles south of the city. And anticipating a reasonably swift return to normality, which would make their reunion possible, he also informed his wife that he had given ‘special orders that the floor of the boxes in front of yours are to be
lowered so that you will be able to see over the people in front’.
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But two days later, with telegrams flying in with ever more worrying news of events on the Middle and Lower Euphrates, General Leslie had to swiftly postpone these recreational plans, briefly informing his wife that the ‘political agents at Najaf and Diwaniyya’ had reported ‘serious unrest’.

To make matters worse Major General Leslie had a particularly awkward problem at Hilla in the shape of Brigadier General Arthur G. Wauchope, commander of the 34th Infantry Brigade, the unit nearest to the uprising. During the war, the forty-six-year-old Wauchope had served both on the Western Front and in Iraq, for which services he had been awarded the CMG, the CIE and the DSO; but he was now suffering severely from the heat, from the pain of a wound received in 1916 and from what looked increasingly like a nervous breakdown. ‘General Wauchope has been hysterical again’, Leslie informed his wife on 3 July, and ‘[has] begun to send the troops at Hilla about in all directions.’ Fortunately, Wauchope’s doctor had recently forbidden him from remaining in Iraq during the hottest period of the year and a War Office telegram had just arrived on Leslie’s desk appointing the unfortunate Brigadier General to the command of a battalion in England. ‘So I hope he will soon get away,’ Leslie told her.
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Meanwhile, the military situation at Rumaytha was deteriorating. By 6 July supplies of food, water and ammunition were running low. A sortie by Indian infantry into Rumaytha’s covered souk managed to seize a few days’ food and in response to a message sent by heliograph to Samawa, and from there by telegraph to Baghdad, two aircraft flew over the town and dropped three ammunition boxes. One of them fell into the river, one into a date-palm garden outside the serai while the third reached its intended destination but in doing so fatally injured an Indian corporal. Fortunately, through the bravery of a civilian railway official and a sepoy of the 99th Infantry, the other two boxes of ammunition were eventually recovered.

General Leslie had dispatched a train carrying ammunition, food and water for Rumaytha accompanied by a relief column under the command of Lieutenant Colonel D. A. D. McVean, hurriedly put
together from various units which had just arrived at Diwaniyya. It consisted of one infantry battalion, the 45th Sikhs, plus five platoons of the 99th Deccan supported by a squadron of the 37th (Indian) Cavalry, a pack artillery battery and thirty Kurdish levies. It was a singularly weak force to achieve its objective and its advance was proving painfully slow owing to the necessity of carrying out frequent repairs to the rail line and removing derailed rolling stock.

By the evening of 6 July the column had reached a point on the railway line six miles to the north of Rumaytha, where it camped for the night. Early the following morning the column began to advance again, but unbeknown to Colonel McVean his men were marching straight into a swarm of around 4,000 insurgents holding positions in a dried-up canal lying directly across the path of the advancing column.
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About three-quarters of the rebels were on foot and the remainder were horsemen. Over half carried firearms, of which nearly a third were modern rifles – mainly the ex-Turkish army model 1893 Mauser which was broadly equal in performance to the British Lee-Enfield. The remainder carried older weapons, primarily the single-shot Martini-Henry, a breech-loading rifle firing a black-powder cartridge. Introduced in 1870, it had once been the standard weapon of the British infantry but by 1904 had been replaced. However, although the Martini-Henry had a much slower rate of fire than the Lee-Enfield, its effective range – 600 yards – was comparable. Those insurgents who did not have firearms, including most of the horsemen, carried a variety of other weapons including lance, sword and dagger.

As the column came within range the insurgents opened fire. The Sikhs tried to break through the enemy line but were hurled back. Soon casualties were mounting and Colonel McVean realised that his position was precarious. Breaking through the rebel lines looked out of the question: he simply did not have enough men. Moreover, groups of insurgents were beginning to work their way around his flanks. McVean also knew that his line of communication back to Diwaniyya was only scantily defended. There was a very real chance of the column being completely surrounded and wiped out to a man. Indeed, if it had
not been for the timely arrival of a flight of No. 6 Squadron aircraft which joined in the battle, bombing and strafing the Arabs, this would almost certainly have been the outcome. According to Squadron Leader Gordon Pirie’s report on the action, ‘it is no exaggeration to say that the whole column would have been massacred had it not been for the efforts of those aeroplanes.’
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Colonel McVean therefore decided to break off the action and withdraw northwards, and in doing so he had a stroke of luck. At around 11.00 a.m. a savage dust storm suddenly blew up, concealing the column’s movements and enabling it to withdraw north for a good mile before the rebels realised what had happened. The Arabs hurried after them and desultory fighting went on until dark, at which point the insurgents gave up the pursuit and the British-led Indian troops formed a protected camp. On the following day the column continued its withdrawal, reaching the village of Imam Hamza, eighteen miles north of Rumaytha, and there it remained for the time being. It had escaped a potential military disaster but it had failed in its objective and, in proportion to the number of troops engaged, casualties had been heavy: One British officer killed and one wounded; forty-seven Indian other ranks killed and 166 wounded. Equally worrying was the fact that the insurgents had shown themselves capable of considerable tactical skill: in effect, they had pulled off a classic guerrilla-warfare manoeuvre – surround and isolate an enemy post and then ambush the troops sent to relieve it.

As soon as Leslie was informed of the failed relief attempt he began to assemble a larger relief column for a second try while putting together a plan to enable the Rumaytha garrison to hold out until this more powerful column could break through. On 13 July, as many aircraft as possible – at least six, he hoped – would carry out a bombing raid on the town and its outskirts, which would give the garrison an opportunity to make a coordinated breakout into the market area and seize as much food and supplies as possible. One of the aircraft – detailed to bomb the centre of the town – would be armed with 112lb bombs (hitherto only 25lb bombs had been used) and Leslie was of the opinion that ‘these big bombs should fairly put the wind up the Budoos.’
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The intended outcome of Leslie’s second relief column, which would follow the bombing raid, would be absolutely critical: if it failed it would almost certainly be necessary to abandon a large stretch of the Middle and Lower Euphrates; success, on the other hand, would give the British a breathing space in which to reinforce their troops in the region affected by the uprising. Consequently, Leslie chose a very experienced officer, Brigadier General F. E. Coningham, commander of the 51st Infantry Brigade, currently engaging Arab raiders on the Upper Euphrates, to command this second and crucial attempt to relieve Rumaytha.

However, messages received from the Rumaytha garrison via Samawa were giving every impression that the besieged soldiers and civilians were already losing their nerve. In a letter to his wife, Leslie complained that, in spite of being informed of his plan to bomb the insurgents, the garrison remained ‘despondent’. Indeed, it looked very much as though ‘their tails were down so much that they would not make an effort … and were determined to give-in if they were not relieved at once.’
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In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Leslie himself kept his spirits up in the time-honoured traditions of an Indian Army officer, informing his wife on 11 July that he had ‘got in four chukkas of polo the day before yesterday and a couple of sets of tennis yesterday’, although he did acknowledge that ‘things are moving too fast to allow of any recreation for certain.’
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Nor was Leslie the only senior British officer unwilling to let the crisis interfere too much with his social and recreational engagements. When Leslie ‘dashed in to GHQ’ on the evening of 12 July to get permission for his second Rumaytha relief attempt he found General Haldane playing bridge, during which the GOC-in-chief informed an astonished Leslie that he ‘would not risk a single man of his reserves’ to save Rumaytha and that it was ‘the garrison’s own fault for getting themselves besieged’.
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Somehow Leslie persuaded his commanding officer to agree to his proposal and it was decided that the second relief column should concentrate at Hilla and begin its advance on Rumaytha on 15 July, two days after the bombing raid. In the event, the first part of the plan was
successful; nine aircraft took part in the attack and the garrison’s sortie managed to seize rations and forage sufficient for it to last out until 23 July. However, Haldane continued to grumble about the dispatch of the second relief column and to Leslie’s evident exasperation, at 8.30 p.m. on the same day that the column had set off, he was summoned to GHQ, where Haldane told him that his agreement on the night of the 12th ‘was given against his better judgment’, and that henceforth he ‘refused to jeopardize his whole force in Mesopotamia by making an unready push’.
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Meanwhile, Haldane’s problems were multiplying. On 14 July it was reported that another garrison, at Samawa, was ‘getting itself besieged’, that the forty-five levies guarding the railway station at Ibn ‘Ali between Diwaniyya and Hilla had now deserted, taking their weapons with them, and that all the tribes of the rich rice-producing Shamiyya region on the Hindiyya branch of the Euphrates north of Hilla had joined the uprising.

South of Rumaytha, the situation was equally threatening. While Brigadier General Nepean, commander of the ‘River Area’, was trying – largely unsuccessfully – to get reinforcements through from Samawa to Rumaytha, downstream of Samawa insurgents had been ripping up railway lines and attacking trains trying to get through to Samawa from Basra. A train carrying a hundred sepoys of the 2nd Battalion 125th Rifles had reached Samawa on 3 July but an armoured train which was following was derailed twelve miles south of the town. Four days later patrols found the train and with it the bodies of twelve sepoys and the engine driver. It was becoming clear that the rebels understood very well the extent to which the British relied on their railway system. Indeed, by 8 July they had captured or derailed six trains on the stretch of track between Diwaniyya and Samawa, in effect cutting the lines of communication between Basra and Baghdad.
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However, the garrison at Samawa was better placed to withstand a siege than Rumaytha. Although the town itself had, by now, gone over to the rebels, the British had four closely linked strongpoints outside the town. The 400-strong garrison was commanded by a capable and experienced
officer, Major A.S. Hay of the 31st Lancers, and controlled enough ground for aircraft to land and take off; so, as yet, supplying the defending troops with food and ammunition was not a particular problem. There was also a large stock of bombs at Samawa, so aircraft which flew in with supplies could fly out again with payloads to attack nearby enemy encampments. In addition a gunboat, HMS
Greenfly
, was steaming up to Samawa from Nasiriyya. Consequently, Haldane considered that he could leave Samawa to fend for itself for the time being.

On the other hand, the rising in Shamiyya Division was a much more serious affair, as Haldane’s own dispatches to the War Office reveal. Until 8 July Rumaytha dominates the telegraph lines and there is no mention of the Shamiyya. However, on the following day, Haldane informs the War Office that the ‘political situation on Shamiyya Division is delicate’.
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Three days later, the telegram to the War Office notes that the Shamiyya situation continues to be ‘unchanged’ and a message dispatched at 1400 hours on 14 July also describes the Shamiyya as ‘unchanged’.
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Then, at midday on the 15th, a four-line telegram simply – but ominously – requests ‘that the troops mentioned in … telegram of 8 July be sent to Basra as soon as possible’, continuing, ‘I shall probably be compelled, owing to spread of the present risings which are assuming a general form, to ask for the remainder of a full division.’