Learning from the past

[davidbfpo]

Last night I attended a lecture on the 1914-1918 campaign in Iraq, where the Ottoman Empire fought the British Empire, the later mainly using Indian troops. In the Q&A several questions on the current situation led one speaker, an archivist at the UK National Army Museum, to comment only a American army intelligence officer came to them and devoured lessons learnt material on the UCW aspects. He later cited Turkish soldiers dressing in ladies traditional clothing, knowing the Brits would decline to search them and the local / Arab oral history tradition that spread reports of Brits hanging locals near Basra. Something he suggested would still be in the Iraqi popular memory.

Turning to the Iraqi Revolt (which appeared on another thread months ago) that the British had several horrible experiences and often in places whose names we are now familiar with, e.g. Ramadi.

I noted the facts given that the British at the end had over 400K troops deployed, several independent cavalry brigades and four divisions. Plus 100K labourers. Teeth to tail ratio appears rather low.

The speakers have a book awaiting publication on the WW1 campaign: From Baghdad to Badsra by Alan Wakefield and Simon Moody.

davidbfpo

[Norfolk]

Lord Slim remarked rather ruefully that the official British Army History of the First World War devoted only a paragraph or two to the whole of the Mesopotamian Campaigns. All the more understandable on his part since he fought in it.

It is rather interesting that early on things went reasonably well even into the 1916 Campaign up the Tigris, until they got to Ctesiphon, then things of course went all wrong - like Kut and all that. Of course, then the Brits spent the second half of the war sorting themselves out and getting it right before they finally defeated the Turks decisively at Sharqat at the end of the War.