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Page 46
The English, of course, were not satisfied to leave the situation in
such a condition, and at once began their plans for a new attempt to
capture Bagdad. The summer campaign, however, was uneventful, though on
May 18th a band of Cossacks from the Russian armies in Persia joined the
British camp. A few days afterwards the British army went up the Tigris
and captured the Dujailah redoubt, where they had been so badly defeated
on the 8th of March. They then approached close to Kut, but the weather
was unsuitable, and there was now no object in capturing the city.
In August Sir Percy Lake was succeeded by Lieutenant-General Sir
Frederick Stanley Maude, who carefully and thoroughly proceeded to
prepare for an expedition which should capture Bagdad. A dispatch from
General Maude dated July 10, 1917, gives a full account of this
expedition. It was thoroughly successful. This time with a sufficient
army and a thorough equipment the British found no difficulties, and on
February 26th they captured Kut-el-Amara, not after a hard-fought
battle, but as the result of a successful series of small engagements.
The Turks kept up a steady resistance, but the British blood was up.
They were remembering General Townshend's surrender, and the Turks were
driven before them in great confusion.
The capture of Kut, however, was not an object in itself, and the
British pushed steadily on up the Tigris. The Turks occasionally made a
stand, but without effect. On the 28th of February the English had
arrived at Azizie, half way to Bagdad, where a halt was made. On the 5th
of March the advance was renewed. The Ctesiphon position, which had
defied General Townshend, was found to be strongly intrenched, but
empty. On March 7th the enemy made a stand on the River Diala, which
enters the Tigris eight miles below Bagdad. Some lively fighting
followed, the enemy resisting four attempts to cross the Diala. However,
on March 10th the British forces crossed, and were now close to Bagdad.
The enemy suddenly retired and the British troops found that their main
opponent was a dust storm. The enemy retired beyond Bagdad, and on March
11th the city was occupied by the English.
The fall of Bagdad was an important event. It cheered the Allies, and
proved, especially to the Oriental world, the power of the British army.
Those who originally planned its capture had been right, but those who
were to carry out the plan had not done their duty. Under General Maude
it was a comparatively simple operation, though full of admirable
details, and it produced all the good effects expected. The British, of
course, did not stop at Bagdad. The city itself is not of strategic
importance. The surrounding towns were occupied and an endeavor was made
to conciliate the inhabitants. The real object of the expedition was
attained.
[Illustration: BAGDAD THE MAGNIFICENT FALLS TO THE BRITISH
Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, Commander-in-Chief of
the British Mesopotamian Army, making his triumphal entry into the
ancient city at the head of his victorious army on March 11, 1917.]
CHAPTER VIII
IMMORTAL VERDUN
France was revealed to herself, to Germany and to the world as the
heroic defender of civilization, as a defender defying death in the
victory of Verdun. There, with the gateway to Paris lying open at its
back, the French army, in the longest pitched battle in all history,
held like a cold blue rock against the uttermost man power and resources
of the German army.
General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff and military
dictator of the Teutonic allies, there met disaster and disgrace. There
the mettle of the Crown Prince was tested and he was found to be merely
a thing of straw, a weak creature whose mind was under the domination of
von Falkenhayn.
For the tremendous offensive which was planned to end the war by one
terrific thrust, von Falkenhayn had robbed all the other fronts of
effective men and munitions. Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his crafty
Chief of Staff, General Ludendorff, had planned a campaign against
Russia designed to put that tottering military Colossus out of the war.
The plans were upon a scale that might well have proved successful. The
Kaiser, influenced by the Crown Prince and by von Falkenhayn, decreed
that the Russian campaign must be postponed and that von Hindenburg must
send his crack troops to join the army of the Crown Prince fronting
Verdun. Ludendorff promptly resigned as Chief of Staff to von Hindenburg
and suggested that the Field Marshal also resign. That grim old warrior
declined to take this action, preferring to remain idle in East Prussia
and watch what he predicted would be a useless effort on the western
front. His warning to the General Staff was explicit, but von Falkenhayn
coolly ignored the message.
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