It's awfully late. Only millions of starlings are abroad. I wonder if Tudway is dreaming of the limb!
April 18th.—A terrific bombardment continued downstream from last night until early this morning. We have since heard that the Third Lahore Division, under General Keary, after a magnificent struggle, has taken the lines of Beit Aissa, and that Turkish hordes are counter-attacking in successive waves. Our casualties are very heavy. The large pontoons which the Turks dragged overland for a ferry downstream are now in position. Tudway was recently to have led a river attack at night in H.M.S. Sumana and to have pierced or blown up the bridge. The scheme, however, was cancelled.
Arabs continue to wait around the butchery for horse bladders on which to float downstream. They are shot at by the Turks, who want them to stay on here and eat our food, or else they are killed by hostile Arabs. Every night they go down, and a little later one hears their cries from the darkness. There are rumours that the Arab Sheik and his son, who are here with us and are badly wanted by the Turks, are to escape secretly to-night. These people know the Turk and the treatment they are likely to get for having associated with us.
For three or four days our heavy sea-planes have brought us food, dropping each day from one half to a ton of flour and sugar in the town and as often as not into the Tigris or Turkish lines. We are grateful to our brother officers downstream for this, and realize the difficulty of getting a correct "drop" always. I for one don't consider this at all a possible soulagement, as even with their best effort our tiny four-ounce ration cannot be nearly kept up. In fact, one ounce would be nearer the mark. Money is also dropped, and many coins dented in the fall go as souvenirs at double value.
April 24th.—I have been compelled to abandon keeping my diary owing to excruciating pain in my spine from the shell contusion. What is wrong I can't make out, but sometimes the tiniest movement sends a sharp thrill of keenest pain through one's whole being. I think I must have struck the wall forcibly and affected the vertebræ. After lying in one position for any little time this particular spot in my spine aches with a most ravaging pulsation of neuralgia, and I find it difficult to sit upright for many minutes. On these occasions if I lie still my arms and legs shoot out at intervals with a sort of reflex action, and sometimes repeat the performance several times.
But for being much easier to-day I thank God. I have even walked a little with a stick, and the twitching is much less violent and less often. My eyes, however, are still dim, and I find it difficult to see very distinctly. To complete the list of my infirmities of the flesh the enteritis, which has continued in a mild form for three weeks, has got worse, and I find emmatine the only thing that has done any good. Here, again, I have much to be thankful for, in that I have not had the severe form as so many others have, or else with other troubles I should be on unskateable ice. My legs are shockingly thin, less than my arms were, and I can fold my skin round my legs. In fact, I might think of applying my remarks on the poor fellow at the hospital to myself. The daily egg and ounce of milk stopped days ago. We have paid Rupees 30 for a tin of milk which I have with some rice my very good friend Major Aylen sends me from the officers' hospital. He now wishes me to enter hospital, but I prefer being an out-patient. The atmosphere there is both siegy and sick.
The bombardment of the 22nd downstream appears to have been a tremendous attempt by Gorringe to get through at Sannaiyat. It failed. Our comrades gave their lives freely for us and they fought in the mud feet deep trying to get at their enemy. As they fell wounded they were drowned.
What an appalling price we are costing! A calm seems to be stealing over the garrison. It is the reaction from suspense extended infinitely far, and we know that we have done all possible to carry our resistance to the last possible day. These words are not so self-righteous as they look when one considers the gallant effort to walk and to carry out the simplest routine by men dying and doomed. There are men, with cholera staring from their faces, moving along at a crawl with the help of a long stick; men resting against the wall of the trench every ten yards. One wills hard to do the simplest thing. From our men the siege has demanded even more than from us. We have now drifted very near the weir and within a few days must know our fate. A few say it appears already. There is, between us and that, however, only the habit, now strong within us, of refusing to believe that Kut can fall. And yet if Gorringe has not yet got Sunnaiyat, how can he cross these successions of defences in a few days?
April 25th.—I am making a great effort to write further in this diary. Last night there happened one of those gallant episodes that confirm our pride of race.
A relief ship, Julna by name, had been fitted out downstream and loaded with every available comfort for us, and provisions for several weeks. She was heavily protected and commanded by Lieut. Cowley, R.N.R., the famous local celebrity who knows every yard of the Tigris. He with two other officers and some men of the Royal Navy volunteered to outdo the Mountjoy episode. The Turkish gunners were engaged by our artillery down below, and under cover of darkness the Julna left. The Turks, no doubt, knew, or soon found out, what the show was. She came along gallantly, drawing a heavy fire, and surmounted all difficulties until reaching Megasis ferry, where, fouling a heavy cable, she swung on to a sandbank. Here the Turkish guns confronted her at a few yards' range. Her officers were killed, Lieut. Cowley captured, and she was taken within sight of our men waiting to unload her by the Fort, and of the sad little group of the garrison who beheld her from the roof-tops of Kut. She lies there now. It appears that this tragic but obvious end of so glorious an enterprise is a last hope. We have scarcely rations for to-morrow.