During the period in which Kut-el-Amara was besieged by the Turks, the British troops had suffered much.  The enemy bombarded the town almost every day, but did little damage.  The real foe was starvation.  At first the British were confident that a relief expedition would soon reach them, and they amused themselves by cricket and hockey and fishing in the river.  By early February, however, it was found necessary to reduce the rations, and a month later they were suffering from hunger.  Some little help was given them by airplanes, which brought tobacco and some small quantities of supplies.  Soon the horses and the mules were slaughtered and eaten.  As time went on the situation grew desperate; till almost the end, however, they did not lose hope.  Through the wireless they were informed about the progress of the relief expeditions and had even heard their guns in the distance.  They gradually grew, however, weaker and weaker, so that on the surrender the troops in the first lines were too weak to march back with their kits.

The Turks treated the prisoners in a chivalric manner; food and tobacco was at once distributed, and all were interned in Anatolia, except General Townshend and his staff, who were taken to Constantinople.  Later on it was General Townshend who was to have the honor of carrying the Turkish plea for an armistice in the closing days of the war.

The surrender of Kut created a world-wide sensation.  The loss of eight thousand troops was, of course, not a serious matter, and the road to India was still barred, but the moral effect was most unfortunate.  That the great British nation, whose power had been so respected in the Orient, should now be forced to yield, was a great blow to its prestige.  In England, of course, there was a flood of criticism.  It was very plain that a mistake had been made.  A commission was appointed to inquire into the whole business.  This committee reported to Parliament on June 26, 1917, and the report created a great sensation.  The substance of the report was, that while the expedition was justifiable from a political point of view, it was undertaken with insufficient forces and inadequate preparation, and it sharply criticized those that were responsible.

It seems plain that the military authorities in India under-estimated their opponent.  The report especially criticized General Sir John Eccles Nixon, the former commander of the British forces in Mesopotamia, who had urged the expedition, in spite of the objection of General Townshend.  Others sharing the blame were the Viceroy of India, Baron Hardinge, General Sir Beauchamp Duff, Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in India, and, in England, Major-General Sir Edmund Barrow, Military Secretary of the India office, J. Austin Chamberlain, Secretary for India, and the War Committee of the Cabinet.  According to the report, beside the losses incurred by the surrender more than twenty-three thousand men were lost in the relieving expedition.  The general armament and equipment were declared to be not only insufficient, but not up to the standard.