"تاريخ الحرب الكبرى استنادًا إلى وثائق رسمية. الحملة في بلاد الرافدين ١٩١٤-١٩١٨. مجلد I" [ظ‎‎١‎٦‎٩] (٤٥٤/٣٤٣)

312 HISTORY OF THE WAR : MESOPOTAMIA
them otherwise in every way, that they could be towed across
the lake by the light-draught stern-wheelers.
General Townshend reached Basra from India on the 21st
August. He had spent some weeks at Simla, having stayed
for part of the time with the Viceroy, and he had seen the
Gommander-in-Chief, who struck him as very much overworked
and tired.* In his book General Townshend says that he had
gathered in India that an advance on Baghdad was intended.
This is not confirmed from other sources, though the question
was undoubtedly under discussion, and it is not clear from
his book on what grounds he based this opinion, for he
goes on to say that he could not get anything out of the
Viceroy as regards our policy in Mesopotamia ; that a very
important Foreign Department official informed him that
he did not think there was any idea at the moment of an
advance on Baghdad, and that the Foreign Department would
strongly deprecate such a move unless made with adequate
forces; and that the Commander-in-Chief, while assuring him
that he should not go beyond Kut unless reinforced sufficiently,
at the same time told him that he had no troops to spare for
the purpose. In any case General Townshend himself, in a
letter to General Wolf e-Murray (then Chief of the Imperial
General Staff at the War Office), expressed the opinion that we
ought to hold what we had got in Mesopotamia and not advance
any more.
On the 22nd August General Nixon received from India a
repetition of a telegram from the Secretary of State of the 20th,
accepting the military arrangements proposed, and during the
next two days he talked over the advance to Kut with General
Townshend. On the 23rd General Townshend received his
instructions, which opened, “ Your mission is the destruction and
dispersal of the enemy, who, according to the intelligence
already furnished you, are prepared to dispute your advance;
and the occupation of Kut al Amara, thereby consolidating
our control of the Basra vilayet ” : the instructions then dealt
with the troops allotted for the operations and other necessary
details, f
Before leaving Basra for Amara on the 25th, General
Townshend says in his book that he told Sir John Nixon that
if he routed and stampeded the Turks in the coming battle he
That Sir Beauchamp Duff was in bad health at this time is confirmed
irom other sources.
t They were somewhat modified before the battle, and are consequently
not given here m full.