lied with bombs, but the enemy were well equipped with them.
Consequently the British were gradually driven down the trench from
traverse to traverse, in the direction of the river, where they
encountered another bombing party that was coming up a trench at right
angles. The British were placed in a desperate position, being jammed
in densely between these attacks, and literally squeezed over the
parapet. In evacuating the trench they were subjected to a deadly fire
in which they lost more men than in the attack.

[Illustration: The British Campaign in Mesopotamia.]

The uniform flatness of the terrain in this region and entire absence
of cover for the attacker, whether the movement be frontal or
enveloping, was responsible for the heavy losses the British incurred
in this engagement. Here there were no protecting villages, hedges, or
banks. A swift, headlong rush that could be measured in seconds was
impossible under the circumstances. At 2000 yards the British infantry
came under rifle fire, and had no communication trenches to curtail
the zone of fire. An armistice was concluded on January 21, 1916, for
a few hours, to allow for the removal of the wounded and the burial of
the dead. In forty-eight hours the Tigris had risen as high as seven
feet in some places and the country around was under water, which
effectually prevented all movements of troops by land.

General Townshend meanwhile, besieged at Kut-el-Amara, continued
cheerfully to repel attacks and to await the arrival of the relieving
force. He was well supplied with stores, and there was no fear of a
famine. He described his troops at this time as being in the best of
spirits. Evidently he was not in a position to be of any assistance to
the relieving force, whose advance had been delayed by the storms. At
the close of January, 1916, he reported that the enemy had evacuated
their trenches on the land side of the Kut defenses, and had retired
to a position about a mile away from the British intrenchments.

The floods of January, 1916, were a distinct benefit to General
Townshend, for the Turks, intrenched in a loop of the Tigris, were
driven out by the deluge and compelled to seek higher ground.

In the first days of February, 1916, Sir Percy Lake, who had succeeded
Sir John Nixon to the chief command of the British forces in
Mesopotamia, dispatched General Brooking from Nasariyeh with a column
up the River Shatt-el-Har, a branch of the Tigris, to make a