1914-1945 campaigns in Iraq: Learning from the past

[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.