"تاريخ الحرب الكبرى استنادًا إلى وثائق رسمية. الحملة في بلاد الرافدين ١٩١٤-١٩١٨. مجلد I" [ظ‎‎١‎٩‎٠] (٤٥٤/٣٨٥)

354 HISTORY OF THE WAR : MESOPOTAMIA
no assistance by the troops holding Quma on the opposite bank of the Tigris
beyond a little artillery support. As for the troops in Quma, the local
commander there never discovered till too late that the enemy were crossing
the Tigris, and had no one in observation to guard against his retreat being
cut off. The writer thinks that the 1,000 men in Quma might have broken
through the 1,400 enemy on the right bank of the Tigris on the evening of
the 8 th December. The Turkish Commander-in-Chief at Ezra’s Tomb and
the troops at Sakrikiya, far from making any counter-attack, fled and took
no advantage of General Fry’s dangerous position with part of his force
north of Quma, separated by the Tigris from the rest at Muzaira’a.
The writer considers that a counter-attack from Sakrikiya would at least
have enabled the Quma garrison to be relieved and would have allowed the
whole force to be withdrawn up the Tigris until reinforcements should enable
the Turks to place a superior force against the enemy.
As it was, the actual strength employed against General Fry in Muzaira’a
and Quraa on the 7th and 8 th December comprised about 1,200* effectives,
whilst the strength of the Turkish force withdrawing from Sakrikiya on the
10th December up the Tigris amounted to over 2,000 men, with 6 guns.
The Turkish War Office in December 1914 told their Mesopotamian
General Headquarters " to avoid dispersion and, until the arrival of sufficient
reserves warranted a counter-move, the enemy was to be afforded no oppor
tunity of gaining a decisive result.” But Mesopotamian Headquarters did
not listen.
After the capture of Quma, the same errors of dispersion were made
one detachment on the Euphrates, one on the Tigris and one in Arabistan.
The different commanders were incapable and there was no co-operation.
Each fraction was left to itself and felt too weak to do its allotted task.
Cut off from one another by great swamps, what could they do against the
Enghsh, who, using the Euphrates, Tigris and Karun rivers, could bring
a superior force to any one of the three sectors ?
The Turkish Commander-in-Chief was now Sulaiman Askari and for him
the writer has scarcely a good word to say. At the outbreak of war, Sulaiman
Askari had been in Constantinople and it was to him mainly that the Turkish
Army Headquarters turned for advice regarding Mesopotamia. When he
was made Commander-in-Chief in Mesopotamia, he was imbued with the
idea of hurling the English into the Persian Gulf and of invading India.
He actually refused the offer of reinforcement from Aleppo by a regular
division and suggested that it should be sent to Kermanshah ! The writer
is of the opinion that, mainly due to the influence of Sulaiman Askari, the
Turkish War Office in the early stages of the war was full of grandiose ideas
of sweeping the East with hordes of Arab and Tartar horsemen and armies
from Austria, etc. There was no question of capability of defence. Iraq
could certainly look after herself.
The writer describes how the Turkish right wing, under the personal com
mand of Sulaiman Askari, after long preparations, was defeated at Shaiba.
The idea was for the three Turkish wings to attack simultaneously—the
right wing to take Basra and all three to meet at Mohammerah.
The centre and left wings were too weak and badly commanded to produce
any effect. As for the right wing, by great expenditure some thousands of
Arabs had been induced to join, but these were a weakness rather than a
help. ^ The writer refers to the " accursed, mirage-ridden battle of Shaiba ”
as a contest between knowledge and ignorance. On the one side ignorance
and mediaeval manoeuvres, on the other the skill and experience of forty
years soldiering possessed by Fry, Melliss and Delamain. . . . Our troops
were not equal in numbers or quality to their task.”
Footnote by Historical Section, Committee of Imperial Defence
wr J^ er is almost certainly inaccurate in this figure, which seems to be much too low. On the
n 11 , ece , m ® er ’ j on left bank of the Tigris about Muzaira’a the Turks lost, in addition to
MJied and wounded, about 130 prisoners and 3 field guns. The British estimate of Turkish numbers
q )h n e e t ^ 2,000 (see Chapter VII., p. 148). The Quma garrison, which surrendered on the
9th December, totalled 1,034 officers and men, and 4 guns.