Topic: BatzM - Baghdad
Baghdad
Mesopotamia, 11 March 1917
Baghdad, the action in Mesopotamia (present day Iraq) which resulted in the capture of this city from the Turks by British forces under Lieut.-General Sir Stanley Maude on I1 March 1917. On 5 March Maude advanced from Aziziyeh, on the Tigris River 80 kilometres south-east of Baghdad, with his two Army Corps (each of two infantry divisions) and an Indian cavalry division of two brigades. Strong Turkish resistance was encountered at the Diala River, which flowed into the Tigris from the north-east, but by 10 March the British had bridged that obstacle, whereupon the enemy abandoned the city and enabled its occupation the next day.
Australian involvement in this operation was as members of the 1st (Anzac) Wireless Signal Squadron, a unit then two-thirds Australian and one-third from New Zealand. The squadron provided twelve mobile transmitting stations throughout the force, and during the march into Baghdad those operating with the cavalry were among the first troops into the city. Over the next few days two Anzac stations continued to provide Maude's primary communications hack to Basra, the main British base on the Persian Gulf.
Extracted from the book produced by Chris Coulthard-Clark, Where Australians Fought - The Encyclopaedia of Australia's Battles, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1998, pp. 122-123.
Additional References cited by Chris Coulthard-Clark:
Keast Burke (ed.), (1927), With Horse and Morse in Mesopotamia, Sydney: A&NZ Wireless Signal Squadron History Committee.
Further Reading:
Battles where Australians fought, 1899-1920
Citation: Baghdad, Mesopotamia, March 11, 1917
