Turkish machine-gun crews, from 'Four Years Beneath the Crescent' by Rafael De Nogales, Inspector-General of the Turkish Forces in Armenia and Military Governor of Egyptian Sinai during the World War.
Turkish machine-gunners in action
"The total strength of the [Turkish] Eighteenth Army Corps, inclusive of the 14th Division, was given as 6,200 rifles and eighty machine guns; there were twenty-two field guns, twelve mountain guns and twenty-one howitzers of various models with limited ammunition. Part of the artillery had been lost in the last heavy battles and in the retreat. The evacuation of Bagdad was now begun, and the lightly wounded from the last battles were removed to Samara.On March 5th the fighting was resumed. A hostile infantry division and a cavalry division advanced. The latter turned the Turkish left. During the night of the 6th of March the Eighteenth Army Corps was withdrawn to the Diala position."
After the loss of of British army at Kut-al-Amara on April 29, 1916 — an army that had over-extended its supply lines in a too-hasty advance on Baghdad — command of British forces in Mesopotamia was given to General Frederick Stanley Maude, who, in early 1917, more methodically worked his way up the Tigris River towards Baghdad. The ancient city fell the night of March 10–11.
Five Years in Turkey by Liman von Sanders, pp. 162–163, publisher: The Battery Press with War and Peace Books, publication date: 1928 (originally)
1917-03-05, 1917, March, Baghdad, Mesopotamia, Turkish machine gun crew
