-Caveat Lector- Euphorian spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to http://www.guardian.co.uk The tragedy of Kut Military headstones have started arriving in Iraq from Britain. Not in preparation for an invasion but to commemorate allied soldiers who died in a previous attempt at 'regime change'. Ross Davies Tuesday November 19 2002 The Guardian The 500 military headstones that have just arrived in Baghdad from England already bear the names of soldiers killed in action in Iraq. But these troops died in an ill-fated, little-remembered attempt at "regime change" nearly a century ago. In the winter of 1915, towards the end of the first full year of the first world war, an Anglo-Indian force was sent to capture Baghdad. To the historian and veteran CRMF Cruttwell the attack was "a capital sin": the advance on Baghdad was "perhaps the most remarkable example of an enormous military risk being taken, after full deliberation, for no definite or concrete military purpose." Officials from the Commonwealth war graves commission have just arrived in Iraq to assess the damage done by 20 years of upheaval - and many more years of decay - to the 13 war cemeteries the commission tends there. The new headstones are the first phase of a major programme: a total of 51,830 British and Commonwealth servicemen died during the war in what was then Mesopotamia, and there are 22,400 graves (more than two-thirds of the troops who fought in Mesopotamia were Indians whose faith requires cremation rather than burial). Many of these deaths were the result of the decision to attack Baghdad, and in particular of what happened in a loop of the Tigris river at Kut-al-Amara. On November 22 1915, General Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend and his force of about 9,000 men of the 6th Indian division were advancing on Baghdad by boat along the Tigris, the land being roadless - an "arid billiard table". At Ctesiphon, about 20 miles short of the capital, the Indian and British troops came up against a larger, better armed and better supplied Turkish force which had had months to dig in on both sides of the river. Townshend's force drove out the defenders, but at the cost of 40% casualties. Unable to withstand a counter-attack, let alone continue the advance, Townshend retreated back down the Tigris, with 1,600 Turkish prisoners and more than 4,500 wounded from both sides. The long, slow journey was nightmarish for the wounded, for Townshend had been kept short of boats and medical supplies by a stingy government in India. An over-optimistic superior, Sir John Nixon, had ordained that the men would find all they needed - in Baghdad. Collecting other troops as he inched along, Townshend made his stand at Kut, a strategic river junction he had captured a month previously. It had been one of a number of cheap and brilliant victories by a clever and resourceful soldier who knew the value of morale, and until the end kept the respect of his men. He had argued all along against going on to Baghdad; he lacked sufficient men, food and artillery as well as river transport and medical back-up. But the general and his men were to be the victims of their own success. The invasion of Mesopotamia itself was about oil, but that required only a landing on the Gulf coast to secure the southern part of the country around Basra. This would keep the Turks away from the nearby Persian port of Abadan, terminus of the Anglo-Persian pipe-line which was the source of the Royal Navy's oil supply. Basra was taken and held with little cost at the end of 1914 by a small invasion force launched from India. By late 1915, however, the war cabinet needed a success story to round off a year of military disaster, most recently at Gallipoli, where the British were preparing to pull out, having failed to break out and take Constantinople. Why not push beyond Basra province and take Baghdad? The Gallipoli campaign ended on January 8 1916 with a re-embarkation of Dunkirk proportions. By then, Kut, a collection of flyblown hovels, with Townshend and his men inside, had been surrounded for more than a month: included in the 13,500 penned inside were some 3,500 Indian non-combatants and 2,000 sick and wounded. There were also 6,000 Arabs to be fed. They held out in freezing cold and then torrential rain against infantry assault, sniper fire, shelling, and bombing, until a relief force could get near enough for the defenders to risk breaking out. It never happened. Three attempts were made to relieve Kut. Each failed, at a total cost of 23,000 casualties. Food began to run out, and many of the Indian troops could or would not eat what meat there was. The defenders' draught animals, the oxen, were the first to go, followed by their horses, camels, and finally, starlings, cats, dogs and even hedgehogs. Kut was the first siege in which aircraft dropped supplies: these ranged from money to millstones to keep the garrison's flour mill going (and thus the Indians' supply of chapatis). But the Turks and their German officers were able to send up more and better aircraft, and too few friendly planes could get through to avert starvation. Repeated attempts to supply Kut by river were also repulsed. Desperate to keep his men alive, Townshend suggested - and the government endorsed - a ransom of £2m (about £67m today) for the defenders to go free. The Turks, elated by Gallipoli and able to switch troops from there to Kut, refused. Finally, on April 29, when vegetarian Indians were down to seven ounces of grain a day, Kut capitulated. Townshend was given permission to surrender, and obtained promises of humane treatment for his men from the Turks. It was then, after five months of siege, that the troubles of the defenders of Kut really began. The Turks had a different notion of what constitutes "humane treatment" and, as they treated their own soldiers with extreme brutality, saw no reason to pamper their captives. About 1,750 men had died from wounds or disease during the siege. Some 2,600 British and 9,300 Indian other ranks were rounded up and marched away. Two-thirds of the British and about a seventh of the Indians never saw their homes again. Relative to the numbers of men involved, the British losses at Kut dwarfs those of the far bigger battles on the Western Front. The historian and war poet Geoffrey Elton was a junior officer at Kut and saw the rank-and-file being marched away, officerless, "none of them fit to march five miles ... full of dysentery, beri-beri, scurvy, malaria and enteritis; they had no doctors, no medical stores and no transport; the hot weather, just beginning, would have meant much sickness and many deaths, even among troops who were fit, well-cared for and well supplied." Some were marched to captivity elsewhere in Mesopotamia, others all the way to Turkey. Elton spoke of the Arab guards stealing the mens' boots, helmets and water bottles, and of dead and dying stragglers left where they fell. Cruttwell said: "The men were herded like animals across the desert, flogged, kicked, raped, tortured, and murdered." The Turks abandoned Kut in February 1917, and Baghdad fell in March. That June a royal commission reported on who was to blame for ordering Townshend to advance so far forward. The answer was everybody but Townshend. His commanding officer, Sir John Nixon, was censured. So too was the viceroy of India, Lord Hardinge, the commander-in-chief in India, Sir Beauchamp Duff, the secretary of state for India, Austen Chamberlain, and the war cabinet in London, which had disregarded the advice of its own secretary of state for war, Earl Kitchener. As the horrors of the death marches and prison camps became known after the war, so the sufferings of the men were contrasted with more favourable treatment given to their officers - Townshend, in comfortable captivity near Constantinople, was knighted in 1917. From being the hero of his country's longest siege, "Townshend of Kut" became its villain. In the end, however, people forgot the deadbeats and chancers who paved the way to Kut. The CWGC now hopes to see that other names from Kut are remembered in its Iraqi war cemeteries. "We have always found the Iraqis willing to take us for what we are," says director-general Richard Kellaway, "a non-governmental organisation, whose duty is to commemorate, by name, the people who died in the two world wars." Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
