One division will probably have the task of holding Sunaiyat forces while the other two divisions push up through Beit Aessa, whence our 6-inch guns should enfilade the Sunaiyat position. The line of advance would probably make for Dujaila Redoubt which would be taken on by our big guns and the bridge at O destroyed to prevent escape of the enemy to other bank. One division would then have a large part of the Turkish force hemmed in on the Essin ridge right bank, and the other division crossing into Kut by a bridge to be erected by us would swing around past the Fort to prevent the remaining enemy forces on the left bank from getting away. It will be either a dismal failure or brilliant success, and much at this belated hour must depend upon the floods.
March 29th.—A beautiful day and quite hot. We have been unmolested except for some shells on the Fort. I have finished "Septimus," by W. Locke. Septimus is a delightful chap, and would make much fun for us if he were here.
Then we played chess, and I visited Pas Nip on my way around the trenches. He returned and lunched with us. I have managed to get a tin of gooseberry jam at ten rupees, one tin of milk twelve rupees, 1½ lbs. of atta for fifteen rupees.
I held another inspection of the native drivers among whom scurvy has increased. They still refuse to eat horseflesh.
Don Juan has turned from a dark black to a burned brown. That, possibly, is his way of turning grey! I gather him some grass every possible day.
March 30th.—It has been a day of the most perfect tranquillity, and as I couldn't sleep for this confounded backache I was up for the dawn. I climbed up to the observation post and looked around on a lovely earth. I mean it. The very wretchedness and misery of the floods, and the broken palm grove, and the disfigured earth, were all woven into the most bewitching harmony by sheets of silver and bars of golden sunlight. It was hard to realize it was a scene of war, that those receding terraces were trenches filled with armed Turks. I am beginning to think that, after all, the Garden of Eden could have been very beautiful—at any rate in the dawn, for then it is a country of long shadows and persuasive lights. This morning the drooping palm fronds patterned the water and the wide plain. There was gold and green in every patch of grass. As for the rest of the earth, it was all a wonderful and faithful mirror, for in the lucent waters of the ever-growing flood one saw the moving images of clouds and wild fowl. Down below there was not a breath, but high above a gentle breeze from the west caught some fleecy islets of the sky and washed them out into the great blue sea. To-night the geography of the sky has changed. There are no islets, there is no movement. But across the whole western quarter of the sky the clouds have formed an ethereal beach of white-ribbed sands that reach around the world, and form the shores of a wide dark ocean that is lit by flashing stars.
To-night I should like to be Peter Pan in an obedient cutter and sail there far and wide. Jolly runs I could have, and how very easy to find my way about safely with all those splendid lights and beacons. And being Peter Pan I should know them all.
An ominous buzz recalls me to things nearer at hand. The room has been invaded by mosquitoes. Already the flies are an abominable nuisance in the daytime, and cockroaches are plentiful.
Last night the Sumana was strafed again, and Tudway has been toiling all the evening at her defences.
This morning I paid the men and did some office work, and brought the war diary up to date. After that I found time to try a longer walk around our first line, but felt too seedy to go into the Fort. I heard that the sickness is rapidly increasing, and the condition of the troops is so bad that the chief dread of the whole routine is the marching to and from the trenches. This being so, regiments are now allowed to remain out there permanently. In one Indian regiment man after man has simply sunk down in his tracks and died through want of food. And an extraordinary number of soldiers wretchedly ill won't report sick, partly through a horror of entering the crowded and unhappy hospitals, and also from a sense of duty. Among the men there is, of course, a good deal of ragging and general barracking about our not being relieved, but their spirit and patience and trust in their general is truly magnificent. No soldier, I truly believe, could wish for a more splendid loyalty from his rank and file than these men, the European troops, at any rate, feel and show in a hundred ways for their "Alphonse." They get little news but of disappointments, still they go about their duties with a step unsteady and painfully slow, and at every fresh misfortune they joke and smile.