Gates of Kut

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Night, like a dark and bloated buzzard, was winging its way slowly and uneasily over Mesopotamia.<br><br>In Kut-el-Amara, in that grim, tongue-shaped loop of the Tigris, the broken jumble of mud huts began to merge into strange, distorted shapes. The scraggy tamarinds and liquorice trees made a fretful murmuring. The stifled moans of the sick and the dying rose for a little space, faltered, and fell away again into silence.<br><br>Thin, skeleton fingers plucked aimlessly at the sand, and voices murmured and muttered deliriously of the white cliffs of Dover, of England and home, of London - gay, laughing, lamp-jewelled London, dancing down the roads of the world.<br><br>Towards the great marshes, stern and sinister in the growing darkness, isolated flares of light betokened the Turkish lines of investment and the redoubts of the enemy.<br><br>North, south, east and west they were merging into a circle, slowly narrowing, ever creeping closer.