The Kasaba of Kut-el-Amara, Mesopotamia, where a British Indian army was surrounded and besieged by Turkish forces from the end of 1915 until the British surrender on April 29, 1915. Photograph 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.
The Kasaba of Kut-el-Amara
"The Turkish triumph over British arms in Mesopotamia, culminating in the surrender of Gen. Townshend's besieged army at Kut-el-Amara in April, 1916, had stirred the British nation into taking steps to retrieve their disgrace. A large British Army, composed principally of Indian troops, and commanded by Lieut.-Gen. Frederick Stanley Maude, moved up the Tigris Valley in January, 1917, pushing the Turks before them. Advancing on Kut-el-Amara, the British found a strong Turkish force occupying both banks of the Tigris and the peninsula in the center created by a 'hairpin loop' of the river. The expulsion of the Turks from their entrenched and fortified position occupied the British a full month. On February 25th, after a terrific artillery battle, the Turks evacuated the stronghold, retreating in the direction of Bagdad, 110 miles away."
The British army that surrendered to the Turks at Kut-al-Amara on April 29, 1916 was the largest surrender by a British army since the Battle of Yorktown that ended the American Revolution. After advancing quickly, in a premature attempt to seize Baghdad, that army had fallen back to Kut, and was invested by a Turkish army that defeated all relief attempts. General Maude, commanding the British and Indian army in Mesopotamia, was more methodical in his advance on Baghdad.
King's Complete History of the World War by W.C. King, page 357, copyright © 1922, by W.C. King, publisher: The History Associates, publication date: 1922
1917-02-25, 1917, February, Kut, Kut-el-Amara, Kut-al-Amara
