'HISTORY OF THE GREAT WAR BASED ON OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS. THE CAMPAIGN IN MESOPOTAMIA 1914-1918. VOLUME I.' [‎94r] (192/454)

DISPOSITIONS 165
attack and to have lost two to three hundred killed and many
wounded, including their commander Sulaiman Askari Bey,
who was taken back to Baghdad with severe injuries. Their
artillery fire had been better directed than at Sahil, but a
large proportion of their shell were blind or burst on graze ;
and consequently their effect had been slight. Our retirement
is said to have been regarded by the Arabs as a defeat, but
whether the Turks themselves so regarded it seems doubtful.
For the time being their progress was checked ; and, as it
turned out, our attack stopped any idea they may have held
of a further advance south in force before the rising of the
waters. Another result was to reduce the nightly sniping
and raiding by the neighbouring Arabs.
On the 19th, the War Office had telegraphed that, excluding
2,500 men, said to have reached Baghdad, the Xllth Turkish
Army Corps was reported to have been diverted to the Cau
casus, where the presence of the 37th Division was also reported.
Ihis news was to some extent confirmed by local intelligence
in Mesopotamia, which gave the Turkish force in Lower
Mesopotamia at twenty battalions of about six hundred men
each. Of these, six were said to consist of Turks who had come
with Sulaiman Askari, five belonged to the Xllth Army Corps
(35th Division), and nine were the remnants of the 38th Divi
sion, gendarmerie or units which had fought at Sahil and Qurna.
These units were in three separate bodies—one at Amara,
another about Ezra’s Tomb, and the third was intended to
cross the lower Euphrates and advance by land on Basra.
On the 22nd, General Barrett reported that there was no
urgent necessity for reinforcing him, as the enemy seemed
to be adopting a defensive rather than an offensive policy.
He himself could not advance and assume the offensive,
however, without reinforcements. On the 23rd, Lord Crewe
asked the Government of India if, in view of the Turkish
numbers and dispositions, they could reinforce Force “ D.”
They replied that they w r ere holding the 12th Infantry Brigade
ready to go if General Barrett required it, though its despatch
would weaken the North-West Frontier Region of British India bordering Afghanistan. . They might with
difficulty spare a cavalry regiment also ; but its necessity
would be less if a flight of aeroplanes, which General Barrett
had again asked for as an urgent requirement, could be spared.
They were sending two armoured motor cars and two light motor
lorries to test their utility on the desert to the west of Basra.
By the 26th, however, developments in the situation obliged
General Barrett to ask for reinforcements to protect Basra