TO THE FALL OF KUT, APRIL 29TH, 1916
THE SECRETS OF A KUTTITE
CHAPTER I
EN ROUTE FROM HYDERABAD TO MESOPOTAMIA—VOYAGE
UP THE TIGRIS
Kut-el-Amara, December 22nd, 1915.—At the present moment I'm snugly settled inside my Burberry sleeping-bag. The tiny candle that burns gloomily from its niche in the earth wall of the dug-out leaves half the compartment in sharp shadow. But through the doorway it lights a picture eloquent of war. This picture, framed by the sandbags of the doorway, includes a gun-limber, observation pole, rifles, a telescope, and a telephone, along a shell-pierced wall. Above winding mounds of black soil from entrenchments hang the feathery fronds of the eternal palm. Only some droop, for mostly they hang, bullet-clipped, like broken limbs. The night is still and cold, the stillness punctuated by the rackety music of machine-guns. As I write snipers' bullets crack loudly on the mutti wall behind my head. Another night attack is expected from the trenches in front of the 16th Brigade which we must support. When the battery is in action the most unloved entertainment that offers is the rifle fire that just skips the wall enclosing the date-palm grove in which we are hidden. Sometimes the sharp crackling sound of bullets hitting the trees increases as the flashes of our guns are seen by the enemy, and resembles in its intensity a forest on fire. One hears a sudden crack just ahead like the sharp snapping of a stick, and in the early days of one's initiation a duck is inevitable. I don't say one ducks, but one finds one has ducked. For a time every one ducks. It is no use telling people that if the bullet had been straight one would have been hit before hearing it strike the palm. Some people go on ducking for ages. Of course I'm talking of the open. In the trenches ducking is a fine art. The last time I ducked commendably, that I remember, was yesterday. I was observing from our front line trenches with plenty of head protection from the front, when a bullet came from an almost impossible direction. It flung a piece of hard earth sharply on my cheek, and I ducked. Afterwards I laughed and took more care.
By the way, as this is not a diary but an unpretentious record of things not forgotten, and intended on reference to dispel the illusion that all this is a dream, I may as well furnish an explanation of how I, Edward Mousley, a subaltern in the Royal Field Artillery, come to be in this dug-out here in Kut-el-Amara, along with the Sixth Division under General Townshend, that is to say, almost the whole original Force D, besieged by the whole Turkish army in Mesopotamia under Nureddin Pasha.
My brigade was at annual practice near Hyderabad Scind when a wire ordered another subaltern and me to proceed at once on service with Force D (in Mesopotamia) to replace casualties. Some very kind words and excellent advice from my Colonel and innumerable chota pegs from every one else and the next morning we left, the other subaltern and Don Juan and I, to exchange practice for reality. Don Juan is my faithful horse. At Karachi I found several gunners of my acquaintance who had come out from Home with me in the Morea, a few months before, including one Edmonds, who had tripped with me across India.