Several months after the Armistice I married, and with my wife returned to Baghdad, where I took up the post of Chief Legislative Draftsman to the Judicial Department. To have returned to the past scene of the events of my captivity is an odd experience, and my friends have asked me for a recent impression. This, however, might lead to controversial matters, and for such there is here neither place nor room.
However! On our return in November last year we stopped at Kut for two days. I add a last note from my diary.
P.O.'s Quarters, Kut, November 8th, 1920.—We left Baghdad by train about 7 a.m. on November 6th, day travelling being necessary on account of the recent revolt. The whole line is heavily blockhoused. It lies along the route of our historic retreat after Ctesiphon back to Kut. Somewhere beneath the desert dust is the double trail of bones; bones of the men who fell in the retreat, and bones of the men who fell or crawled six months later in the captive columns.
We are staying with the Political Officer, a tremendously kind and interesting fellow. My wife was most curious to behold first hand the precincts of our doings in the siege, some of which I had described to her from my captivity. The foreshore has quite changed. My artillery observation posts of sandbags, that once, tattered and battered with shell fire, defied the Turkish marksmanship to the end, has given place to a fine street, and this house stands where the garrison gunners kept a similar vigil, and where our flag, shot into ribbons, was hauled down on the fateful day. I had no difficulty, however, in locating many familiar scenes. We visited General Townshend's house, where, as the Jewish occupant explained, "the General issued his communiqués!" It suffered from our own guns after the Turks entered, and the minaret also was damaged by some accidental shot.
My wife knew several of our garrison when her father's regiment, the 24th S.W.B.'s, was in India years ago. I entertained her with stories of the amusing side of Kut. She was highly delighted at the little Arab boy's question as to whether she also had been in the siege!
We climbed the roof. The pattern of the shell burst that killed poor Colonel Courtenay and Garnett and Begg is still there. Then we visited the horse lines and took a car over the crumbling trenches to the Brick Kilns, where General Smith and I had our first dug-out. It seemed strange, indeed, to go along "on top" in a car where for so long to show even a topee was to offer a dead mark to the Turks over the river.
The Brick Kilns most of all retain and impart to one again the spirit of Kut. The dug-out is still dug out, and bits of blown-up guns all round about. The position of Colonel Broke-Smith's Battery (63rd R.F.A.) I located near by. One seemed to hear his genial voice as he stumped along these very trenches to see if his guns were on their night lines. He was a magnificent gunner, and neither the siege nor captivity sapped far into his joyous indifference. I remember delivering a message to him under a sharp fire in the action of Um-al-Tabul, glorious to Townshend's memory. Shells were bursting all around as he sat up his limber pole. I should think it impossible for any voice to sound more gleeful and exhilarating, and at the same time with more whip in it than his. He had got the precise range of that glorious target of crowded Turks, surprised at 1000 yards. Under each burst of his shrapnel I saw the running figures suddenly changed to flat black patches. In fact, we could distinguish bursts by gaps suddenly appearing in the black horde. He came to lunch at my club on our meeting in the War Office after the Armistice, and admitted that when the Turks were particularly troublesome in his captivity, he used to recall with much satisfaction that glorious target.
As we walked to position after position, incidents long forgotten came up to the surface of my mind. Here was where we made the ramp for the debouch, there where poor Bombardier X was sniped. This was where the floods burst in over the bank and flooded us out. That where we made our last line. We came across a patch on the maidan, thick with shell cases and pieces of segment. This to my delight I located as the position of my old battery, the 76th R.F.A. The six gun emplacements are clearly discernible, and my dug-out, in which I had spent so many weird hours, gaped eloquently before me. Grass grew on the walls.
The picturesque position of 86th R.F.A. in the palms is overgrown, but the smashed trees and shell-pierced wall and dug-outs gave me my bearings. The fort has been erased.
Last of all I succeeded in finding in the town the billet of the Sixth Divisional Ammunition Column, which later on I had shared with Tudway and Mellor. The upper story that had been partly demolished by the shell which occasioned the bruise to my back has now been cut away. The front door was barred and the billet vacant. By entering through an adjoining house, and scaling the wall on top over which the Turks had swarmed, I got down and forced the door for my wife and Major Jeffery to enter. The cupboard which I had filled with bricks was still there, as also the room in which the shells had entered four and a half years before. Only four and a half years, and yet how far had I walked and seen since then! The back wall over which we used to peep at the Tigris is smashed down by bombardment, and the whole place bespattered with bullet marks.