ce
Rifles, attached King's Royal Rifles; killed in action, near Ypres,
Jan. 13, 1917.

Our soldier youth thrice-loved, whose laughing face
In battle's front can danger meet with eyes
No fear could e'er surprise;
Nor stain of self in their gay love leave trace,
His nature like his name,
Frank, and his eager spirit pure as flame.

_Waltham Thickets._

PREFACE

The Mesopotamian War was a side-show, so distant from Europe that even
the tragedy of Kut and the slaughter which failed to save our troops
and prestige were felt chiefly in retrospect, when the majority of the
men who suffered so vainly had gone into the silence of death or of
captivity. When Maude's offensive carried our arms again into Kut, and
beyond, to Baghdad, interest revived; but of the hard fighting which
followed, which made Baghdad secure, nothing has been made known, or
next to nothing. The men in Mesopotamia did not feel that this was
unnatural. We felt, none more so, that it was the European War which
mattered; indeed, our lot often seemed the harder by reason of its
little apparent importance. Yet, after all, Baghdad was the first
substantial victory which no subsequent reverse swept away; and it came
when the need of victory, for very prestige's sake, was very great.

Mr. Candler has written, bitterly enough, of the way the Censorship
impeded him in his work as official 'Eye-witness.' His was a thankless
task; as he well knows, few of us, though we were all his friends, have
not groused at his reports of our operations. No unit groused more on
this head than my own division. We usually had a campaign and a bank
of the Tigris to ourselves. 'Eye-witness' rightly chose to be with the
other divisions across the river. Inevitably the 7th Meerut Division
got the meagrest show in such meagre dispatches as the Censors allowed
him to send home. The 2nd Leicestershires, an old and proud battalion,
with the greatest of reputations on the field of action, remained
unknown to the Press and public. Our other two British battalions, the
1st Seaforths and the 2nd Black Watch, could be referred to--even the
Censors allowed this--as 'Highlanders'; and those who were interested
knew that the reference lay between these two regiments and the
Highland Light Infantry. But who was going to connect the rare
reference to 'Midlanders' with the Leicestershires?

In May, 1917, the 7th Division tried to put together, for th