Battle of Amara
Who Fought
British: 6th Division under General Charles Townshend, including the 17th Brigade (Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, 103rd Mahratta Light Infantry, 119th Infantry), the 22nd Punjabis, and a flotilla of sloops, armed launches, and armed tugs. Ottoman: defensive forces holding fortified island positions and villages along the Tigris,; supported by gun emplacements and the gunboat Marmaris.
History & Significance
The Battle of Amara, also known as the Second Battle of Qurna (May 31 – June 3, 1915), was a military engagement between the forces of the British and Ottoman Empires during the Mesopotamian Campaign of World War I. The battle took place in the flooded marshes and islands along the Tigris river between the towns of Qurna and Amara and resulted in the British capture of Amara and rout of Ottoman forces in the area.
Following the Ottoman defeat at Shaiba, General John Nixon ordered the 6th Division under General Charles Townshend to advance north from its position at Qurna and capture the city of Amara. Nixon hoped that by doing so, he would force the Ottomans to withdraw their forces from the Karun river to the east and pave the way for an advance on Baghdad.
The land between Qurna and Amara was largely composed of flooded marshes with several hills protruding from both the eastern and western banks of the river. The Ottoman army had taken up defensive positions on these islands, with gun emplacements on the western side of the river supporting several entrenched infantry positions. Further to the north were also the villages of Abu Aran, Muzaibila, and Ruta, which were garrisoned by Ottoman and Arab troops. To counter this defense, Townshend equipped his troops with bellums (a type of small canoe used by Tigris natives, seating 5-10 men) and divided them into four groups distinguished by colored flags, with the intention of assaulting Ottoman positions on both the west and east sides of the river simultaneously. The amphibious attack would be supported by fire from a small flotilla of sloops, armed launches, and various other light vessels, as well as from 4-inch guns and machine guns mounted on barges and rafts.
At 1:00 AM on May 31, the 22nd Punjabis began their advance through the marshes on the eastern side of the river, arriving at a position 1500 meters south of the Ottoman emplacements at 4:30. At 5:30 the British gunboats and artillery began a bombardment of the front line, which the Ottomans responded to 20 minutes later with inaccurate fire against Townshend's headquarters aboard the sloop HMS Espiegle. The 17th Brigade group, composed of the Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, the 103rd Mahratta Light Infantry, and the 119th Infantry regiments, began to advance along the western side of the river at around 6:00. At the same time, the 22nd Punjabis on the east bank assaulted the Ottoman line, capturing the fortified positions there and using them to support the western advance with machine gun and rifle fire. All of the fortified islands along the Ottoman front had been captured with minimal resistance by 11:30 AM, prompting Townshend to call a halt to the first phase of the attack.
The ground they fought on
The site of Battle of Amara lies on Argyll Group, bedrock that formed in the Neoproterozoic. The rock here is psammite, semipelite and pelite.
Perhaps the most remarkable episode of the battle came on the morning of 3 June 1915, when the armed launch Shaitan, running well ahead of the rest of the British flotilla, entered Amara alone, sank a steamer carrying Ottoman troops, and passed through the town without a single shot being fired at her. Half a mile beyond the town some 300 Ottoman soldiers emerged from the forested riverbank and surrendered to Shaitan's crew of just nine men, who collected their arms and marched them back into Amara, where Townshend's total force of 41 men then received the formal surrender of the town's civil governor and military commandant, taking around 800 additional prisoners in the process. The crew of Shaitan were subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for this extraordinary feat.
- Not specified in the sources; British resistance described as minimal during the capture of the fortified islands
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything a full report reveals about Battle of Amara
This page covers Battle of Amara. A full Aubrey report for the area pulls together this battle alongside scheduled monuments and everything else the record holds within a few miles:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Scheduled Monuments near Battle of Amara
Other modern Battles
Battles near Battle of Amara
Explore the landscape around this battlefield
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in the UK — drawing on Domesday records, scheduled monuments, Victorian OS maps, geological data and archaeological archives to tell the full story of a place.
- Battle of Amara · Wikipedia
- Siege of Kut · Wikipedia