In 1919, Major E. W. C. Sandes published his account of war as an officer with the Sixth Indian Division of the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force. In Kut and Captivity with the Sixth Indian Division includes field sketches of the early battles of 1914 in southern Iraq—victories for the British/Indian forces—to the November 1915 battle at Ctesiphon, site of an ancient Mesopotamian city marked by the massive, ruined arch of the same name. Because of heavy losses at Ctesiphon, where some 11,000 British and Indian troops fought over 30,000 soldiers of the Ottoman Empire, the MEP retreated to Kut, where they were besieged for months leading into 1916, until a final surrender to Ottoman troops in April, 1916.

Sandes account is that of a British officer, and it reads as such, full of strategic military language and long-winded explanations of troops movements along the Tigris and Euphrates that account for the length of this old source. For the sake of this site, though, Sandes account of his soldiers’ experience is useful in the details of war: food shortages during and after the siege at Kut, transport up-river to Baghdad as Ottoman prisoners of war, and a grueling northward desert march to Mosul, which eventually led all to the way to Anatolia.

After the surrender at Kut, in the first days as Turkish prisoners, Sande wrote:

    The great problem naturally was to feed the British and Indian troops rapidly assembling on this bare plain seven  or eight miles from Kut. The Turkish camp, a mile farther up river, held all the available supplies, and the only food sent to us during the first day was some Turkish biscuits which were thrown on the ground and lay there in a dusty heap till distributed to us at 6 p.m. by our own Supply and Transport officers.

    The Turkish army biscuit is a curiosity in its way. Imagine an enormous slab of rock-like material, brown in colour, about 5 inches in diameter and 3/4 inch thick, made of the coarsest flour interspersed with bits of husk and a goodly proportion of earth, and you have a tolerable idea of the staple article of diet on which the Turkish soldier seems to thrive…There is no doubt that the Turkish biscuit, whatever its ingredients may be, is a nourishing form of food for a cast-iron interior, but does not agree with people weakened by a five-months siege.

-Major E.W.C. Sandes, In Kut and Captivity with the Sixth Indian Division (London: 1919), 269-270.

 
 From the National Archives: "This photograph shows an emaciated Indian army soldier who survived the siege of Kut (December 1915-April 1916). It was probably taken in July 1916, after he and other British POWs had been released from Turkish captivity in Baghdad during a prisoner exchange. The soldier’s skeletal frame indicates not only the appalling conditions inside Kut during the siege, but also the harsh treatment meted out to ‘other ranks’ while in enemy hands afterwards."

After being transported with thousands of British and Indian men of the Sixth Indian Division up the Tigris, Sandes described their landing in Baghdad and their procession through the city as prisoners of war:

      Guards with fixed bayonets were placed at intervals along our line, and we turned to the left and started our march through Baghdad, where we were apparently to be exhibited exactly as in a Roman triumph, except that we wore no chains and had our full complement of clothes. We were marched through the most densely populated area of Baghdad. There was no necessity for this. For some reason best known to the Turks, the Indian officers were put at the head of the procession, followed by the British officers in  order of seniority of rank. Whether this was done to annoy us, or whether through ignorance, I do not know; but it is almost incredible that the Turks could be wholly ignorant of the fact that all Indian officers of whatever rank are junior to the land-joined British subaltern. We passed out into the streets, turned to the left, and entered the mercantile and bazaar portions of the city….

        …We traversed all the main bazaar roads of the city, where interested crowds thronged the route to see us…We tried to keep up a cheerful appearance before the crowd, and found the unique bazaar with its vaulted roof quite interesting and comparatively cool after the glare outside. From several windows in the upper floors of houses pretty faces looked down on us in curiously—and I think even in pity—for a large portion of the populace was very unfriendly to the Turk.

 - Sandes, In Kut and Captivity with the Sixth Indian Division, 283-284.