Battle of Wadi (1916)

The Battle of Wadi, occurring on 13 January 1916, was an unsuccessful attempt by British forces fighting in Ottoman Iraq during World War I to relieve beleaguered forces under Sir Charles Townshend then under siege by the Ottoman Sixth Army at Kut-al-Amara.

Pushed by regional British Commander-in-Chief Sir John Nixon, General Fenton Aylmer launched an attack against Ottoman defensive positions on the banks of the Wadi River. The Wadi was a steep valley of a stream that ran from the north into the River Tigris, some 6 miles (9.7 km) upstream towards Kut-al-Amara from Sheikh Sa'ad. The attack is generally considered as a failure, as although Aylmer managed to capture the Wadi, it cost him 1,600 men. The British failure led to Townshend's surrender, along with 10,000 of his men, in the largest single surrender of British troops up to that time. However, the British recaptured Kut in February 1917, on their way to the capture of Baghdad sixteen days later on 11 March 1917.

Background

On 5 December 1915, Ottoman forces under the command of Halil Kut and the German commander Baron von der Goltz, surrounded an Anglo-Indian force of 25,000 men and began the Siege of Kut-Al Amara, a city 50 miles (80 km) south of Baghdad. Replying to pleas for help from Major Charles Townshend, Mesopotamian Theatre commander Sir John Nixon dispatched the British Tigris Corps of 19,000 men under Lieutenant General Sir Fenton Aylmer to relieve the besieged garrison.

The first attempt to relieve Kut (the Battle of Sheikh Sa'ad) came on 6 January 1916. Aylmer's advance force, under Major-General George Younghusband, moved forward from Ali Al-Gharbi towards Sheikh Sa'ad along both banks of the Tigris.