Enemy on the Euphrates (17 page)

Maude’s proclamation – and a subsequent declaration in an even more explicit vein the following year – soon came to be regarded as firm promises guaranteeing the full independence of the Iraqi people. Indeed, one may gauge the extent to which most Baghdadis accepted the apparent sincerity of General Maude’s proclamation and the ‘independence’ which it appeared to offer by the fact that when the general suddenly died of cholera on 18 November 1917 and the British-controlled Arabic-language newspaper
Al-‘Arab
called for suggestions as to how best to commemorate his untimely death, it was no less a figure than Ja‘far Abu al-Timman, grandson of the deceased combatant of the 1915 anti-British jihad Haji Daud and a man who now held strongly nationalist views, who proposed a public subscription to erect a memorial building housing a library, reading room and marble statue of Maude himself, and carrying the inscription ‘To the memory of General Maude from the citizens of Baghdad.’
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Meanwhile, in Cairo, Leachman was in good sprits. An illness which had long been troubling him (and which later was diagnosed as chronic appendicitis) was in remission and to his mother he wrote that he was ‘enjoying myself and the good food’. Nor did anticipation of his important forthcoming meeting with Sir Mark Sykes seem to worry him. Indeed, when they did meet they appear to have got on rather well. Leachman describes Sykes as ‘most amusing and outstandingly clever’ and says that while travelling around with him he had ‘learnt many things about the world’. Whether Leachman ever expressed to Sykes his severe reservations about the Arab Revolt in the Hejaz, let alone his extremely dim view of its protagonists, we do not know, but it seems unlikely because the two men apparently parted company on good terms. Yet unbeknown to either, although they would never meet again – Sykes was to die in the great influenza pandemic of 1919 – their lives would further, and fatally, intertwine.

It has been said that the flap of a single butterfly’s wing can cause a violent storm on the other side of the world. Be that as it may, a somewhat more direct chain of causation originating in Sykes’s highly convoluted and inconsistent policies – oscillating wildly between
imperialism and encouragement of ‘self-determination’ – would soon lead inexorably to a very different kind of storm in the Middle East. And that tempest would envelop Lieutenant Colonel Gerard Leachman, blind him in its fury, and destroy him a few miles outside a small Iraqi town called Falluja.

As the third year of the Great War drew to a close, it was becoming clear to the military and civilian leaders of the belligerent powers that a critical new factor had entered the deadly equation of violence. Hitherto the war had been fought by a combination of manpower and horsepower, with coal-fuelled railways supporting the initial mobilisation and concentration of forces. When the British Expeditionary Force landed in France in August 1914 its motorised logistical support consisted of a mere eighty trucks, twenty automobiles and fifteen motorcycles, most of these attached to GHQ.
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By 1917, however, large numbers of oil-powered motor vehicles and ‘tanks’ had become prerequisites for victory.

In fact, the internal combustion engine had already made its debut on the battlefield in September 1914 when the French counter-offensive on the Marne was only made possible by the mobilisation of over 3,000 Parisian taxis to ferry troops to the front; but thereafter, the static nature of warfare on the Western Front slowed the introduction of motor vehicles. Nevertheless, by the end of the war the British Army on the Western Front possessed 56,000 lorries, 23,000 motor cars and 34,000 motorcycles. In addition the USA, which had only entered the war in April 1917, had another 50,000 petrol-driven vehicles in France.
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The mechanisation of transportation was accompanied by the mechanisation of warfare itself. Although the use of tanks by the British at the battle of Cambrai in November 1917 yielded disappointing results, lessons were learned and at the battle of Amiens in August 1918 a swarm of 456 tanks finally broke through the German lines.

In the Middle Eastern theatre of war petroleum-powered mechanical transport was less in evidence but by 1918 even here, its advantages were becoming clear. For example, it was calculated that a three-ton lorry could carry the equivalent of between fifteen and thirty camel-loads of supplies and had a radius of action twice that of the camel.
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By the end of the war, 7,000 motor vehicles, including hundreds of half-ton Ford vans, were being used for army transportation in Iraq and Rolls-Royce armoured cars were being used to good effect in both Iraq and Palestine.
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It was a similar picture in the air. A war which had started with a handful of ‘stringbags’ used primarily for reconnaissance was being transformed by a remarkable increase in the production and deployment of not only fighters but also huge long-range bombers. By the end of the war Britain had produced 55,000 aircraft, France, 68,000, Italy, 20,000 and Germany, 48,000. And during its year and a half of participation in the war the USA produced 15,000.

But it was in naval warfare that the overwhelming advantages of oil had become most apparent, decisively confirming the earlier decisions of Admiral Fisher and Winston Churchill to begin to convert the fleet from coal to oil. A ton of oil could produce the same energy value as 1.4 tons of coal, with obvious advantages in terms of the speed/displacement ratio. While many of Britain’s older capital ships still remained coal-fuelled, the Royal Navy’s finest vessels, the five battleships of the 15-inch gun Queen Elizabeth class completed between 1913 and 1915, and the latest sleek new battlecruisers, were all oil-fired. But oil consumption was heavy. For example, the battlecruiser HMS
Tiger
consumed 1,200 tons of oil per day when sailing at full speed; and the battlecruisers
Renown
and
Repulse
, completed in 1916, at high speed burned 1,400 tons per day: but that 1,400 tons per day was equivalent to about 85 per cent of the daily output of Britain’s only major oilfield in 1916 – the Masjid-i-Sulayman field of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

Not surprisingly, therefore, by 1917 the Allies had become increasingly concerned that oil supplies might soon become inadequate to support the war effort. Between 1914 and 1916 world oil production increased by 14.6 per cent, from 58.9 million (metric) tonnes to 67.5 million
tonnes; but most of that modest increase took place in the USA, whose production increased from 38.6 million tonnes in 1914 to 43.7 million tonnes in 1916, accounting for 65 per cent of world production. However, a considerable amount of America’s production was being absorbed by the rapid increase in domestic motoring: in 1916 there were already 3.4 million registered automobiles in the USA. The only other significant world oil producers were Russia’s oilfields at Baku on the Caspian Sea, producing 10.6 million tonnes, Mexico with 5.9 million tonnes, the Dutch East Indies with 1.7 million tons and Rumania with 1.2 million tonnes. But by the end of 1917, and following Russia’s Bolshevik revolution in October of that year, the Baku fields were in turmoil as the struggle between the city’s local Bolsheviks and other political factions took hold while the Rumanian oilfields and refineries on the Black Sea coast had to be sabotaged by a British raiding party to prevent them falling into the hands of advancing German troops.

As increasing numbers of oil tankers were sunk by German U-boats, concern about the adequacy of oil supplies intensified and it was not just the problem of current supplies which occupied the minds of the Allied leaders. Thoughts were already turning towards a postwar scenario, perhaps one in which Germany survived – cowed, but not decisively defeated. The demand for oil could only continue to grow as more countries joined the race to build oil-fired capital ships and the incipient motor-car industry expanded; but from where was the oil to come?

Not surprisingly, the ‘Easterners’ among Britain’s war leaders had the answer, and used it to emphasise, yet again, how crucial it was to achieve victory in that theatre. In July 1916 Sykes lectured the War Cabinet on the strategic importance of the Middle East to Britain, citing the great value of its ‘immense oil areas’ to whoever should possess them. The following month he addressed a huge public meeting in London on German war aims, arguing passionately that even though the fields of Flanders might decide the battle, Germany was really fighting for the Middle East and its resources. Admiral Slade, who had addressed the De Bunsen Committee in 1915, also had no doubts about the value of Middle East oil and in a cabinet memorandum of 31 October 1916 he
argued that Britain should seek control of all the oil rights not only in Iraq but also in Kuwait, Bahrain and the Arabian peninsula.

The following year, with desperate telegrams being dispatched from London to Washington urging the USA to make more oil tanker tonnage available and the secretary of state for the colonies declaring to Parliament, ‘Oil is probably more important at this moment that anything else,’
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few of those in power in Britain and France had any doubt that, whatever the outcome of the war, the potentially vast oil areas of the Middle East must fall into their hands. And from the British perspective this had direct strategic implications.

On 22 November 1917 Lieutenant General Sir William Marshall took over command of the British Army in Iraq after the death of his predecessor, General Maude, four days earlier. Marshall had a powerful force of 3,500 cavalry, 66,000 infantry and 302 guns and was expecting further substantial reinforcements from India. However, his orders from the general staff were essentially defensive. He was to consolidate his position in the Basra and Baghdad vilayets, continue to ensure the safety of the Persian oilfields and pipelines and, if possible, establish communications and cooperation with the Russian Army of the Caucasus under General Baratoff which was operating in northern Persia.

In response to the first of these instructions, Marshall immediately set about extending his area of control in the Baghdad and Basra vilayets by sending out columns to pacify those areas – mainly on the mid-Euphrates – which had been largely by-passed during the rapid advance to Baghdad and where, since 1915, the Arab tribes had enjoyed freedom from either Turkish or British domination. His troops soon took possession of Musayib, Hilla, Kufa, Abu Sukhair and the important mid-Euphrates dam, the Hindiyya Barrage. On the Lower Euphrates British columns captured Samawa and Darraji. Since there were no reports of any threats to the oil installations in Persia and at Abadan, Marshall next moved troops north-east, to occupy Qara Tepe and Khanaqin on the Persian border; but any hopes of an effective liaison with the Russians was dashed by the virtual disintegration of General Baratoff’s forces as his troops melted away under the influence of Bolshevik propaganda,
and on 6 December 1917 Marshall learned that an armistice between the Ottoman and Russian armies had been agreed.

Meanwhile General Sir Edmund Allenby, who had been appointed to command the British Army in Egypt on 27 June 1917, won major victories over the Ottomans on the Palestine front. On 1 November his troops took Beersheba, on the 6th Gaza, on the 15th Jaffa and on 9 December Jerusalem itself was captured. Lawrence, too, had had his moment of glory, seizing the Turks’ lightly defended Red Sea port of Aqaba on 6 July 1917 with a band of 300 Howeitat tribesmen, a triumph marred only by the fact that he accidentally shot his own camel as the Bedouin charged down upon the town’s small group of defenders.

The following year Marshall renewed his offensive in Iraq, sending columns further north and west up the Euphrates to take the towns of Haditha and Ana on 27 and 28 March 1918. The attack was notable for its employment of a mobile force composed of not only cavalry but also mechanised elements – two Light Armoured Motor Batteries (LAMBs) of Rolls-Royce armoured cars and a fleet of 300 Ford vans, fuelled by petrol from the Abadan refinery. After this, the offensive slowed to a halt as the intense heat of the summer months approached and the British consolidated their advance on a line from Haditha in the west to positions just south of Kirkuk.

However, Britain’s twin campaigns against the Ottomans now gained an unexpected advantage as a result of a disastrous strategic decision by Enver Pasha. With the continuing collapse of the Russian armies and the beginnings of civil war between the Bolsheviks and their enemies, he imagined the moment had arrived for a major diversion of his forces towards the Caspian. On 16 May 30,000 Turkish troops invaded Russian Armenia, rallying to their cause thousands of Azerbaijani irregulars under the green banners of Islam. Their first objective was Baku and its oilfields, but after that, Enver imagined they would sweep on into Central Asia, a great Turko-Muslim horde which would eventually threaten India itself. But to pursue this new objective Enver Pasha had to withdraw some key units from both the Palestine and Mesopotamian fronts.

Meanwhile, the fact that British troops were now within striking distance of Mosul and the rich petroliferous regions which were believed to surround it began to excite considerable interest among the small group of individuals who were responsible for Britain’s incipient oil policy.

They were ensconced in two newly established committees, the Petroleum Executive, which came into existence in December 1917, and its offshoot, the Petroleum Imperial Policy Committee (PIPCO), created in May 1918. The former was originally set up to coordinate the oil-related activities hitherto being undertaken by a number of different government departments – the Board of Trade, the Admiralty, the Colonial Office – without any guiding policy. It was chaired by Walter Long, who by May 1918 was minister in charge of petroleum affairs, and its director was Sir John Cadman, professor of mining and petroleum technology at the University of Birmingham. PIPCO, which itself had representation from the Petroleum Executive, also had members drawn from the Foreign Office, Admiralty, Board of Trade and Ministry of Shipping, and in spite of its rather grand name soon became involved in the specific issue of how the government could ensure that Royal Dutch Shell came under its control in a manner analogous to that of Anglo-Persian Oil.
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