In late April 1916, Townshend came up with a desperate plan to bribe the Ottomans into letting him and his men leave Kut, an offer that Halil Pasha took up, engaging in talks with Captain Thomas Edward Lawrence of the Cairo Intelligence Staff, before publicising the British offer to humiliate them. Halil Pasha knew the Anglo-Indian garrison was starving to death, and he had the upper hand. Having run out of food for the Garrison, General Townshend yielded Kut-al-Amara to the besieging Turks on 29 April 1916, the 6th Division surrendering en masse; during the siege, the Division had lost 1,746 men between 9 December 1915 – 29 April 1916. The Division ceased to exist at this point and was removed from the British Empire's Order of Battle for the remainder of the war.
