The 6th (Poona) Division of the Indian Army, under Major-General Charles Townshend, had fallen back to the town of Kut after retreating from Ctesiphon.

General Townshend chose to stay and hold the position at Kut instead of continuing the march downriver towards Basra.

Contained within a long river loop, Kut offered a good defensive position although supply lines from distant Basra were stretched.

Once it became clear the Ottomans had enough forces to lay siege to Kut, Townshend ordered his cavalry to escape south, which it did, led by Lieut.

They were commanded by the respected but elderly German general and military historian Baron von der Goltz.

[9] The first relief expedition comprised some 19,000 men under Lieutenant-General Aylmer and it headed up the river from Ali Gharbi in January 1916.

The first attempt to relieve Kut (the Battle of Sheikh Sa'ad) came on 6 January by troops under the command of Major-General George Younghusband.

The ageing General Maurice insisted on being informed at every turn as the evidence came into the Committee of Imperial Defence; which was further complicated by a restructuring involving the setup of a new sub-committee system and transfer of military responsibilities.

Nixon's replacements with additional staff as a mandatory requirement moved forward from Ali Al Gharbi towards Sheikh Sa'ad along both banks of the Tigris.

Younghusband's column made contact with the Ottomans on the morning of 6 January 5.6 km (3+1⁄2 mi) east of Sheikh Sa'ad.

After heavy fighting all day, Kemball's troops had overrun Ottoman trenches on the right bank, taking prisoners and capturing two guns.

[11] The Ottomans retreated for about 16 km (10 mi) from Sheikh Sa'ad to a tributary of the Tigris on the left bank known by the Arabic toponym simply as the Wadi (meaning "the river valley").

The Ottomans then made their camp upstream of the Wadi at the Hanna defile, a narrow strip of dry land between the Tigris and the Suwaikiya Marshes.

Milk and sugar had given out long ago, likewise beef and mutton and all the bully was gone with the exception of two days' emergency rations which kept back until the very last".

[14] At the time, the Ottomans were seen unloading metal cylinders from a barge in the Tigris, which were assumed to contain chemical weapons from Germany.

In April, starvation within the British garrison at Kut forced Indian troops to abandon the vegetarian diet of their religion and eat horse meat.

Enver Pasha at first pretended to negotiate in good faith, then publicized and rejected the offer as a final humiliation to the British.

[26] The British historian Paul Knight wrote: "The treatment of the Kuttities was similar to those of the Allied prisoners of war taken by the Japanese, which is of course a far more familiar story to a modern audience.

Again, whether or not the death of thousands of Armenians was the result of a state policy, or whether it was the by-produce of negligence, neglect and official incompetence is a moot point.

Here were men who had suffered and fought the long months of the siege, although they were gradually starved and were not fit to do a day's march, yet they were being driven across the pitiless waste under a scorching sun, herded along by a brutal and callous escort of Arab conscripts.

[30] After reaching Mosul, the POWs entered into areas where the population was Kurdish while the desert terrain was replaced with the mountains of Anatolia.

[30] Long described the Kurds as being more kindly disposed to the POWs than the Arabs, which together the cool summer mountain air made conditions more bearable.

The author Norman Dixon, in his book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence, described Townshend as being "amused" by the plight of the men he had deserted, as if he had pulled off some clever trick.

Jan Morris, a British historian, described the loss of Kut as "the most abject capitulation in Britain's military history.

With Baghdad captured, the British administration undertook vital reconstruction of the war-torn country and Kut was slowly rebuilt.

[34] The Indians were led by Amba Prasad Sufi, who during the war was joined by Kedar Nath Sondhi, Rishikesh Letha, and Amin Chaudhry.