After Kut
British prisoners of war recall their treatment after the end of the siege of Kut-Al-Amara
Voices of the First World War · BBC Radio 4
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Show Notes
Men recall their 'death march' to Baghdad and northwards after surrender to the Ottoman Army at the end of the siege of Kut-Al-Amara in April 1916, when, already weakened by dysentery and starvation after five months trapped inside Kut, they had to march hundreds of miles in searing heat, without water, to Prisoner of War camps. Drawing on the sound archives of the IWM and the BBC, and on a journal written by an Indian soldier and hidden in his boots, Dan Snow explores the varying treatment of the men according to rank, race and religion, as they travelled through villages and even lived in villas that had belonged to Armenians, but were now deserted.