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That day was the ninety-first day of the memorable siege of Kut-el-Amara. On it the English relief force under General Aylmer had reached the second Turkish line at Es-Sinn, only eight miles from Kut-el-Amara. After an all night march the English forces, approaching in three columns against the Dujailar Redoubt, attacked immediately after daybreak.
Denis-Westrem in Belgium, was attacked on September 22, 1916, by British machines who claimed to have killed forty Germans and to have burned two sheds and three aeroplanes. On October 1, 1916, bombs were dropped by British aeroplanes on the Turkish camp at Kut-el-Amara.
An enemy report was published to the effect that the Turks had captured one of our armored trains. It will not be giving away a military secret when I say that no railway of any sort exists south of Bagdad." How closely General Townshend was pressed by the enemy in his retreat to Kut-el-Amara is evident from an officer's letter: "We found the Turks in camps sitting all around us.
On March 11, 1916, English outposts had advanced again about seven miles toward Kut-el-Amara to the neighborhood of Abn Roman, among the sand hills on the right bank of the Tigris. There they surprised at dawn a small Turkish force and made some fifty prisoners, including two officers.
It was stated that fully 95 per cent of the men were in such a state of exhaustion as to be quite unfit for active service. If the Turkish commander in chief had known of this, the reenforcements he had dispatched from his base at Kut-el-Amara might easily have compelled the British force to retire.
During the period in which Kut-el-Amara was besieged by the Turks, the British troops had suffered much. The enemy bombarded the town almost every day, but did little damage. The real foe was starvation. At first the British were confident that a relief expedition would soon reach them, and they amused themselves by cricket and hockey and fishing in the river.
However, it is located on the left bank of the Tigris, the same as Kut-el-Amara, and the success of taking this position, small as it was, promised therefore, once more an early relief of General Townshend. This successful attack against Umm-el-Hannah on April 5, 1916, was carried out by the Thirteenth Division, which had previously fought at the Dardanelles.
Before an advance could be made on Bagdad it was necessary for the British to defeat a large Turkish force at Nasiriyeh and at Kut-el-Amara, where the British captured fourteen guns and about 1,000 prisoners, losing in killed and wounded 500 officers and men. The Turkish trenches were destroyed and within a small area about 900 Turkish dead were counted.
The journey from Amara to Kut sounds a mere link across the river, as the full name of Kut is Kut-el-Amara, and most people naturally suppose Amara is part of Kut. This is another Amara, however. The Amara from which we embark for Kut, a day's journey in a fast boat, is a large camp, and quite a town for Mesopotamia, captured from the Turks, early in the war, by sheer bluff.
In spite of the fact that they could see the flash of the guns of their besieged compatriots who were attacking the rear of the Turkish line from Kut, they were forced to give up their attempt to raise the siege. During the night of March 8, 1916, they returned to the main camp, which was located about twenty-three miles from Kut-el-Amara.
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