Whatever history thinks of Major General Townshend, he certainly penned a thorough accounting of his role in the Mesopotamian Campaign. Gen Townshend was in command of the 6th (Poona) Division in Expeditionary Force D in Mesopotamia during WWI. Townshend amassed a series of somewhat bold successes in the initial part of the campaign, having had to contend with very unique conditions (floods, extreme temperatures, desert warfare, etc...) Townshend provides a very detailed narrative of his initial successes, while throughout alluding to his extensive knowledge of military history, and comparing and contrasting his activities with those of famous military commanders from history.
However, the book focuses primarily on Townshend's march past Kut towards Baghdad, where his Division was stalled at the Battle of Ctesiphon, and forced to retreat back to Kut, where it prepared a defense for what turned out to be a 5-month siege by the Turks. Townshend is quick to note the objections he levied with his higher headquarters on the lack of adequate forces available to him to achieve his objectives.
Townshend was in daily contact with the British forces charged to secure his relief; and a reader might feel torn between Townhend's increasingly vocal sense of urgency as food supplies dwindled, vs. the precarious position the relief forces were in and their inability to break through to Kut. Nevertheless, the endgame was the capitulation of Townshend's division to the Turks.
The surrender is essentially how the book ends, with the exception of a couple of chapters in the appendices covering Townshend's confinement on a private island off the coast of Constantinople. Not mentioned is the horrific conditions his men faced having to march (in an already weakened condition) to Anatolia, where a large percentage of the forces died. This in and of itself has brought him great criticism over the years, whether it is well-founded I would leave it to future readers to judge.
I would have liked to have seen more on the actual conduct of negotiations for the terms of surrender, since they have not been covered well by other participants (Lawrence and Herbert). Likewise, I would have liked to have seen Townshend discuss the state of his surrendered forces, since he wrote the book with that information readily available.
If one can ignore the self-aggrandizement and finger-pointing found throughout the book, there is a great deal for the historian here in this book, since very few senior military commanders in Mesopotamia were able to pen their memoirs. ( )