The Second Battle at Ramadi

The Mesopotamia Campaign is usually associated with the disaster of the Siege of Kut or mistaken for part of the Arab Revolt. Like the First Day of the Somme was not the whole of the Western Front, so the Siege of Kut was not the whole of the Mesopotamia Campaign.

The remainder of the campaign was marked by manoeuvre and success, no more so than at the Second Battle of Ramadi which was, in the speaker’s opinion, the most perfectly fought battle of the First World War.

Unfortunately, the First Battle of Ramadi was a rare example of a British defeat away from the Siege of Kut. Maude (GOC Allied Forces in Mesopotamia) later called the action "an instance of as clean and business-like a military operation as one could wish to see".

Major Paul Knight PhD VR FRHistS is an Army Reserve officer employed in Historical Analysis at the Land Warfare Centre. He served two operational tours in Iraq (2005 and 2007) and a year in between studying Arabic. While serving in Al-Amara in 2005, he became interested in the Mesopotamia Campaign, in particular ‘Townshend’s Regatta’ of 1915 which captured Al-Amara at the end of the most successful advance of the British Army in the First World War. He is the author of The British Army in Mesopotamia and is currently writing a book on the Second Battle of Ramadi, 1917, which he will argue was the most perfectly fought battle of the war.