f 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.

"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 gin