"In the first week in February scurvy appeared, and aeroplanes dropped seeds, which General Townshend ordered planted on all the available ground, and the gardens bore sufficient fruit to supply a few patients in the hospital.
Kut-el-Amara.
"Mule and horse meat and sometimes a variety of donkey meat were boiled in the muddy Tigris water without salt or seasoning. The majority became used to horseflesh and their main complaint was that the horse gravy was like clear oil.
"Stray cats furnished many a delicate 'wild rabbit' supper. A species of grass was cooked as a vegetable and it gave a relish to the horseflesh. Tea being exhausted, the soldiers boiled bits of ginger root in water. Latterly aeroplanes dropped some supplies. These consisted chiefly of corn, flour, cocoa, sugar, tea, and cigarettes.
"During the last week of the siege many Arabs made attempts to escape by swimming the river and going to the British lines, twenty miles below. Of nearly 100, only three or four succeeded in getting away. One penetrated the Turkish lines by floating in an inflated mule skin."
Another intimate description was furnished by the official British press representative with the Tigris Corps and is based on the personal narratives of some of the British officers who, after having been in the Kut hospital for varying periods of the siege on account of sickness or wounds, were exchanged for wounded Turkish officers taken by the relief force. According to this the real privations of the garrison began in the middle of February and were especially felt in the hospital.
"When the milk gave out the hospital diet was confined to corn, flour, or rice water for the sick, and ordinary rations for the wounded. On April 21, 1916, the 4 oz. grain rations gave out. From the 22d to the 25th the garrison subsisted on the two days' reserve rations issued in January; and from the 25th to the 29th on supplies dropped by aeroplanes.
"The troops were so exhausted when Kut capitulated that the regiments who were holding the front line had remained there a fortnight without being relieved. They were too weak to carry back their kit. During the last days of the siege the daily death rate averaged eight British and twenty-one Indians.