On This Day - 1916 - Lawrence of Arabia Attempts To Help Thousands of British Troops Escape Kut-al-A

On this day in 1916, three British officers, including the famous Captain T.E. Lawrence (known as Lawrence of Arabia), attempt to engineer the escape of thousands of British troops under siege at the city of Kut-al-Amara in Mesopotamia through a secret negotiation with the Turkish command.

Since December 1915, British forces under the command of Sir Charles Townshend had been under siege from Turkish and German forces in Kut, on the Tigris River in the Basra province of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Four attempts to push the enemy troops back had resulted only in some 23,000 casualties—nearly twice the strength of the remaining regiment. Exhausted, undersupplied and plagued with illness, Townshend’s men were on the brink of surrender when the British regional command decided to try one last diplomatic maneuver.

Then working in military intelligence in Cairo, Egypt, the recently promoted Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence found office work dull, and thus was excited to be sent, along with two other officers, on a secret mission to negotiate the escape of Townshend and his troops with their Turkish counterparts. On April 27, they made their offer: if the Turks allowed the men in Kut to leave the city and rejoin Allied regional forces located to the south of Kut, they would be rewarded with £1 million in gold. Read More