Review Nikolas Gardner, The Siege of Kut-al-Amara, At War In Mesopotamia 1915-1916, Indiana University of Press, 2014

  

The British defeat at Kut during the Mesopotamia campaign was England’s second worse during World War I. Around 12,000 troops were taken prisoner almost half of which died in captivity. Nikolas Gardner in The Siege of Kut-al-Amara, At War In Mesopotamia 1915-1916 attempts to challenge the conventional wisdom about Kut. He makes a convincing argument that the commander General Sir Charles Townshend was responsible for the surrender.

 

Gardner begins by going over the literature about Kut. He breaks that into three periods. Right after World War I studies used the 1917 Mesopotamia Commission which looked at the high command in Mesopotamia, India and London and the lack of resources given to the campaign. In the 1960s the second group of authors relied upon personal accounts from British officers. They praised the field commanders like General Townshend and blamed the senior leaders similar to the Mesopotamia Commission for ordering an attack upon a larger Ottoman force making the defeat pre-ordained. The latest releases look at some of the strategic decisions such as the British trying to establish prestige amongst Muslims, the constant drive for victories in Mesopotamia, or the lack of intelligence about the Ottomans. They tend to agree with the second wave of writers who believed that Kut was doomed.

 

The book challenges all of those. Gardner studied two issues. First the decisions of General Townshend and second the state of his Indian troops which made up the majority of his command. He believes that Townshend’s decisions during the campaign were shaped by his views of his Indian soldiers. He questioned their morale from the start which only increased after they were surrounded at Kut. That led him to ask for immediate help when the British relief forces were not ready and to not help with an attack which could have broken the siege. Gardner thus blames the field commander Townshend and does not believe that Kut was inevitable as the previous writers do.

 

The Sige of Kut-al-Amara is a very quick read. It is able to give a blow by blow of the fighting from when General Townshend moved north in his attempt to take Baghdad in 1915 to his surrender at Kut in 1916 without getting bogged down in the details. Kut was one of the biggest disasters of World War I and yet it is hardly discussed since almost everything focuses upon the fighting in Europe. Gardner adds some new ideas about the Mesopotamia campaign which show the strategic and tactical mistakes that were made.

 

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