The narrative has arrived at the siege of Kut.
Self knows not the exact location of Kut, but she won’t let something like that impede her reading. Onward!
There is a little problem of the food supply for the British defenders :
General Townshend advised the commanders of the relief force that his food stores would be depleted by 23 April but that he would have enough horses to provide meat until 29 April.
An attempt is made to re-supply Kut by air-drop, but — alas! — the pilots have a really bad sense of direction: “. . . as often as not their parcels go into the Tigris or into the Turkish trenches!”
Final Tally:
- The siege of Kut lasted four months.
- In order to relieve 13,000 besieged troops in the city, the British suffered over 23,000 casualties.
This reminds her of another horrendous rescue operation which she read about recently in The Three-Year Swim Club: a World War II unit of Japanese American troops was sent in to rescue members of a platoon. They successfully completed their mission, suffering a terrible casualty rate, something like 50%, many times more than the number of men they ended up rescuing.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
