Landships II

Hi James, According to what I've read (and i cant claim my sources are reliable) General Baratov arrived in persia at Bandar-e Pahlavi in November 1915, some of the forces he was sent to command were already in persia comprising a Cavalry division based at Ardabil and Mashhad this was composed of Poltava, Krukovskii Mountain-Mozdok, Black Sea, Sunzha-Vladikavkaz, and Kolpakovskii's Semireche Cossack Regiments as well as a couple Turkestani infantry battalions...
However these forces do not seem to have been very succesfull to that date as the Turkish forces had succesfully penetrated as far as Tabriz...
To these regiments were added The Georgian Cavalry Legion, Omansky Cossack Regiment, the Katerinadraski Cossack Regiment, a unit of Armenians, and Shkuro's Kuban Special Cavalry Detachment as well as some 38 artillery pieces , and various infantry Regiments, combined this force totalled some 14,000 men of which 2/3 were cavalry largely cossack units.....
This force became The 1st Caucasian Cavalry Corps under the command of General Baratov and succesfully pushed the Turkish forces mostly out of Persia or at least neutralised them after a number of succesfull engagements .....
Baratov attempted to releave the siege of kut but was unable to get closer then Hamadan before the British at Kut-el-amara Surrendered... 
The next Phase of the campaign became the advance on Baghdad(although Ive no idea if this was actually planned)  Kangavar, Kermanshah and Kharind fell one by one untill Baratov's formation came up against General Ali Ishan Bey's XIII Corps in June 1916 at Khanaqin(Just across the Iraq border)consisting of some 20,000+ men the largest force uptill then encountered, after a sharpe clash Baratov withdrew back into persian territory......
Its seems that from this time onwards Turkish forces were more succesfull eventually retaking all of the towns enroute to Hamadan with Baratov fighting a rearguard action against superior numbers,I've no dought the situation was very confused when you consider the difficulty of the terrain...
Bv march 1917 the situation had radically changed and in response to the British advance on and capture of bagdad Ali Ishan Bey's remaining forces withdrew from Hamadan with Baratovs remaining loyal troops(most had disserted or were in the process of doing so due to the revolution) mostly Kuban and terek Cossacks following at a distance......this is where the turks withdraw from persia.....


Hope this helps Cheers...

I'm probarbly significantly wrong about some of the early campaign details

Google maps will help to make things clear...


-- Edited by Ironsides at 13:49, 2008-06-20

Thanks for taking an interest, Ivor. You've overtaken me with some of this stuff.

This is a very complicated campaign - made more difficult to follow by the fact that a lot of the place names have changed over the years and can have three or four versions.

I think Rowanduz must have been technically part of the Caucasus fighting, even though it's in Kurdistan. The Russians seem to have stopped the Turkish incursion into NW Persia and stabilised that front but couldn't make any progress south. They then moved down through Persia to reach the crossing points into Mesopotamia. From what I can tell, the forces they encountered weren't Turkish regulars but an assortment of locals who were vaguely pro-German but decidedly anti-Russian (and anti-Christian, and pretty much anti-everybody).

I think the answer must be that the Russians penetrated into Mesop twice. The first time, they took Kermanshah, Hamadan, etc from the irregulars, crossed through the Paitak Pass and arrived at Khanaqin. All the mentions of Kh that I've seen say that the Russians were checked there and withdrew. As you say, this must have been XIII Corps under Ali Ishan Bey sent to meet it.

I can only assume that the Russians fell back into Persia, pursued by AIB - odd, since the pass was eminently defensible and it must have been a logistical nightmare to get 20,000 men along that road; NY Times reports say that the Turks were chronically short of artillery because of the difficulty of moving it.

Am I right in thinking that AIB must have retaken the towns to the east of the mountains until recalled when the second, successful British advance on Baghdad began? We know that the Russians ended up with a front to the NE of Baghdad by spring 1917. So they must have followed AIB when he withdrew and retaken the same towns before descending into Mesop and getting as far as Diyala. I can think of no other way such a large force of Turkish regulars can have been in that position.

AIB ended up having to veer NW through the foothills above Mosul to try and rejoin the evicted Baghdad garrison and avoid being cut off by the British advance.

There's a fairly new book called "Ordered to Die", a history of Ottoman forces 1914-18. Sadly, it's excruciatingly expensive. There is a preview on the Net that says Enver's first invasion of Persia (late 1914) came unstuck, "but he would make another attempt". Unfortunately, you can't read that bit. Of course, he chased the Russians all over the show after the Revolution when they weren't interested (and the Germans had to step in and put a stop to it), but I don't know if that's what the author is referring to.

Very perplexing. The reference to Saripul is odd; that's almost in Pakistan and, I should have thought, very much in the British sphere of influence, far from Russian operations. And a couple of accounts say that at Kangavar the Turks were under the command of a Count Kaunitz, but he seems to have been a 19th C Austrian Foreign Minister.

Thanks again, Ivor. I'm still struggling to get my head round this, but I've just ordered the book on the Ottoman Army from the library, so it might become clear if and when that turns up.

You must think I've got a touch of OCD about this. Maybe I have.

The case continues.

Ta, Ivor. You appear to be correct in every detail. I've just dug up some accounts that more or less confirm it. This is the theory, based on newspaper reports, British officers' accounts, and histories of the area.

First of all, the Turks got further than Khoi/Khoy in early 1915; while Sarakamis was still in the balance, the Russians actually withdrew from N Persia, leaving it open to the Turks, who occupied Tabriz. But not for long.

at the end of January 1915, the Russian troops seized Tabriz, previously occupied by the Turks, and forced the Turks out of Southern Azerbaijan.

So NW Persia was closed off to the Turkish Army.

When the Russians advanced in NE Turkey, they formed a front Trabzon-Erzincan-Mush-Bitlis-Van. But at one point they got close to Siirt, not far from the Mesopotamian Plain and were in a position to move south towards Baghdad through Mesop itself.

The army moving southwards that had seized Bitlis had now reached Khizan, thirty miles farther south. Thence it was aiming at Sert, when the rich Euphrates Valley would be open to it.
 

For reasons I've not yet established, they got no further. There were certainly Turkish counter-attacks in the area, and the Rusians had their work cut out trying to protect the Armenians. Perhaps they thought it would leave them over-exposed and that a move through Persia with the protection of the mountains on their right would protect their flank.

There are conflicting dates for Baratov's landing at Bandar-e Pahlavi/Ansali. Some say May, some November 1915. Whichever it was, the forces opposing him don't appear to have been Turks; the term seems to be used fairly loosely. A British account says they were a mixture of irregulars, mercenaries, and organised bands of Kurds and other locals.

In addition to the advance towards Baghdad, Russian forces secured Tehran, Qom, and Isfahan relatively bloodlessly. All the action was in the Kermanshah area.
We know that B got to Khanaqin in June 1916 and was stopped there. This map http://www.firstworldwar.com/maps/graphics/maps_53_mesop1917_(1600).jpg shows XIII Corps astride the border in that area in March 1917, but in which direction were they moving?
I think they had been in eastern Mesop when Baratov arrived and then pushed him back into Persia.

After the victory of Kut al-Amara in the spring of 1916, Ottoman ambitions in Iran seemed once more to be feasible, and Enver ordered the occupation of Kermanshah as a first step. . . .  In accordance with Enver`s orders, Ottoman forces began to advance into Iran and, at the beginning of August 1916, occupied Hamadan. The ultimate aim was to occupy Tehran, and thus to bring the Iranian government officially into the war.

Enver's only route to Kermanshah and of Tehran would be over the mountains beyond Khanaqin and through the Paitak Pass. No possibility of moving through to the north, where the Russians were in the way, or to the south, where the British were. This must be the second attempted invasion alluded to in "Ordered to Die".

The Ottomans regained control of Western Iran for 5 months, after which the Russians regained it until the end of the War.

From a British officer's diary in 1917: The inhabitants of Khanikin had had bitter experience of a hostile Russian occupation in 1916, but now decided to refrain from all opposition, because on this occasion the Russians came as our allies and with our consent, if not at our request.
This seems to confirm two Russian entries into Khanaqin.

So that seems to be what happened: at first Baratov's opposition was largely indigenous; after Khanaqin he fought Turkish regulars, XIII Corps (perhaps amongst others) for several months until their retirement allowed him to re-enter Khanaqin, establish an enclave in Mesopotamia, and make brief contact with the British at Diyala, before the Revolution caused it all to fall apart.

Sorry about the spacing. Don't know what I'm doing wrong.

-- Edited by James H at 16:07, 2008-06-25

Thanks, Ivor. That ties it up. The NYT articles are brilliant but not in any particular order, so it is a bit of a pain to piece it together chronologically.

If you have a look at my first venture into this (that all started over Issy Smith) there's a report of a Russian base at Karind, from where a squadron of Cossaks made their way somehow to the British positions at Ali Gharbi.

The reports you point out are tragically optimistic as regards the relief of Kut, of course.

If Ordered to Die turns up and throws any further light on it, I shall report back.

BTW, worldwarone.com OK at this end.

Chin chin,

J

The last word:

W Persia largely static from August 1916 - Feb 1917, with Turks' main base at Hamadan. Enver urged further progress towards Tehran, but Ali Insan did not believe he had sufficient strength. XIII Corps recalled and begins retirement on Feb 22, first elements reaching the Diyala by March 15, by which time Baghdad has fallen. Corps deployed on left flank of main Turkish force N of Baghdad to prevent further Russian advance into Mesop. 6th Dn. on west bank of Upper Diyala, facing combined Russian/British forces. End of invasion.

Just to give this a veneer of relevance to Landships: the Corps was reinforced in Persia  by an Austrian 105 howitzer battery, and, interestingly, three battalions of Muslim ex-PoWs from French North African units, presumably a gift from Germany. Whether they were there voluntarily and how enthusiastically they applied themselves is not recorded in this study. Nor is the matter of how they were equipped. Did someone raise this episode a while ago?

Thanks for your collaboration, Ivor.

"That would explain the reports of captured Askaris"

Quite possibly, although, according to the report, that was on the Caucasus Front. It depends how strictly they were using the word. It means "soldier" in quite a few languages as well as having the meaning it normally has in Europe, which is East African. But I'm sure I remember reading somewhere about the French Muslims, maybe not on Landships. Perhaps there were other units besides the ones Erickson mentions. And if they were N African they would most likely be Arabs or Berbers rather than black Africans and therefore possibly easily lumped into the racial mix to be found in the Ottoman Army. I wish I could remember where I saw that.

Incidentally, while looking into that I came across this tale, which I find rather moving:

The Weimar Republic provided pension payments to the German Askaris. Due to interruptions during the worldwide depression and World War II, the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) voted in 1964 to fund the back pay of the askaris still alive. The West German embassy at Dar es Salaam identified approximately 350 ex-askaris and set up a temporary cashiers office at Mwanza on Lake Victoria. Only a few claimants could produce the certificates given to them in 1918; others provided pieces of their old uniforms as proof of service. The German banker who had brought the money came up with an idea: as each claimant stepped forward he was handed a broom and ordered in German to perform the manual of arms. Not one of them failed the test.

Ah. Complicated. In the NYT article about the "askaris", the report gives the impression that the Russian War Office distinguishes between the 2 fronts. Maybe the terminology varied. It doesn't help that the three countries meet and that the fighting flowed back and forth at times. I can't decide whether it's truer
to say that the two fronts were actually one or that the one was actually two . . .

I've also found that some of the locations are so small that you have to zoom in so close to find them that you lose track of where they are in the larger scheme of things. I got round that one by popping in to the library and getting a huge atlas, so big that you can see all the places simultaneously and get your head round it.

Anyway, unfortunately I haven't yet been able to rediscover the tale of the French Muslims, where exactly they were from, or how they felt about being shunted off to the Ottomans and hence to Persia. I gather that during the "collective indiscipline" in the French Army in 1917 the colonial troops were remarkably loyal and reliable, even used as discipline units, so it doesn't sound as if they were itching to escape the French yoke. Maybe they thought that a transfer to the warm Middle East with a bit of soldiering involved was preferable to a German winter in a PoW camp, staring at the walls.

This "askari" business still intrigues me. Did they mean black troops or was it a term used loosely? There must have been some PoWs from the Tirailleurs Sénégalais and other black units, and they would have been Muslim, so were they included in the package?

Just another quick point about the second invasion; there was a smaller incursion by the Turks to the north of Kanaqin, from Suleymaniye, by the 4th Infantry Div., which advanced to Sine and Kurve (aka Sanandaj & Qorwa). It was reinforced by some Persian volunteer battalions and renamed the Mosul Group. I assume it withdrew at the same time as XIII Corps. At that point, the Russians entered Mesop at Kanaqin and Panjwin, on the road to Suleymaniye. A third Russian force moved in towards Rawanduz, a good deal further north. I think I've seen British-crewed RR a/cs operating at Rawanduz, which are more likely to have come from the Caucasus. So maybe by now it was a general Russian advance, meaning that the two fronts had sort of become one.

Anyway, Ivor, I think we've wrapped this up. Columbo would be proud of us, even if only you and I have been interested and everyone else is sick to death of us.

I thank you.


-- Edited by James H at 21:04, 2008-07-06