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Throughout 1915 the British Indian Army had
been marching up the Tigris River triumphantly winning battle after battle as it closed in
on Baghdad, but no longer. This week finds that army in dire straits, under siege at
Kut with no relief in sight.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War
Last week we saw the remnants of the Serbian
army and even the civilian population fleeing to and through the Albanian mountains from
the German, Austro-Hungarian, and Bulgarian invaders. The refugees were in dire straits
and many froze and starved to death. Further north, the Italian front had gone quiet as
the fourth battle of the Isonzo River had ended, and indeed the arrival of winter had
shut down most of the action on all of the European fronts. Here’s what followed.
There were no offensives on the Western Front
since battles in Artois and Champagne had ended a month ago, and it seemed there would
be none until after the winter, though last December and January the First Champagne Offensive
raged on and on, so you never know, but there was still action.
This week the Germans concentrated reinforcements
and reserves in Flanders and Artois but didn’t take much ground. They even lost a bit of
it as flooding on the 7th in the Yser region forced them to abandon many of their advanced
trenches there. On the 8th, 6 British airplanes bombed a German storage depot in the Somme
region and the aerodrome at Hervilly. A British cargo boat ran aground off the Belgian coast
and three German hydroplanes tried to sink it, but they were driven off by Allied planes,
and deep snow in the Vosges prevented anything but artillery attacks over there.
But if the British weren’t especially active
on one front, on another one they certainly were.
On December 5th, British forces met the Bulgarians
for the first time as the Bulgarians attacked them in Macedonia at two points, Demir Kapu
gorge and on the Rabrovo-Doiran road. The first of those managed to gain the British
trenches, but the counter attack was successful and they drove back the Bulgarians. The second
Bulgarian attack, with far superior numbers of men to the British, took the first British
trench line, but couldn’t reach the second.
East of the Vardar River General Georgi Todorov continued to attack the British with around
100,000 men. On the 6th, under the cover of a dense mist they managed to get close unseen
and pounded the mostly Irish regiments with high explosive shells. The British were forced
back several kilometers.
Now, French General Maurice Sarrail, also on the Vardar with his forces, faked an attack
on Ishtip and then before the Bulgarians realized what he was doing had gotten away with all
of his stores and gone to Krivolak, blowing up bridges and tearing up railroad tracks
behind him. By the 5th he had reached the north end of Demir Kapu gorge, not too far
from the British positions, and there the French finally had to fight. The Bulgarian
attack was determined but the French held them off and managed an almost ridiculously
precarious retreat. The only way out was a single narrow railroad running on a narrow
shelf that was cut into the rock high above the Vardar River. But they made it with all
their supplies, and got to Gradetz where they dug in. The Bulgarians attacked them on the
8th and 9th, but were driven off, and on the 10th the French had made contact with the
British left flank.
But it wasn’t just in Macedonia that the
British were being forced back. It was also happening in Mesopotamia.
For nine days General Charles Townshend had
been leading his forces back down the Tigris River away from Ctesiphon. The British Indian
forces had won the battle there, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, for the casualties taken
had destroyed their own fighting capability. There were no reserves and they couldn’t
just hang around in the open desert, but the retreat to Kut was a nightmare. The transport
facilities were totally inadequate. I’m gonna read you a quote that’s not for the
squeamish, so some of you may want to fast forward. This is from Major Robert Carter
of the Indian Medical Service about the arrival of a hospital ship on the Tigris.
“I saw that she was absolutely packed... with men... when she was about 300 or 400
yards off it looked as if she was festooned with ropes. The stench when she was close
was quite definite, and I found that what I mistook for ropes were dried stalactites
of human feces. The patients were so huddled and crowded together on the ship that they
could not perform the offices of nature clear of the edge of the ship... we found a mass
of men huddled up... They were lying in a pool of dysentery about 30 feet square. They
were covered with dysentery and dejecta from head to foot. With regard to the first man
I examined, I put my hand into his trousers and I thought that he had a hemorrhage. His
trousers were full about to the waste with something warm and slimy. I took my hand out
and thought it was a blood clot. It was dysentery.”
Behind these wounded, Townshend and his forces made it to Kut on December 3rd where his superior,
General John Nixon, thought he should stand and fight. Could Townshend succeed as he had
at the siege of Chitral in 1895 or would Kut fall? Well, the Ottoman attacks throughout
the month were repulsed with heavy losses, so they left enough men to hold Kut under
siege and marched past Kut to take defensive positions down river at Sheikh Sa’ad.
Inside Kut were 14,500 British and Indian troops and their dependents and about 6,000
Arab civilians. All of these needed to be fed, and on December 7th, Townshend claimed
he had enough food to last for 60 days, and kept his men on full rations, while demanding
that Nixon send a relief force. That would take some time.
And here’s another note to round out the
week. On December 6th, Essad Pasha declares himself pro-allies. You may not remember him,
but he was Minister of War and Minister of the Interior in Albania briefly in 1914. He
revolted against the Prince and was exiled to Italy, but now he was back and had a tiny
kingdom he’d carved out of Albania where he welcomed Serbian refugees and expelled
all Austrians and Bulgarians.
And there you have the week; isolated events
in the west, the Eastern front at a standstill, but huge action in the Balkans as the French,
British, and Serbs fought the Bulgarians, while thousands of Serbian soldiers and civilians
were still fleeing into the frozen mountains of Albania to escape the invaders. In the
Middle East the British were bottled up at Kut, and at Gallipoli...
Right, Gallipoli. I haven’t mentioned Gallipoli
this week, but there was a development; a big one. On December 7, 1915 the politicians
finally made up their mind, the British would evacuate Gallipoli. Peter Hart wrote a great
book on Gallipoli, but here’s a quote from another book of his, “The Great War”,
that sums up his feelings about Gallipoli:
“Apologists for the Gallipoli campaign have long tried to boast of what could have been,
with a heavy emphasis on “if only”. This fails to recognize that the Allies fought
the campaign with levels of naval and military support that were considered acceptable until
the Turks defeated them. Time and time again Hamilton promised success, again and again
he failed. Gallipoli was one of a series of military Easterner adventures launched without
proper analysis of the global strategic situation, without consideration of the local tactical
situation, ignoring logistical realities, underestimating the strength of the opposition,
and predicated on a hugely optimistic assessment of the military capabilities of their own
troops. Not for nothing is hubris regarded as the “English disease”... vital resources
had been drawn away from where they really mattered... Gallipoli achieved nothing but
to provide the Turks with an opportunity to slaughter British and French troops in copious
numbers in a situation in which everything was in the defenders’ favor. Meanwhile,
back on the Western Front was the real enemy: the German Empire. Men, guns, and munitions
were in the process of being deployed to Gallipoli during the first British offensive at Neuve
Chapelle; they were still there when the Germans launched their deadly gas attack at Ypres
in April, during the debacles of Aubers Ridge and Festubert, and during the first great
push at the Battle of Loos in September... This was the real war- Gallipoli was nothing
but a foolish sideshow.”
Peter Hart’s book about Gallipoli was a tremendous help for my research and I highly
recommend it. If you want to get a copy of it, you may want to check our Amazon store
where we get a commission for each purchase you make. Find the link below this video.
Winston Churchill was the architect Gallipoli and of course an important man throughout
the war and the 20th century. If you want to find out more about his deeds in World
War 1, click right here for our biography episode.
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