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.
