Indian cavalry on patrol, c.1918

1920’s Mesopotamia

While General Haldane’s attention was focused on the besieged garrison at Rumaytha, the insurgency continued to spread, gathering in more and more tribesmen, their sheikhs swept up in a great swell of religious fervour and primitive patriotism which gave them little room to manoeuvre, even when their sheikhly interests might have been better served by remaining obedient to the British. By mid-July 1920 around 35,000 Arab tribesmen were in arms and the number of British garrisons and outposts at risk of being cut off and destroyed was increasing.

In particular, fears grew for the safety of the British outpost at Kufa, where a small detachment of Indian troops from the 108th Infantry Regiment was keeping a wary eye on the rebellious city of Najaf seven and a half miles to the south-west. Kufa, a town of around 3,500 inhabitants, situated on the right bank of the channel of the same name, lay thirty-three miles south of the British base at Hilla. For twenty-one miles of that distance a narrow-gauge railway, built during the war, ran as far as Kifl, another small British outpost and railway terminus and the point where the Hindiyya branch of the great Euphrates divides, forming two further channels, the Kufa and the Shamiyya. As early as 11 July, the stationmaster at Kifl had reported that attacks on the railway station and telegraph lines were anticipated and the railway staff were authorised to withdraw north to Hilla. However, the following day, the PO for the Hilla Division, Major Pulley, considered it safe enough for the railway staff to return.

Meanwhile, Major P. Fitzgerald Norbury, the PO for the Shamiyya Division, accompanied by his youthful APO, Captain Mann, began a series of visits to the sheikhs of the Khaza’il, Bani Hasan and Shibl tribes, attempting to bribe them to abandon the al-Fatla, who were currently the most actively engaged insurgents. But this was to no avail and on 13 July the al-Fatla and their allies began to threaten Kufa.

The defenders of Kufa totalled 730 men, 486 of whom were Indian troops of the 108th Infantry plus their four British officers. The only other fighting men were a motley force of 115 Arab and Persian levies commanded by six British officers and three British NCOs. There were also 102 Indians and fourteen British employed by the Civil Administration. However, Norbury had selected a strong defensive position of stone buildings on the edge of the town and adjacent to the river and ensured that this strongpoint was well stocked with supplies and ammunition. Moreover the gunboat HMS Firefly had just arrived at Abu Sukhair, a few miles south of Kufa, having steamed down from the Upper Euphrates, and could easily return to Kufa in a few hours.

Signs of hostility began to show themselves on 14 July when insurgents opened fire on a British launch carrying supplies which would have certainly been captured without the intervention of Firefly, after which the gunboat was ordered upriver to Kufa. Then, on 20 July, the British base in the town came under sporadic rifle fire.

By the following day the British outpost was completely encircled and the attacks grew fiercer. Soon a number of buildings near to the British defensive perimeter were set on fire and Norbury and Mann repeatedly led fire-fighting parties to try to extinguish the flames. On 22 July, in the course of another of these sorties, Captain Mann was shot and killed by the Arab attackers. Wilson had lost yet another of his ‘young men’. Meanwhile, insurgent raiding parties began to threaten Kifl and on 23 July its railway station was overrun by a section of the Bani Hasan tribe, and the railway staff, who had been ordered back to their posts on 12 July, were captured and taken prisoner to Najaf.

As the military situation in the Shamiyya Division deteriorated, on Thursday 22 July Major General Leslie, still at Diwaniyya, was summoned to Baghdad for a conference with the GOC-in-chief and the following day was flown up to Baghdad for the meeting with Haldane. Afterwards he paid a visit to his own 17th Division HQ and it was there, later that Friday morning, that he received a telegram from Colonel R.C.W. Lukin, commanding officer at Hilla, who had replaced the ‘hysterical’ General Wauchope a few days earlier. With Kifl overrun by rebel tribesmen and the Hilla–Kifl railway cut in a number of places, Colonel Lukin informed Leslie that he was under intense pressure from the local PO, Major Pulley, to send out a detachment towards Kifl, in order to ‘show the flag’ in the hope that this would deter the ‘wavering’ northern sections of the Bani Hasan from joining the insurgency. The telegram requested authorisation to do so.

The only troops at Hilla available for this purpose were the 2nd Battalion of the Manchester Regiment (less one company), a field artillery battery, a field ambulance section, a company of Indian pioneers and two squadrons of Indian cavalry, in total around 800 men, all units from the 18th Division which had been sent to Hilla, on GHQ’s order, to form a column there for the purpose of retaking Kifl and relieving Kufa – but only when a sufficiently strong force had been assembled.

Colonel Lukin’s telegram informed Leslie that he intended to send a column made up of the units currently available down the road to Kifl to a point six miles south of Hilla called Imam Bakr, which had been reconnoitred and was reported as having a good supply of water for both animals and men. The objective was to ‘show the flag’ as requested by the PO. Lukin asked Leslie to approve this move and to authorise a continuation of the advance towards Kifl if circumstances allowed.

Leslie, who by now was fully aware of his commanding officer’s strictures about sending out under-strength columns at the behest of POs, decided to pass the request to the GOC-in-chief himself, so he telephoned GHQ and, in the presence of his own two staff officers, he read out Colonel Lukin’s telegram to Brigadier General Stewart, Haldane’s general staff officer who had taken the call. A few minutes later, Stewart replied, giving GHQ’s permission for the Manchester Regiment and other units to advance towards Kifl but, for the time being, to go no further than Imam Bakr, which was to be considered ‘an outpost of Hilla’. The commander of the column was also ordered to avoid becoming engaged with superior hostile forces. Leslie then transmitted these instructions to Lukin at Hilla, sending a copy of his telegram by special dispatch rider to GHQ, and later that day he boarded an aircraft at Baghdad to fly back to Diwaniyya.

Precisely why General Haldane authorised the Manchester Column’s movement to Imam Bakr is something of a mystery. It was completely inconsistent with his previously stated objections to making an ‘unready push’ and the manoeuvre had no clear objective. Certainly, there was no reason why GHQ should defer to the judgement of the PO who had been pressing for the column’s dispatch. One possible explanation is that Haldane was expecting the arrival at Hilla of some of the units from the Rumaytha relief column he was planning to withdraw north from Diwaniyya and which could then be sent on immediately to reinforce the Manchesters at Imam Bakr. It was this more substantial force which would then advance further towards Kifl and Kufa.

However, when the Manchester Column was sent out on the afternoon of 23 July, neither Colonel Lukin at Hilla nor the officer commanding the column, Colonel Hardcastle, had any idea that reinforcements were en route to them and might be arriving shortly, a communications failure that was to have tragic results.

To better understand the course of events which was now about to unfold, let us first examine the terrain through which the column was to move. Between Hilla and Kifl the landscape was almost entirely flat and featureless except for the ruined Babylonian tower of Birs Nimrud – locally reputed to be the Tower of Babel – which would have been just visible, situated on a mound, about ten miles south-west of the column’s point of departure. At that time of year the terrain itself was a mixture of grey-brown desert covered with scrubby ‘camel thorn’ bushes intersected by a number of half-empty canals which fed off the Hilla branch of the Euphrates. Where these irrigation canals watered the land, rice fields – some of them quite extensive – broke the monotonous vista. Two of these irrigation canals, the Amariyya and the Nahr Shah, ran roughly north–south, to the east of the road and the 2’6” railway line from Hilla, while two smaller canals, the Mashtadiyya and the Rustumiyya lay broadly east–west. Imam Bakr – the position six miles south of Hilla where Colonel Hardcastle had been ordered to halt, make camp and water the cavalry and transport teams from local wells – was a short distance north of the point where the road and railway line crossed the Mashtadiyya canal. As to the ‘road’ to Kifl along which the column would march – it was little more than an unmetalled track.

Let us try to picture the small British force on Friday 23 July 1920 as it begins its advance into enemy territory under the baking Mesopotamian sun. A few months earlier the newly planted rice fields and small plots of winter wheat ready for harvesting would have been bright green and dotted with spring flowers, but now all has turned to drab dusty yellow. There is nothing to raise the men’s spirits as they set off towards their equally cheerless destination.

‘B’ Company of the Manchesters, under the command of Captain G.M. Glover, are at the head of the column followed by ‘A’ Company. But after only a couple of miles these pale young men from Lancashire in their solar topees and baggy shorts are already in a sorry condition, sodden with a fine perspiration, like a downy mist, which seems to leak out of every pore, and desperately thirsty; but the British Army believes that troops should refrain from drinking water in the heat of the day while marching, so ‘water discipline’ is being rigidly enforced. Behind them march a company of sepoys – strong, lean men of the 1st Battalion the 32nd Sikh Pioneers, ready in an instant to drop their rifles and seize their entrenching tools; normally a six-mile march would be nothing to them but with the shade temperature touching 120°f, even these tough, experienced soldiers are beginning to suffer. The six horse-drawn 18-pounder guns of the 39th Royal Field Artillery battery are in the centre of the column together with 150 ‘Animal Transport’ (AT) carts each pulled by two mules, carrying ammunition and the impedimenta required for constructing a camp. As their Indian drivers whip them forward, the animals churn up the fine dust of the alluvial soil, choking the men of ‘D’ Company of the Manchesters who are marching behind them. And in the rear, and on either flank, are two squadrons of the 35th Scinde Horse, the pennants of their lances fluttering in the scorching breeze of the shamal as they scan the horizon for enemy tribesmen; but, as often as not, in the shimmering heat, what first appears to be a horseman is just a mirage – or nothing more than a six-foot high clump of wild liquorice or a strangely twisted grey-leaved native poplar tree.

Forty-four-year-old Colonel R.N. Hardcastle, in command of the column, marches with the infantry, alternately on horseback or on foot, resting his mount. The son of a ‘gentleman of independent means’ of Wakefield, Yorkshire, Colonel Hardcastle joined the army with the rank of second lieutenant in December 1897.9 By now he is a very experienced soldier. He fought in the Boer War of 1899–1901, serving with the Manchester Regiment’s 1st Battalion, and was awarded the DSO for bravery in September 1901. In 1914 his unit formed part of the British Expeditionary Force in France and between 18 and 20 October it saw very heavy fighting at Richebourg-l’Avoué, where Hardcastle, by now a captain, had to assume temporary command of the battalion after its lieutenant colonel was sent to hospital. In April 1915 he was promoted to major and the following year his unit was sent to Iraq, where it took part in the futile campaign to relieve General Townshend’s men besieged at Kut al-‘Amara and during which Major Hardcastle was wounded. By July 1918 Hardcastle, now with the rank of brevet lieutenant colonel, was commanding the 1st Battalion of the Manchesters in General Allenby’s successful campaign against the Turks in Palestine. It was with the same rank that Hardcastle was placed in command of the Manchester Regiment’s 2nd Battalion in November 1919.

Many of the column’s other officers are equally experienced and decorated. But brave and experienced as they may be, these officers are no less affected by the intense heat than their men and on arrival at Imam Bakr in the early evening all ranks are exhausted and some have already collapsed from dehydration and heatstroke.

At this point events begin to take an unfortunate turn. In spite of the enforcement of ‘water discipline’, the column has insufficient water supplies for an operation in such extremes of temperature.10 Colonel Hardcastle has been assured that there will be plentiful water supplies at Imam Bakr but when his cavalry patrols reach the nearby wells it is discovered that the water is so brackish that even the animals refuse to drink. However, the column is within a short distance of the Mashtadiyya canal so the men and animals trudge onwards to that location. But once again they are disappointed – the Hilla branch of the Euphrates, from which the matrix of irrigation channels is fed, is very low this year and there is no water entering the Mashtadiyya canal. So the weary and despondent British and Indian troops march back to Imam Bakr.

However, a junior PO accompanying the column who is familiar with this area, Lieutenant P.H.S. Tozer, is sent out scouting for alternative sources of water and soon returns informing Hardcastle that there are adequate supplies in another canal, the Nahr Shah, further to the south-east; there is also a good defensive position at which to make camp eight miles south of Imam Bakr, where the railway and Hilla–Kifl road cross another canal with water, the Rustumiyya. So Hardcastle now sends a message back to Hilla informing Colonel Lukin that he intends to continue his advance to the Rustumiyya, asking his senior officer to approve the movement.

On receiving this request, at 00.15 on 24 July, Colonel Lukin sends a telegram to Major General Leslie at Divisional HQ Diwaniyya informing him of the column’s plight and of his intention to allow the column to advance further southwards towards Kifl, principally to obtain water but also to continue to ‘show the flag’ in this unsettled area. Leslie is informed by Lukin that he has authorised the column to set off from Imam Bakr ‘in the morning’.

At this point Leslie is still hours away from his HQ, being flown back from his conference with Haldane in Baghdad. When he does eventually receive Lukin’s message at 10.40 a.m. on Saturday the 24th, he is puzzled by the expression ‘in the morning’ – does Lukin mean he is intending to order the advance to begin this morning (in which case he would have already departed) or the following morning – on the 25th? He therefore telegraphs back to Hilla asking for clarification, at the same time informing Lukin that substantial reinforcements will soon be on their way to him from the units which are expected to return to Hilla from the relief of Rumaytha.

Meanwhile, it has been confirmed that the Nahr Shah canal does indeed contain adequate water supplies and Hardcastle has sent part of the column there with the animals without further authorisation. The operation is successful but because of difficulties leading the horses and mules down the steep banks of the canal, they can only be watered in small batches.

Consequently the party does not return to the camp at Imam Bakr until 8.15 a.m. An hour later, Hardcastle has still not received a reply from Hilla to his telegram of 00.15 as to a further advance to the Rustumiyya canal, so because the temperature is already above 100°f, he decides to give the order to advance without waiting any longer. However, it is not until 4.00 that afternoon that Leslie receives a telegram from Lukin at Hilla informing him that the column has already set off ‘that morning, early’. The stage is now set for a tragic denouement.

By midday on Saturday 24 July, Colonel Hardcastle and his men eventually reached the Rustumiyya canal, by which time 60 per cent of the Manchester Regiment troops were so exhausted and affected by the heat as to require, in the opinion of the column’s medical officer, a complete rest for twenty-four hours. However, the column was now close to Kifl, whose single white minaret could clearly be seen from the canal bank, and, faced with the possibility of an attack by marauding bands of insurgents, Hardcastle decided that a protected camp would have to be constructed. So after only a few hours’ rest the men were set to work preparing a defensible position while two troops of the Scinde Horse were posted as standing patrols on the road and light railway line leading to Kifl.

General Aylmer Haldane, British Commander-in-Chief in Iraq, 1921

THE SCENE OF THE MANCHESTER COLUMN DISASTER JULY 1920: THE CAMP ON THE RUSTUMIYYA CANAL

The spot chosen for the camp was a naturally strong one. It was sited to the east of the road from Hilla to Kifl in the angle between the road and the canal.

 On three sides there were earthen banks a few feet above the level ground which served on the southern side to retain the ten-foot-wide canal while on the east was an irrigation cut of lesser width. The protection of the third side, which bordered the road, consisted of a dry ditch with a low bank on both sides of it. Beyond this side to the west and making an acute angle with the road, outside the perimeter selected for the camp, ran a line of mounds, possibly the remains of an ancient canal bank of which all other traces had disappeared. Since the highest of these was around ten feet above level ground, and the highest point in the vicinity, these positions were also occupied.

Only on the fourth side facing north-west were there no naturally defensible features and so at 5.30 p.m. those men who were still fit enough were ordered to commence digging trenches along this line. However, a few minutes later an orderly from the cavalry troop stationed on the railway line galloped into the camp with news that a large party of Arabs were tearing up the rails and destroying the culverts. This was followed by the arrival of a wounded cavalryman and then, shortly afterwards, by the remainder of the cavalry with worrying news: at least 10,000 insurgents were said to be advancing on the camp and were only about two miles away. Although this estimate of enemy combatants was later revised down to about 3,000, the British and Indian troops were clearly heavily outnumbered.

A short time later both sides opened fire, although there was some delay in getting the British artillery into action because the British gunners, who were also the column’s telephonists, were currently trying to get in touch with Hilla by attaching their instruments to the telegraph line. By 7.50 p.m. the fighting became more intense and the Arabs were seen to be working round the flanks of the encampment, some of them closing to only 150 yards from the camp perimeter. Colonel Hardcastle was aware that he had been ordered to avoid an engagement with superior forces but he was now in a quandary: his orders indicated that the column should probably withdraw to a position of greater safety, nearer to Hilla; but with nightfall approaching he also knew that conducting such a movement in good order would be extremely hazardous. What he did not know, however, was that within the next twenty-four hours reinforcements from the Rumaytha relief force would be available at Hilla ready to be sent on the short distance to support Hardcastle’s men. If the Manchester Column had dug in and taken advantage of their superior firepower they would probably have been able to hold their position until those reinforcements arrived.

In the event, Colonel Hardcastle’s judgement seems to have failed him. Instead of taking a firm decision as commanding officer, he called all the officers to a council, including the two POs accompanying the column, Lieutenant Tozer and his superior, APO Captain W.E. Hunt. These two urged an immediate withdrawal, claiming that, seeing such a force of British troops pinned down in this manner, all the local Arabs would rise up and even Hilla itself might be overwhelmed and captured. The outcome of the conference was that a decision was taken to abandon the camp and retire northwards towards Imam Bakr and Hilla. ‘B’ Company of the Manchester Regiment was to act as the advance guard split into two files either side of the AT wagons and artillery. They would be followed by ‘A’ and ‘D’ companies; the Sikh Pioneers and the two squadrons of the Scinde Horse would make up the rearguard.

At 8.40 p.m., in a darkness unrelieved by any moonlight, the Manchester Column begins to move off in the direction of Hilla along what is little more than a dirt track. For the first half mile of progress the column holds together well. Morale has now improved somewhat. British and Indian soldiers have enjoyed at least a few hours of rest and they are relieved to be returning to the modest comforts of Hilla after the privations of the march. And for the time being they are able to fend off sporadic attacks by mounted insurgents who are reluctant to come into close combat with their better-armed opponents.

Then, suddenly, there is a commotion among the AT wagons. Something has panicked the mules and horses, which begin to charge off in different directions. In the pitch darkness, the men of ‘A’ and ‘B’ companies of the Manchesters have no idea what is happening until careering transport wagons carve through their ranks. In the chaos, the inexperienced young infantrymen who cannot get out of the way are trampled, injured and killed while the rest are split up into isolated groups of men left stranded and in many cases separated from their officers and NCOs.

From now on any sense of there being an organised military formation has disintegrated. Loose horses, led by a white pony, continue to career up and down the road on which some of the Manchesters are endeavouring to make an orderly retreat. The combat degenerates into a scattering of individual fights between little groups of British and Indian troops and a swirling mass of Arab horsemen and foot soldiers. As they retreat, the gunners halt for a few minutes, firing their guns into the Arabs at almost point-blank range, and with drawn swords the sowars of the Scinde Horse make repeated charges into the enemy tribesmen to prevent them surrounding and capturing the guns and gunners. In the course of these charges, all six of the cavalry’s British officers have their horses shot from under them; two of their officers are badly wounded and the senior Indian officer, Risaldar Muhammad Azim, who has shown the greatest coolness and bravery throughout the fighting, is shot in the stomach and dies shortly afterwards. And as the struggle to extricate the guns dies down, two-thirds of the cavalry are now fighting on foot.

In another of these close-quarter combats the twenty-six-year-old Captain George Henderson, commanding ‘D’ Company of the Manchesters, orders his men to fix bayonets and leads a charge into the nearest mass of insurgents.16 For a while this body of rebels pulls back but within minutes they have recovered and threaten to surround Henderson’s men. Once again he leads a charge at bayonet point towards the Arabs but this time he is badly wounded. Nevertheless, after this show of resistance, the insurgents pull back, turning their attention to the substantial amount of equipment, rifles and ammunition in the AT wagons which the Manchester Column has had to abandon. At this point Henderson manages to extricate his men and escape up the road to Hilla. After a few hundred yards the men of ‘D’ Company halt at a defensible position. It is only now that the severity of Henderson’s wound becomes apparent. He asks a sergeant to lay him down on the canal embankment where they are sheltering. His last words, spoken to one of his NCOs are, ‘I’m done now, don’t let them beat you.’ Henderson was later awarded the Victoria Cross ‘for most conspicuous bravery and self-sacrifice’.

Meanwhile, Captain Glover and 128 men of ‘B’ Company of the Manchesters, originally at the head of the column, have become completely disorientated and have veered away from the Hilla ‘road’ to the left, on a track leading to Birs Nimrud. At some point along this track they are surrounded and attacked by a swarm of mounted insurgents. None of these men would ever be seen again. Glover and his men were later classed as ‘missing’, but according to a survivor from another unit, they were ‘slaughtered to a man’, a conclusion broadly confirmed by a subsequent court of inquiry.

By around 6.00 a.m. on 25 July, some men of ‘D’ Company of the Manchesters and other units had eventually managed to find their way back to Hilla. But what of the remainder of the column? The first Major General Leslie heard of the Manchester Column, since he had been informed of its advance to the Rustumiyya canal, was at 10.30 p.m. the previous day, when he received a telegram from Hilla saying that the column had been in action and was ‘withdrawing to Hilla under fire’. As he later described it to his wife, ‘I knew only too well what this meant with six guns and a lot of transport withdrawing at night and so few infantry to protect them.’

If Colonel Hardcastle had decided that the Manchester Column remain in its fortified camp it would probably have been able to defend its position until reinforcements arrived, especially since the Rustumiyya canal provided an adequate water supply. Indeed, while the column was beginning its ill-fated retreat to Hilla, Leslie was commandeering as many railway trucks as possible with which to transport the Royal Irish Rifles from Diwaniyya to Hilla from where they could be rushed to support the Manchester Column. Then, at 10.30 in the morning of 25 July, Leslie received the news he had been dreading: the Manchester Column had ‘suffered disaster’; only two guns had reached Hilla and the rest of the column was believed to be returning but ‘its whereabouts was unknown.’

Leslie had little choice but to continue with the entrainment of the Royal Irish Rifles in the hope that these reinforcements might yet do something to obviate the ‘disaster’. So at 11.30 a.m. the train carrying the Irish Rifles, accompanied by Leslie himself, left Diwaniyya station, arriving at Hilla at 6.00 that Sunday evening.

At Hilla Leslie found ‘everybody in a state of the utmost gloom’. And to his amazement, instead of retiring to Baghdad as Leslie had ordered, General Wauchope was still in situ, having decided, on his own account, to stay on to ‘advise’ his replacement Colonel Lukin. Not surprisingly, the scant information being received as regards the fate of the Manchester Column had more or less unhinged him. ‘General Wauchope is almost a gibbering lunatic,’ Leslie later informed his wife and immediately packed the unfortunate brigadier off to Baghdad.

Indeed, such was the ‘gloom’ at Hilla that Colonel Lukin – apparently aided and abetted by Wauchope – had begun to turn two large buildings in the town into a fortified position from which to make a ‘last stand’. Leslie at once put a stop to this and, going round the outskirts of the town, he selected the best spots for piquets, had them manned and put what Arab levies were available into the most easily defended ones. The remnants of the Manchester Column were placed on the least exposed side of the town and a general night-time curfew imposed on the town’s residents.

And as this most depressing Sunday wore on, an account – albeit a very provisional one – of what had happened to the Manchester Column began to emerge. Writing from Hilla in the evening, Leslie described how he intended to set up a court of inquiry into the affair but in the meantime his initial account of the debacle was as follows:

At 8.00 p.m. – i.e. after dark – the Officer Commanding took the fatal resolve to retire on Hilla. Some transport carts stampeded and panic set in. The Arabs closed right in on them and the withdrawal became very much disorganized. I understand that only one squadron of the 35th Horse and a portion of the Pioneers under their British officers continued to conduct an orderly rearguard action. I hear, but don’t yet believe, that the men of the Manchester Regiment never recovered the panic. The gunners behaved well, firing their guns at ranges of 80 yards or so. The Arabs got amongst some of the teams stabbing the horses with daggers. They had one gun out of six hopelessly over-turned in a large water channel and it had to be abandoned after the breech block and sights were removed. They also had to abandon some ammunition wagons. The cavalry lost very few men, the Pioneers had 24 missing and 6 wounded out of 141, but the Manchesters account for only about a dozen known killed or rather less wounded, but have nearly 200 missing! They also lost practically all their Lewis guns. It looks bad for them, but one must await the enquiry … A very bad show of which I do not see the end …

In fact, as we have seen, some of the Manchesters did put up a strong fight, but overall Leslie’s initial views as to the extent of the defeat were largely borne out by the final tally of casualties. The disastrous night action south of Hilla cost the British 178 killed or missing, 150 captured and 60 wounded – a loss of 388 from a total of around 800 men. In addition, considerable amounts of ammunition and an 18-pounder field gun were captured by the insurgents. The loss of the field gun was to have further unfortunate consequences.

It didn’t take long before news of the rout of the Manchester Column, and in particular the capture of so many British infantry by the rebels, spread throughout the country. Indeed, it reached the coffee houses and mosques of Baghdad almost as soon as it reached the British GHQ, via the occupiers’ own telegraph and telephone system. So panicked were the military authorities in Hilla that they failed to take the elementary precaution of transmitting news of the disaster in code. Since there were many sympathisers and supporters of the insurgency working in the British telegraph and telephone offices, tales of the British mishap – some of them wildly exaggerated – were already sweeping through the narrow streets of the old city by the Sunday afternoon.

Gertrude Bell apparently did not hear about the incident until she arrived at work the following morning. In a letter to her father dated 26 July she begins with some private family matters after which she describes how, ‘Things have moved a little since I wrote last week. We have relieved Rumaytha and at the same time our own minds, for the couple of hundred people who had been shut up there for 3 weeks were a great anxiety.’

But then, after discussing the political situation in Baghdad, the letter continues,

The above was written before breakfast. When I got to the office I found that the whole complexion on the Euphrates had changed. All the tribes are out … Whether we can hold Hillah or not I don’t know … But it’s a bad business. The military authorities seem to me all through to have been more inept than it’s possible to conceive. The crowning scandal was the despatch two days ago of a battalion of the Manchesters from Hillah to Kifl. They were ordered to leave at 4 am and left at 10, with one day’s rations and water bottles. You remember that hot and barren road? Think of marching down it in July at midday! 17 miles out of Hillah they were dropping about with heat stroke. The tribes attacked – not viciously, I gather, but it was more than enough for the Manchesters, for there wasn’t a kick left in them. The tribes carried off the artillery and ammunition they were convoying down to Kifl … I believe there are more troops coming from India but unless they send a new higher Command with them, I think they may easily send 20 divisions in vain.

Inept or not, on receiving news of the Manchester Column disaster, any reluctance that General Haldane felt with regard to requests for reinforcements evaporated entirely. However, so far, both Haldane and Wilson had contrived to confuse the War Office as to exactly what reinforcements were required. On 18 July, the day after Churchill announced to the cabinet that, in response to General Haldane’s request, an additional full division was being mobilised to reinforce the beleaguered garrison in Iraq, a bemused War Office received a telegram from GHQ Baghdad informing them that they should postpone the dispatch of any more units, except the one brigade which Haldane had originally requested on 8 July. Given that on 18 July the battle for Rumaytha was still in the balance, Haldane’s apparent willingness to postpone substantial reinforcements – in his own words ‘from motives of economy’ – must have seemed inopportune to say the least; and to complicate matters further, the following day, Wilson (as usual ignoring instructions to refrain from commenting on purely military matters) offered his opinion that there was no need for any additional units – what was needed was to bring all the existing units up to strength. While that observation may have had some merit, its impact at the War Office merely added to the general state of confusion. Five days later, any clarity about reinforcements for Iraq further dissolved when Haldane telegrammed the War Office asking that ‘divisional staff and ancillary services’ should be sent ‘at the earliest opportunity’ from which it was inferred that, after all, Haldane was still expecting ‘the remainder of the division at an early date’.

Meanwhile, on 21 July, the cabinet had been informed of the military action on the road to Rumaytha. ‘The fighting was severe’, it was recorded, ‘but our attack was successful and a counter-attack by the enemy after dark was beaten off.’ After which the cabinet, seemingly reassured that matters in Iraq were not quite so bad as they had expected, moved on to grapple with the host of other problems with which they had been struggling with since the end of the war – the ‘Bolshevik threat’, Poland, the Irish rebellion, Egypt, strikes etc. etc. And in spite of Churchill’s fierce admonition to the contrary, no decision was taken about the withdrawal of British troops from Persia to support the counter-insurgency campaign on the Euphrates. Then, on 26 July, in the aftermath of the Manchester Column disaster, Haldane requested not one, but two divisions of reinforcements.

Replying two days later, Churchill informed Haldane that ‘the provision of any such [second] division is extremely problematical and that as regards Ordnance and Royal Army Service Corps personnel we are at the end of our resources’, to which he added, more in hope than expectation, that Haldane should consult with the civil commissioner, and decide ‘a definite course of policy’ but one which would bear in mind the limitation of Britain’s military resources.

Whilst your difficulties in the situation are fully appreciated, we think that it should be possible for the civil and military authorities on the spot to arrive at an agreed appreciation of the political situation on which you can estimate your military requirements and formulate a definite military policy, including the number of days supply reserves considered essential.

What Churchill apparently did not understand was that ‘an agreed appreciation’ between Haldane and Wilson was simply not possible: these two men had fundamentally different objectives. As the insurgency gained momentum, Wilson’s main preoccupation was, more than ever before, the safety of his ‘young men’, scattered all over the country, facing a very real threat of capture or murder. To counter this threat Wilson believed that the army should be deployed so as to provide as much protection to his young POs as possible. Haldane, on the other hand, was increasingly worried by his lack of any reserve with which to counter a really serious threat – for example a coordinated attack on Baghdad itself. Indeed, in the telegram of 28 July, Churchill had explicitly ordered him to hold ‘some reserve in your own hand over and above the troops necessary to meet your visible military requirements at any one time’, until more troops arrived from India. The only way Haldane could do this was by withdrawing outlying units and concentrating his forces nearer to the capital while at the same time refraining from responding to each and every request for support from the Civil Administration. A fortnight after receiving Churchill’s response to his request for further reinforcements, Haldane therefore issued the following instructions to his officers.

Responsibility of Officers.

On two recent occasions on the advice or recommendation of a political officer, risks quite unwarrantable from a military point of view have been taken by officers in command of troops. Unfortunate results have followed …

Having described these ‘unfortunate results’ as involving both losses of men and equipment but also contributing to the spread of the insurrection, the GOC-in-chief,

impresses on all officers in command of troops the responsibility which they incur should they act in a manner not strictly in accordance with sound military principles, more especially in a country such as Mesopotamia where the climate is in itself our greatest enemy. Political like other information is often untrustworthy and must not be blindly accepted; and to keep his Division quiet at all costs is with the political officer a natural and paramount instinct.

General Haldane, however, was making it abundantly clear to his officers that no such ‘instincts’ should be countenanced.

The G.O.C.-in Chief does not wish in any way to cramp the initiative of officers but there is a wide distinction between initiative and rashness. The present situation is such that the least set-back must have harmful results and it is every officer’s duty to reflect before acting and realise how great a responsibility he accepts if he is not certain in his own mind that he can fully justify his action.

Haldane could not have made it clearer. Henceforth Wilson’s ‘young men’ were going to be left to fend for themselves until victory over the rebels was in sight. After such an injunction no officer who cared for his military career was going to send troops to the aid of POs unless explicitly ordered to do so by the GOC-in-chief himself. To Wilson, the order was little more than a death sentence for some of those under his command and for whom he had the deepest respect and affection.

And among those to whom General Haldane’s order was addressed there were some army officers who would have been equally unhappy with the wording of the order. It contained strong implications – indeed virtually accusations – that one or other senior officer had indeed, been taking ‘risks quite unwarrantable from a military point’ and behaving in a manner ‘not strictly in accordance with sound military principles’. Major General Leslie, for one, would have bitterly resented these words because from the testy encounters with his commanding officer which he had already experienced, he had a strong impression that Haldane was in some way pointing the finger of blame at him for the setbacks of the past few days. For his part, Leslie had taken to referring dismissively to his commander-in-chief as ‘the early-Victorian baronet’.

Meanwhile, official opinion fluctuated wildly as to the advisability of withdrawing from the Mosul vilayet in order to concentrate British forces in the vilayets of Baghdad and Basra and hopefully forestall any further catastrophes like the Manchester Column debacle. However, in a telegram of 24 July Sir Percy Cox, recently arrived in Britain to brief the cabinet, weighed in with his own views on the matter. ‘I can only contemplate with the greatest dismay the suggestion that we should withdraw from Mosul,’ he stated. Apart from the impact upon ‘our prestige throughout Mesopotamia’,

I regard the maintenance of our position in Mesopotamia as a factor of enormous importance to our general interests in the Middle East and India. From an economic point of view I think it is common knowledge that the possibilities of Mesopotamia in oil, cotton and wheat make it a great country of promise … Oil is of course, an uncertain quantity but the prospect is at any rate sufficient to attract to Mesopotamia the interest and capital of very large concerns.

And he continued by pointing out the key importance of holding on to Basra (control of which would be threatened by any withdrawal from more northern parts of Iraq).

We have previously considered the control of the port of Basra at the head of the Persian Gulf to be most important for the strength of our position in those waters. It is especially so now a days in view of our large vested interested in Abadan and in the oil of Arabistan; but its value would be entirely vitiated were Baghdad in the hands of a hostile Power.