_2nd Lieutenant Guy Pedder--December 30._--“We are back again in the same camp as we started out from for this show,[22] and got back just in time, as it has rained almost ever since. We are pretty comfortable in our tents, after much digging. I mean, we dig out the inside of our tents, and make a trench all round to keep the water out. You achieve three things by doing this: (1) your tent is much warmer; (2) you have much more room and do not bump your head every time you turn round; (3) you keep dry.... We can’t possibly move up again for another show until the sun comes out and dries the mud, which is ankle-deep now. (Thank goodness! I was able to buy a pair of gum-boots from our Ordnance here.) Ormrod, Hill, and Lord arrived with a draft. They marched up-country and brought us some horses which we wanted badly. One night the Arabs scored over them well. Ormrod had his gun stolen out of his tent, Hill and Lord had all their kit taken, including bedding, valises, &c., and the sentries were on duty all round and within a few yards of the spot! The Arab is a marvellous thief.... The actual Christmas parcels have not arrived yet; all the same, we had a wonderful Christmas dinner only about three miles from Kut--soup, fish, mutton, and vegetables (we got the mutton after raiding an Arab Fort on Christmas Eve), champagne, two bottles for six of us (gift from Lord Curzon, I believe), an enormous plum-pudding which I bought at the E.F.C.[23] before we left here, also there was a Christmas cake and pudding given by telegraph. There is an E.F.C. up here now, but owing to transport difficulties it runs out of everything you want very quickly; but the best thing of all is our regimental coffee-shop (the only one in Mesopotamia, I believe). Even right up here it is open again, and you can buy anything from getting soda-water bottles refilled to buying assorted chocolates.... A tremendous thunderstorm is raging as I write, and it is coming down in buckets; to-morrow the mud will be knee-deep.” _2nd Lieutenant J. O. P. Clarkson--December 30._--“Here’s a good story and true. One of our monitors had been up to an advanced position to shell the Turks, but had got heavily shelled itself. After a few days of this they tried to pull the Turks’ leg a bit. They rigged a _mahailla_ (Arab boat) with funnels and mast to represent a monitor, towed it up during the night, and the next day put it into position, burning oily rags and brown paper to represent its being under steam. It was not shelled. They towed it up higher still. It was not shelled. The next day a notice appeared from the Turkish trenches, and it ran, “Your real monitors amuse us, but your dummy one is superb.”