British and Indian machine-gunners, Mesopotamia, 1917. NAM 1983-03-41-2-23
Shumran Bend
VC group awarded to Major George Wheeler, 2nd Battalion, 9th Gurkha Rifles.
NAM 1958-02-1
On 23 February 1917, Maude’s force attacked across the River Tigris at Shumran Bend, just north of Kut-al-Amara. The attack was led by a small force of the 2nd Norfolks, 2/9th Gurkhas, 1/2nd Ghurkas and 1/4th Hampshires in boats.
They established precarious bridgeheads across the river as the Turks fought back ferociously.
For Valour
Indian Army troops carrying supplies through their trenches, Mesopotamia, 1917.
NAM 1965-10-221-69
During the fighting, Major George Wheeler of the 2/9th Gurkhas won the Victoria Cross. An eyewitness later wrote: 'One could read the story afterwards in the mud. Wherever a keel had scored the Turkish shore, there were Gurkha dead, and dead British rowers who had been lifted from the boats. Many of the pontoons still lay stranded in the mud.
One had a hole in its side, a direct hit by a shell and nine dead in it; and dead Gurkhas lay tumbled about the parapet; some had pitched over it and lay sprawling with the impetus of the fall. Beyond were dead Turks, who had counter-attacked from inland.
Turkish prisoners of war march through the Baghdad streets, cMarch 1917.
NAM 1983-12-70-110
Major Wheeler, hit in the forehead by a bayonet thrown at him, with one other officer, and three men scattered a bombing party of four of them who threatened to overwhelm the small landing party and seize the bund'.
Fall of Baghdad
The defeat of the Turks at Shumran and the recapture of Kut-al-Amara opened the way to Baghdad. On the morning of 11 March 1917, a patrol of the Black Watch entered the city, followed by men of the 35th Brigade. Maude issued a proclamation a week after his troops took Baghdad, part of which could be seen as a sobering precursor to 2003’s Operation Iraqi Freedom:
'Our military operations have as their object the defeat of the enemy, and the driving of him from these territories. In order to complete this task, I am charged with absolute and supreme control of all regions in which British troops operate; but our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators'.
British troops crossing the North Bridge, Baghdad, 1917. NAM 1965-10-209-44
The war in Mesopotamia was still far from over, but the resistance of the Turks was broken. Maude himself did not see final victory. Exhausted from overwork, he contracted cholera and died on 18 November 1917.
Iraq Mandate
An Indian Army sentry stands guards at one of the gateways to Baghdad, c1917.
NAM 1965-10-209-43
After signing an Armistice with the Turks on 8 November 1918, British troops remained in the region and the new state of Iraq became a British mandate. Between 1920 and 1922, the British Army suppressed a major revolt in the country. Iraq became independent in 1932, but British troops occupied the country in 1941 in order to safeguard oil supplies during World War Two (1939-45).
Echoes from the past
In 1918, as the Mesopotamia campaign drew to an end, British soldiers observed problems familiar today. Sergeant Arthur Campbell wrote that the Baghdad population 'could not agree among themselves as to who should be at their head under the Government as the Sunnis insisted on a Sunni Prince…whereas the Shiites demanded that the Ulema of Najaf should be head of the people. Then there was the non-Muslim population to consider'.
Now, as then, the British Army finds itself operating in a country divided on religious grounds, combating insurgents and witnessing extremes of sectarian violence.
An officer of the Black Watch approaches the scene of a vehicle bomb, October 2004.
NAM 2005-01-67-36 Crown Copyright
