Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend

Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend
Born	21 February 1861
Died	18 May 1924 (age 63)
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	British Army
Years of service	1881–1920
Rank	Major-General
Unit	6th (Poona) Division
Commands held	12th Sudanese Battalion Orange River Colony District East Anglian Division Jhanzi Brigade Rawal Pindi Brigade 6th (Poona) Division
Battles/wars	First World War
Awards	Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath Distinguished Service Order
Relations	Charles Townshend, 1st Marquess of Townshend

Major General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend KCB, DSO (21 February 1861 –18 May 1924) was a British Imperial soldier who led an overreaching military campaign in Mesopotamia during World War 1, which led to the defeat and destruction of his command.

Early life

A descendant of Field Marshal George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend (his great great grandfather) and of families of clergyman and school-masters, Charles Townshend was educated at Cranleigh School and the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. On graduation from the R.M.C. he was granted a commission with the Royal Marine Light Infantry in 1881.

Imperial Warrior

He served in the Sudan Expedition of 1884, then on 12 December 1885 he was appointed on probation to the Indian Staff Corps and was permanently appointed on the 15 January 1886. He went on to serve on the Hunza Naga expedition in 1891. In 1894, while commanding the newly built fort at Gupis, he entertained the visiting George Curzon, "through a long evening with French songs to the accompaniment of a banjo."

He made his name in England as a British Imperial hero with the assistance of London's Fleet Street's coverage of his conduct as the besieged garrison commander during the Siege of Chitral Fort affair on the North West Frontier in 1895, for which he was awarded the Companion of the Bath.

He was attached to the British Egyptian army and, as Commanding Officer of the 12th Sudanese Battalion, he fought in the Sudan at the Battle of Atbara and the Battle of Omdurman in 1898, for which he was awarded the DSO.

He served in the Second Boer War becoming Assistant Adjutant General on staff of the Military Governor for Orange Free State in 1900 and then transferred to the Royal Fusiliers later that year.

Promoted to colonel in 1904, he became military attaché in Paris in 1905 and then transferred to King's Shropshire Light Infantry in 1906. He went on to be Assistant Adjutant General for 9th Division in India in 1907 and commander of the Orange River Colony District in South Africa in 1908.

Promoted to brigadier general in 1909, and major-general in 1911, Townshend was appointed General Officer Commanding the East Anglian Division in 1911, Commander of Jhanzi Brigade in India in 1913, and Commander of the Rawal Pindi Brigade in India later that year.

World War 1

In the Spring of 1915 Townsend was promoted to the rank of Major-General and appointed to the command of the 6th (Poona) Division in Mesopotamia, tasked with protecting British Empire's oil production assets in Persia from Ottoman Imperial attack. He arrived in Basra from India in April to assume command of the Division.

Mesopotamian Campaign 1915-1916

Main article: Mesopotamian Campaign

General Townshend was ordered by his superior Commanding Officer, General Sir John Nixon, to advance the 6th (Poona) Division from Basra along the North-Westerly course of the River Tigris in a large river flotilla consisting of a variety of vessels, with the strategic objective of capturing the town of Amarah and destroying in the process all Ottoman Imperial military forces in its path present in Lower Mesopotamia. The opening phase of the advance went spectacularly well against numerically superior opposition in difficult and hostile terrain and climate, most of the Ottoman forces fleeing or surrendering with comparatively little fighting. Amarah was taken on 3 June 1915, largely by bluff, with two thousand Ottoman soldiers captured as prisoners of war. After this the campaign's ambition was extended to encompass the town of Kut-al-Amara, further up the river, which was captured after a set-piece battle on 28 September 1915. The victorious passage of the campaign received much coverage in the British Empire's press, which was encouraged by a British Government anxious for good war news for the public to counteract the military difficulties it was experiencing in Europe on the Western Front and at Gallipoli. At this point Townshend suggested halting at Kut-al-Amara to gather strength in men and material there before attempting an advance upon the city of Baghdad, but General Nixon was convinced by this time that the Ottoman Army was of a sufficiently inferior quality that there was no need, and dash was what was required rather than a more cautious strategy. Having argued for another extension of the mission, and obtained approval for it from the British Government, Townshend's counsel was over-ridden by Nixon and he was ordered to continue with an advance upon Baghdad without reinforcement.

On 1 November 1915 Townshend led the 6th (Poona) Division from Kut-al-Amara and marched up the course of the River Tigris. Ctesiphon, some 25 miles (40 km) south of Baghdad was reached on 20 November 1915. Here they met an Ottoman force of more than twenty thousand troops that had issued from Baghdad to oppose their approach to the city, giving them a numerical advantage of 2 to 1 over the 6th (Poona) Division, sited within well-prepared defensive trench fortifications. The Battle of Ctesiphon that followed was hard fought over two days starting on 22 November 1915, with Generals Townshend and Nixon both being personally involved in the fighting. The result of the battle was indecisive, both sides having sustained heavy losses. At this point Townshend, finding himself almost four hundred miles deep into hostile country leading a lone Division that had lost one-third of its men in casualties, with inadequate facilities for their medical evacuation, with a tenuously over-stretched line of supply, and facing multiple hostile divisions issuing from Baghdad towards his force with no other substantive British Empire forces within reach to call upon for assistance, resolved to retire back to Kut-al-Amara seeking shelter for the 6th (Poona) Division, and await for reinforcements in accordance with his original intentions. He arrived back there on 3 December 1915 after a retreat harassed by pursuing fresh Ottoman troops that had appeared on the scene post-battle. On 7 December the pursuing Ottoman force surrounded and besieged Kut-al-Amara, trapping the 6th (Poona) Division within its walls.

Siege of Kut-al-Amara 1916

Townshend and Halil Pasha after the fall of Kut

Main article: Siege of Kut

The siege of Kut-al-Amara was a drawn out affair for the British Empire, and a bitter one for the men of the 6th (Poona) Division, being surrounded for five months under fire from all sides, and having to fight off several attempts to storm the town by the Turks, with dwindling resources in conditions of increasing desperation and deprivation. General Townshend sent reports about his supplies to his commander General Nixon (now back in Basra) to induce immediate reinforcement from the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force's base there, which were exaggerated to the point of being misleading. He indicated that he only had supplies for a month at full ration, however, in reality, his troops finally ran out of supplies near the end of April 1916, almost five months later. This led the British Government, under pressure from the London press's portrayal of Townshend as a hero once again surrounded by Oriental hordes in desperate circumstances (as he had been during the Siege of Chitral 21 years before), to order the hasty dispatch of a military relief force from Basra, which was defeated on arrival at Kut by the unexpectedly strong Ottoman defences under the direction of the newly arrived Prussian Field Marshal Von Goltz.

Subsequent increasingly desperate relief expeditions dispatched from Basra to attempt to rescue the 6th (Poona) Division fared equally badly against the defences erected against their passage by Von Goltz (who would not himself see the military victory of the siege, dying of typhoid in Baghdad before its end). One attempt reached a point just 10 miles (16 km) from Kut, but repeated assaults against Turkish positions trying to break through them to reach the town failed. The last effort, after three weeks of attacks, took place on 22 April 1916, but also ended in failure.

Having run out of food for the Garrison, General Townshend yielded Kut-al-Amara to the besieging Turks on 29 April 1916, the 6th (Poona) Division surrendering en masse. The Division ceased to exist at this point and was removed from the British Empire's Order of Battle for the remainder of the conflict.

Prisoner of War 1916-1918

Townshend was well treated by his Ottoman captors. He was transported to Istanbul where he was quartered in comfort for the remainder of the war on the island of Heybeliada in the Sea of Marmara. He was given use of a Turkish naval yacht, and took part in receptions held in his honour at the Sultan's palace. Whilst still in captivity in 1917 he was made a Knight Commander of the Bath by the British Government. The German newspaper Editor Friedrich Schrader reported that Townshend appeared personally in the Istanbul offices of his newspaper "Osmanischer Lloyd" to receive the cable from London announcing the award. At the war's end Townshend, as the most senior British imperial official in Istanbul at that moment, was involved in the negotiations for the Ottoman Empire's military surrender to the British Empire's advancing Egyptian Expeditionary Force in October 1918.

Post-war

Townshend returned to England in 1919. He resigned from the British Army in 1920, and published his war memoir, My Campaign in Mesopotamia (1920). He entered politics, standing as an Independent Conservative candidate (i.e. not supporting Lloyd George's Coalition Government) in a by-election in Shropshire, and was elected in another by-election as the Member of Parliament for The Wrekin (1920–1922). However, as post-war reports surfaced about how badly the troops under his command had suffered at the hands of the Turkish Army as prisoners of war after their capture at the fall of Kut-al-Amara, thousands of them having died in Ottoman captivity, many having been brutalized and murdered,

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Charles Townshend

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Charles Frederick Palmer	Member of Parliament for The Wrekin 1920–1922	Succeeded by Howard Stransom Button