s from Kut-el-Amara. Here a brisk engagement was
fought in the midst of torrents of rain that greatly hindered
operations. The struggle was indecisive. Owing to the floods, General
Aylmer could not attack on the following day, but took up a position
about 1,300 yards from the enemy's trenches.

Mr. Edmund Candler, the well-known English writer, who was with the
British troops operating on the Tigris, furnishes some striking
details of the engagement. His picturesque description of what took
place at this point in General Aylmer's advance to relieve the
besieged army at the Kut, shows the desperate character of the Turkish
resistance:

"The Turks were holding a strong position between the left bank of the
Tigris and the Suweki Marsh, four miles out of our camp. It was a
bottle-neck position, with a mile and a half of front: there was no
getting around them, and the only way was to push through.

"We intrenched in front of them. On January 20, 1916, we bombarded
them with all our guns and again on the morning of the 21st
preparatory to a frontal attack.

"At dawn the rifle fire began, and the tap-tap-tap of the Maxims,
steady and continuous, with vibrations like two men wrestling in an
alternate grip, tightening and relaxing." It was not light enough for
the gunners to see the registering marks, but at a quarter before
eight in the morning the bombardment began. "The thunderous orchestra
of the guns shook the earth and rent the skies. Columns of earth rose
over the Turkish lines, and pillars of smoke, green and white and
brown and yellow, and columns of water, where a stray shell--Turkish
no doubt--plunged into the Tigris.

"The enemy lines must have been poor cover, and I was glad we had the
bulk of the guns on our side. All this shell fire should have been a
covering roof to our advance, but the Turk it appears was not skulking
as he ought.

"The B's came by in support and occupied an empty trench. They were
laughing and joking, but it was a husky kind of fun, and there was no
gladness in it, for everyone knew that we were in for a bloody day.
One of them tripped upon a telegraph wire. 'Not wounded yet!' a pal
cried. Just then another stumbled to an invisible stroke and did not
rise. A man ahead was singing nervously, 'That's not the girl I saw
you with at Brighton.'

"I went on to the next trench where a sergeant showed me his
bandolier. A sharp-nosed bullet had gone through three rounds of
ammunition and stu