SECRETS OF A KUTTITE: An Authentic Story of Kut, Adventures in Captivity and Stamboul Intrigue

The author of this book was a subaltern in 76th Battery, X Brigade, RFA, 6th (Poona) Division, commanded by Maj-Gen Sir Charles Townshend. Mousley joined as a reinforcement from India at Ctesiphon in November 1915, which was the limit of the British advance up the Tigris to Baghdad. Unable to progress further the division retreated to Kut-al-Amara, where it was besieged for nearly five months and eventually forced into surrender on 29th April 1916 through starvation and disease. Repeated attempts by the Tigris Corps to break through and relieve the garrison had failed – at a cost of 23,000 casualties. This was probably the greatest humiliation inflicted on the British army during the war. Close on 12,000 men, British and Indian soldiers and followers went into captivity where over 4,000 died, many under appalling conditions.
The first of the three parts into which the book is divided covers the retreat from Ctesiphon to Kut and the five-month siege, painting a graphic picture of the hardships involved. All the animals were slaughtered for food, and in a moving paragraph he describes the death of his own charger, which he could not bring himself to watch. He describes the brutality of the Turkish troops when they entered Kut, singling out the Kurdish rank and file as “the most barbarous savages in this country.” It was the Kurds who, five or six years previously, had unsuccessfully rebelled against the Turkish authorities, refusing to serve in the army. Part II describes the trek to captivity aife as a prisoner of war. Despite protests the officers were separated from the men and despatched by river to Baghdad, the rank and file had to march, many of them dying on the way. While in captivity Mousley edited a magazine called Smoke, and one chapter is devoted to reproduction of extracts from it. His efforts to escape failed but eventually he was sent to a hospital in Stamboul and the third part of the book describes his experiences in a hospital in which he suffered starvation and neglect. Another atttempt to escape, via the Sea of Marmora, failed and he ended up in prison. The final chapters describe the end for Turkey and Mousley’s manoeuvring to secure his release and his eventual return home