"All the artillery, cavalry, and transport animals had been consumed before the garrison fell. When the artillery horses had gone the drivers of the field batteries formed a new unit styled 'Kut Foot.' One of the last mules to be slaughtered had been on three Indian frontier campaigns, and wore the ribbons round its neck. The supply and transport butcher had sent it back twice, refusing to kill it, but in the end it had to go with the machine-gun mules. Mule flesh was generally preferred to horse, and mule fat supplied good dripping; also an improvised substitute for lamp oil.
"The tobacco famine was a great privation, but the garrison did not find the enforced abstention cured their craving, as every kind of substitute was there. An Arab brand, a species similar to that smoked in Indian hookahs, was exhausted early in April. After that lime leaves were smoked, or ginger, or baked tea dregs. In January English tobacco fetched forty-eight rupees a half pound (equal to eight shillings an ounce).
"Just before General Townshend's force entered Kut a large consignment of warm clothing had arrived, the gift of the British Red Cross Society. This was most opportune and probably saved many lives. The garrison had only the summer kit they stood up in.
"Different units saw very little of each other during the siege. At the beginning indirect machine-gun and rifle fire, in addition to shells, swept the whole area day and night. The troops only left the dugouts for important defense work. During the late phase when the fire slackened officers and men had little strength for unnecessary walking. Thus there was very little to break the monotony of the siege in the way of games, exercise, or amusements, but on the right bank two battalions in the licorice factory, the 110th Mahratas and the 120th Infantry, were better off, and there was dead ground here—'a pitch of about fifty by twenty yards'—where they could play hockey and cricket with pick handles and a rag ball. They also fished, and did so with success, supplementing the rations at the same time. Two companies of Norfolks joined them in turn, crossing by ferry at night, and they appreciated the relief."
A personal acquaintance of the heroic defense of Kut-el-Amara drew in a letter to the London "Weekly Times" the following attractive picture of this strong personality:
"A descendant of the famous Lord Townshend who fought with Wolfe at Quebec, and himself heir to the marquisate, General Townshend set himself from boyhood to maintain the fighting traditions of his family. His military fighting has been one long record of active service in every part of the world. Engaged first in the Nile expedition of 1884-85, Townshend next took part in the fighting on the northwest frontier of India in 1891-92, when he leaped into fame as commander of the escort of the British agent during the siege of Chitral. He fought in the Sudan expedition of 1898, and served on the staff in the South African War. In the peaceful decade which followed Townshend acted for a time as military attaché in Paris, was on the staff in India, and finally commanded the troops at Bloemfontein, Orange River Colony.
"The outbreak of the Great War found him in command of a division in India, longing to be at the front in France, but destined, as events turned out, to win greater fame in Mesopotamia. All accounts agree as to the masterly strategy with which he defeated Nur-ed-Din Pasha at Kut-el-Amara, and subsequently fought the battle of Ctesiphon. Those two battles and his heroic endurance of the long siege of Kut have given his name a permanent place in the annals of the British army.
"Townshend has always attributed his success as a soldier to his constant study of the campaigns of Napoleon, a practice which he has long followed for a regular period of every day wherever he has happened to be serving. He has mastered the Napoleonic battle fields at first hand, and is an ardent collector of Napoleonic literature and relics. Everyone who knows him is familiar with the sight of the paraphernalia of his studies in peace time—the textbooks and maps, spread on the ground or on an enormous table, to which he devotes his morning hours. During the present campaign his letters have been full of comparisons with the difficulties which confronted Napoleon.
"But Townshend possesses other qualities besides his zeal for his profession, and one of them at least must have stood him in good stead during these anxious months. He is indomitably serene and cheerful, a lover of amusement himself and well able to amuse others. In London and Paris he is nearly as well known in the world of playwrights and actors as in the world of soldiers. He can sing a good song and tell a good story. Like Baden-Powell, the hero of another famous siege, he is certain to have kept his gallant troops alert and interested during the long period of waiting for the relief which never came. Up to the last his messages to the outside world have been full of cheery optimism and soldierly fortitude. No general was ever less to blame for a disastrous enterprise or better entitled to the rewards of success."[Back to Contents]