A summer inexpressibly harassing and depressed followed; but towards the end of 1916 affairs were reorganized, and at last a general was found. On the night of December 13 we crossed the Shat-el-Hai, and Maude's attack on Kut began. Ten weeks of fighting, very little interrupted by the weather, followed. It was stern work, hand-to-hand and trench-to-trench, as in France. By the end of the third week in February Kut was doomed. The Turk had made the mistake of leaving small, unsupported groups of men in angles and corners of the Tigris. Maude destroyed these, and between the 22nd and the 25th launched his final attacks simultaneously on both banks. A badly managed attack on Sannaiyat had failed on the 17th; but now, on the 22nd, the lines were stormed. Fighting continued here, and the river was crossed and bridged behind the Turks, above Kut, at Shumran. The Sannaiyat garrison fled precipitately, and the 7th Indian Division occupied successively the Nakhailat and Suwada lines with no opposition worth mentioning. Kut fell automatically, the monitors steaming in and taking possession. The infantry had no time to bother about it. Kut had become a symbol only. So the infantry swung by Kut and on to Baghdad. The cavalry and gunboats hunted the enemy northward, till he made a stand on the Diyaleh, a large stream entering the Tigris a few miles below Baghdad. Very heavy fighting and losses had come to the 13th Division, and the 7th Division would be the first to acknowledge that the honour of first entering Baghdad, for whatever it was worth, should have fallen to them. But, in spite of desperate attempts to cross, they were held on the Diyaleh. The 7th Division therefore bridged the river lower down, and after two days of battle in a sandstorm, blind with thirst--for the men had one water-bottle only for the two days--captured Baghdad railway-station, and threw pickets across the river into Baghdad town. This was on March 11. The 13th and 14th Divisions then crossed the Diyaleh, and were in Baghdad almost as soon as any one from the 7th Division. The 7th and 3rd Indian Divisions passed by Baghdad on opposite sides, as they had passed by Kut, and engaged the enemy's rearguards at Mushaidiyeh and in the Jebel Hamrin. They then concentrated again towards Baghdad.