SUNDAY, 13 FEBRUARY 1916
De Nogales spends the night aboard the Firefly, a sooty, bullet-riddled British gunboat that fell into Ottoman hands during the fighting at Umm two months ago. Both sides keep small flotillas of heavily armed boats on the Tigris, mainly to protect their own supply chain since the river, which is unusually difficult to navigate this year because of drought, is a living artery for both armies.
The faint roar of distant explosions can sometimes be heard and on the distant horizon oily smoke rises densely above some groves of palm trees. Somewhere over there is Kut al-Amara and its beleaguered defenders.
One of the men over there in the encircled town is Edward Mousley. At the moment he is suffering from dysentery and waking up this morning was more than usually unpleasant: apart from the inevitable diarrhoea he has severe pains in the small of his back and in his head, and he has a high temperature. The doctors' orders are simple: "Improve your diet." Mousley comments: "They might as well have recommended an ocean cruise." Food supplies are slowly but surely shrinking in Kut al-Amara. Some of the men who want to stay on their feet at any price keep themselves going on opium pills and various other home remedies, such as a mixture of castor-oil and Chlorodyne, a well-known analgesic patent medicine with a minty taste: its active ingredients are opium, cannabis and chloroform.*
The situation at Kut al-Amara is unchanged—they are all waiting for new efforts to relieve them. Some of them are growing impatient whereas others are simply waiting, bordering on apathetic, having stopped believing in a quick rescue. They talk jokingly of feeling "siegy" or "dugoutish." And the screw has just been tightened one more turn: they were bombed by an enemy plane today. Mousley despairs: "The circle is closed. We are being shot at from all directions, including above." The most upsetting news of the day is that people at home in Britain do not know anything about what is happening in Mesopotamia; they think the corps has just gone into some sort of winter hibernation.
I finished [reading] a novel today. It has at least made me long for England again. We are all full of longings; and the chief blessing of civilisation is that it supplies the wherewithal to quieten them. Lord! For a glass of fresh milk and a jelly. Temperature 1030 and shivering. I am going to have an attempt at sleeping. Everything is quiet. The sentry's steps beside my roof make the earth shake. It is the seventieth day of the siege.
* Chlorodyne, primarily intended for the treatment of cholera, wasn invented by a British army doctor in India and was much copied by competitors. It was very popular at the time, though the concoction was highly addictive and could even lead to death if taken in immoderate doses. It was eventually discontinued in its original composition—to the great sorrow of its many enthusiasts. Chlorodyne offers a good example of how the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were one of the most liberal periods in history where drug abuse was concerned; those involved would not, of course, have thought of it in that way.
~From "The Beauty and the Sorrow" by Peter Englund, p. 222