To my brother, Frank D. Thompson , Second-Lieutenant Civil Service Rifles, attached King's Royal Rifles; killed in action, near Ypres, Jan. 13, 1917. The Mesopotamian War was a side-show, so distant from Europe that even the tragedy of Kut and the slaughter which failed to save our troops and prestige were felt chiefly in retrospect, when the majority of the men who suffered so vainly had gone into the silence of death or of captivity. When Maude's offensive carried our arms again into Kut, and