The Long Road to Baghdad Author:Edmund Candler General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1919 Original Publisher: Cassell Subjects: World War, 1914-1918 Iraq History / Middle East / General History / Military / World War I Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you ... more »buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER XXVII THE HAI SALIENT AND THE DAHRA BEND The fighting on the Tigris was almost continuous from the day we began our offensive on December 13th, 1916, to the capture of Samarrah on April 23rd, 1917. The Mahomed Abdul Hassan Bend was the first enemy stronghold to fall to us. The second, the elaborate trench system enclosing the Hai bridgehead, fell with the capture of the liquorice factory on February 10th. The third, a continuation of this system thrown from east to west across the Dahra Bend, was finally cleared in the assault on February 15th. In this fighting we gained eighteen miles of the Tigris bank, following the bends of the river. Viewed in the old perspective, each series of operations, taken by itself, would amount to a considerable campaign. The expenditure was large in life and munitions; but if we spent more in metal than the Turk, he paid more dearly in blood. Our advance on the right bank was slow, but each step was sure and deliberate, and owing to our ascendancy in artillery almost inevitable. The Turk could not afford to hold his first line in strength under the intensity of our barrage. We got in every time, and to regain his ground he was compelled to counter-attack. Thus, so long as we were content with nibbling away at his defences and did not overshoot our objective, the costliness of the offensive was thrown on him. We flung our net of trenches round him in one bend of the Tigris after another, where with the river behind him he was in a ...« less