The spring floods had come to the world and as we see on several fronts, when the floodwaters
come you have but two choices: you adapt or you die.
I’m Indy Neidell; welcome to the Great War.
Last week the British relief force on the Tigris River pushed back the Ottomans but
was unable to break through and relieve the army under siege at Kut. The major Russian
Offensive around Lake Naroch finally ended with the Russians taking over 100,000 casualties
in total, five times more than the Germans. And on the Western Front at Verdun the week
was marked by a new German push that degenerated into a five day artillery war. Here’s what
came next.
In Mesopotamia it was the now familiar story of disappointment.
The floodwaters of the Tigris had hemmed in the advancing British relief forces to a narrow
strip of land where only frontal assaults were possible, and since they had failed on
the East bank of the river they now tried on the west on the 15th and 17th to break
through the Beit Aieesa trenches in front of the lines of Es Sinn, but all progress
made was soon negated by Ottoman counter-attacks. Then on the east bank at Sanna-i-yat the British
were forced back half a kilometer on the 19th. They tried one last time to break through
there on the 22nd, but it was really a lost cause and it looked like just another depressing
failure for the relief force. The Turks had fought them to a standstill and they had taken
in total 23.000 casualties (Hart), almost twice as many men as were under siege in Kut.
The following day the S.S. Julnar failed to break the river blockade and supply the besieged.
Julnar was a paddle steamer carrying 15 volunteers and 270 tons of food. Led by Lieutenant-Commander
Cowley and Lieutenant H.O.B. Firman, they were caught in the Turkish steel wire river
defenses and taken prisoner. Cowley was executed, Firman died in captivity.
In Kut itself, Charles Townshend’s soldiers had first been reduced to eating their horses
and eventually taking opium pills to stop the hunger pangs. The British had actually
begun dropping supplies into Kut by air, the first time aircraft had been used like that,
but the amounts that could be flown in by primitive machines were of no real practical
assistance to Townshend and his men and time was running out.
But if the Turks were successful there they were anything but that further west.
The Russian advance on the Caucasus Front continued as this week the Russians took the
major Turkish Black Sea port of Trabzon. Coming not too long after the fall of Erzurum this
was another big victory for the Russians. Russian General Nikolai Yudenich had split
his forces; so one group had just taken a major supplying point. The other group made
advances upon Bitlis, which was the gateway to Mesopotamia and central Anatolia. If the
Russians could take that, they could then possibly split the Ottoman Empire in half
and even link up with British forces coming from the Suez Canal and Egypt, trapping Ottoman
armies between them.
And Russia needed this victory. Over the past five weeks they had sent hundreds of thousands
of men into battle on the Eastern Front, taking many times the losses that the German and
Austrian enemy did. The reason for the haste was to try and gain new and better positions
before the spring thaws came, and guess what? They had come.
The roads in many places were now rivers of mud. Creeks and rivers were now torrents and
flooded their banks, making many roads impassable even to infantry, and large mass movement
was impossible, and you certainly couldn’t shift any artillery and heavy ammunition either.
There was still fighting the whole time, but it was primarily things like scouting detachments
fighting each other and almost all on a small scale.
By this week, the ice had all broken up in the north and the floods had at least stopped
rising and in places like the Pripet Marshes, both sides now made considerable activity
by boat. Here’s a description from a correspondent of the Russian Paper, Russkoye Slovo (story
of the great war), “The marshes have awakened from their winter sleep. Even on the paved
roads movement is all but impossible, to the right and left everything is submerged...
but however difficult the operation, the war must be continued and material obstacles
must be overcome... sentries and patrols move in boats, reconnoitering parties travel in
boats, fire on the enemy in boats and escape in boats... the great marshy basin is full
of new boats called “baidarka”... constructed to hold three or four men. The boats are flat
bottomed and steady. “
Men carried them on their shoulders and when they came to deep water just threw them down
and paddled to the other side. The water was everywhere and rivers now stretched out to
the horizon and men paddled and punted all over them in eerie silence.
In spite of this there were attempts at regular warfare. At the beginning of the week the
Russians tried several attacks on the Army Group Prince Leopold of Bavaria in the Servetsch
River region. These were unsuccessful as were scattered German attacks. On April 15th the
Germans attacked with artillery and poison gas but couldn’t get anywhere and for the
rest of the week it was mainly artillery versus artillery. However, at the end of the week
the German scouting parties across the river Shara, north of the Oginski Canal, were surrounded
and annihilated.
It seems weird to talk about such small numbers on the Eastern Front when for the past few
weeks we’ve been talking about offensives that involved half a million men, but at the
moment the big numbers were on the Western Front at the Battle of Verdun.
Now two months old, there was no end in sight, and this week was business as usual, with
the Germans bombarding Avocourt Wood and Cote 304 and the French advancing near Mort Homme,
but hey, since I just talked about the Russians I’ll mention them again here. During April,
the Russian 1st and 2nd brigades, 18,000 men strong, landed at Marseilles for service on
the Western Front, and they had gone the long way around- the trans-Siberian railway, then
Singapore, then across the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal and across the Mediterranean.
Also in France this week on the 20th, a special air squadron was formed, built around 180
American citizens who had volunteered to fight Germany. Called the Lafayette Escadrille it
would shoot down upwards of 200 German planes while losing only 51 of its volunteers.
Now I’ll turn my attention from the skies to the seas.
On April 20th the merchant steamer Aud attempted to land off the coast of Ireland. It was in
reality a disguised German ship. Since the beginning of the war, the Irish nationalist
Sir Roger Casement had been pressing the Germans to use the potential of an Irish rebellion
against Britain. Now, at his doing, the Aud travelled with 20,000 rifles, ten machine
guns, and a million rounds of ammo. It was intercepted by a Royal Navy sloop, and scuttled
itself rather than have the cargo captured. Casement himself went from Germany to Ireland
by sub and landed in an inflatable raft. Four days later he was caught and was eventually
executed for treason.
And here’s a random note and some numbers to end the week.
On April 19th German Field Marshal von der Goltz was assassinated by an Albanian officer
in Asia Minor, and now because you asked: In the fighting last year, 1915, more than
7,000 Indian soldiers had been killed on the Western Front, 1,700 at Gallipoli, and more
than 29,000 in Mesopotamia. According to Martin Gilbert, 850,000 Indian soldiers left India
during the war, and 49,000 were killed in action. India manufactured more than 555 million
bullets and over one million shells and 55,000 Indians served in the labor corps as bakers,
butchers, shoemakers, and so forth, often within range of enemy guns.
And the week comes to an end. British desperation in Mesopotamia, the Russians taking Trabzon,
and scattered action on both the eastern and western fronts.
And floods sabotaging the Eastern and Mesopotamia fronts. You couldn’t count on traditional
transport there, could you, or regular artillery? So what could you count on? There were two
things you could always count on, so I’m going to end with a poem, “the Kiss” by
Fjul, an ode to the bullet and the bayonet:
“To these I turn, in these I trust- Brother lead and Sister steel.
To this blind power I make appeal, I guard her beauty clean from rust.
He spins and burns and loves the air, And splits a skull to win my praise;
But up the nobly marching days She glitters naked, cold and fair.
Sweet Sister, grant your soldier this: That in good fury he may feel
The body where he sets his heel Quail from your downward darting kiss.”
Your two best friends.
Poems were not the only art form used to express what had happened during the war. If you are
interested in the art of World War 1, check out our special episode right here.
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