es for the smallest sore to heal.

Of the original thirty officers, eight are left here, Major Stillwell,
who is C.O., one Captain, Page-Roberts, a particularly nice fellow,
and five subalterns, named Harris, Forbes, Burrell, Bucknill and
Chitty: (Chitty is in hospital): and Jones, the M.O., also a very nice
man and a pretty good M.O. too. The new Adjutant is a Captain from 2nd
Norfolks named Floyd: he is also nice and seems good: was on
Willingdon's staff and knows Jimmy.

In honour of our arrival, they have adopted Double Company system. I
am posted to "A" Double Company, of which the Company Commander and
only other officer is Harris, aet. 19. So I am second in command and
four platoon commanders at once, besides having charge of the
machine-guns (not that I am ever to parade with them) while Chitty is
sick. It sounds a lot, but with next to no men about, the work is
lessened. On paper, "A" D.C was seventy-two strong, which, with my
fifty, makes 122: but in fact, of these 122, twenty-five are sick and
sixteen detached permanently for duties at headquarters and so on,
leaving eighty-one. And these eighty-one are being daily more and more
absorbed into fatigues of various kinds and less and less available
for parade. In a day or two we shall be the only English battalion
remaining here, so that all the duties which can't be entrusted to
Indian troops will fall on us.

I haven't had time to observe the birds here very much yet, but they
seem interesting, especially the water-birds. With regard to what I
wrote to Mamma about the teal, people who have been up the river say
they saw a very big flock of them at Kut. There were a lot of snipe
with them and about twenty bitterns, which surprises me. And about
eighty miles north of here there is a mud flat where great numbers of
mallards are assembling for migration northwards: and there are more
bitterns there than there are higher up even. These flocks about the
equinoxes are very curious. I expect the mallards will migrate
northwards, and the teal soon afterwards will become very scarce, but
I hope the bitterns will stay where they are. The snipe are less
interesting: they move about all over the place, wherever they can
pick up most food. These people put the size of the flock of teal at a
hundred and fifty and the mallards at five hundred, but you should, I
think, multiply the first by a hundred and the second only by ten.

I got Mamma's letter via the India Office ju