Page 187 - Life of Gertrude Bell

ORIENTAL SECRETARY 169
rang a bell everywhere in the world, was the prize to which they
turned their attention. Townshend was a keen student of military
history and he came to Mesopotamia in the footsteps of one of his
heroes, Bclisarius who delivered Rome from the Barbarians, and
Ctesiphon from the Persians in a.d. 541. ‘It was evident to me
that Sir John Nixon [Commandcr-in-Chief of Indian Expedition­
ary Force ‘D* in succession to General Sir Arthur Barrett] intended
to make a dash for Baghdad with my present inadequate force/
wrote Townshend. Intelligence at Cairo and London reported
meanwhile that Enver Pasha had reinforced the Turkish army
with units of the famous Constantinople Fire Brigade force and
that a new commander had arrived at Baghdad, Nureddin Pasha.
And so in November the army pushed on to Ctesiphon, virtually
to the gates of Baghdad. The Indian army could afford 9,000
troops for the exercise. The German High Command estimated
that 90,000 would have been needed to ensure success. Some
8,500 British and Indian soldiers, with bayonets fixed, drove a
superior enemy force before them and captured the ancient
fortress. ‘The Indian battalions were composed in great part of
raw recruits. I am not surprised that the press at home called them
the Invincibles\ wrote their commander in his diary. ‘I am perfeedy
convinced that no body of men ever had harder fighting, be it in
the Peninsular Wars, the Crimea or even ... France or Gallipoli/
Those men, the Dorsets, the Mahrattas and Punjabis, had fought
for a year in the swamps and marshes of southern Mesopotamia,
often at temperatures of 113 degrees in the shade. Horses had
died by the hundred from sheer physical exhaustion. Now came
the counter-attack. Another 4,500 men died on the long retreat
back to Kut-al-Amara where Townshend thought he would find
shelter. Instead, a brave, weary army found itself trapped. By the
time Gertrude arrived in India, the General and his men at Kut
had begun to face the longest, the most courageous and the most
humiliating siege in the history of the British army.

‘We reached Karachi on 6th [February 1916] and Pm cabling to
Domnul to let him know/ she told her father. She was asked to
talk to the officers of the Rifle Corps on Mesopotamia, and to the
troops ‘about anything*. ‘Poor dears, I shall love to do anything
to amuse them.* She went to see the new Delhi, revived as the
capital city of the Raj in India after George V’s Durbar of 1912,
touring the city with the Viceroy and the architect Lutyens. She