The Mespot Letters of a Cotswold Soldier (Hardcover)

The Mespot letters of Frederick Witts, dating from December 1915 to December 1920, span a pivotal period of modern history in Iraq. As commander of No.2 Mobile Bridging Train, Witts was responsible for the crossing of the Tigrisat the Shumran bend in February 1917. This hugely difficult feat proved to be the beginning of the end to three hundred and fifty years of continuous Ottoman rule in Mesopotamia. After the war, Witts, as Brigade Major, was active in Kurdistan and on theUpper Euphrates, and later joined the staff of General Coningham, the most prominent British commander during the 1920 insurrection. Covering the peculiarities of day to day life in the officers' mess, the harshness of the country and the ordeals of war against the Turk and Arab, Frederick Witts' letters, written with affection to his aged mother in Upper Slaughter, give a compelling account of the life and thoughts of a British officer on service in Mesopotamia. Happily some letters from his mother to him also survive, and they give a vivid sense of the difficulties of life just after the first war for a Cotswold squarson family deprived of servants.