During The War
By 1915, the railway ended some 50 miles east of Diyarbakır. Another spur, heading east from Aleppo, ended at Nusaybin. Additionally some rail was laid starting in Baghdad reaching north to Tikrit and south to Kut. This left a gap of some 300 miles between the railway lines. Additionally, there were three mountains which the railway was going to go through, but the tunnels through these three mountains were not complete. So the railway was, in fact, broken into four different sections at the start of the war. The total time to get from Constantinople to Baghdad during the war was 22 days. The total distance was 1,255 miles (2019 km).
The breaks in the railway meant that the Ottoman government had significant difficulties in sending supplies and reinforcements to the Mesopotamian Front. The fighting in Mesopotamia remained somewhat isolated from the rest of the war. During the conflict, Turkish and German workers laboured to complete the railway for military purposes but with limited manpower and so many more important things to spend money on, only two of the gaps were closed.
Read more about this topic: Baghdad Railway
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom—against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)