Mesopotamia

The poem is composed to commemorate the 4250 British (and Indian) soldiers killed after the siege of Kut-al-Amara

The siege which lasted for 147 days resulted in the surrender of the British and Indian troops, who were taken on a fatal foot march to Anatolia across the lands of Iraq in which this big number of soldiers passed away (Gardner,

poem, Kipling is neither blaming the land of Mesopotamia and condemn its people, nor

condemning it as being the land of doom, premonition a curse as in Abercrombie, Bottomley and J. E. Flecker.

Rather, he blames the men responsible for this large-scale massacre of the soldiers, i.e., the politicians who did not act according to their duty, and failed to rescue them on time