[Illustration: THE GARDEN OF EDEN, KURNA. ]

 IN MESOPOTAMIA

 BY MARTIN SWAYNE

 _ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR_

 HODDER AND STOUGHTON

 LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO

 MCMXVII

 _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_

 LORD RICHARD IN THE PANTRY

 THE SPORTING INSTINCT

 CUPID GOES NORTH

 HODDER AND STOUGHTON

 CONTENTS

 PAGE I THE GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN 1

 II BASRA 19

 III THE SICK AND WOUNDED 37

 IV HEAT-STROKE 51

 V MIRAGE 61

 VI THE DAY'S WORK 71

 VII THE NARROWS 85

 VIII AMARA 101

 IX ARABIAN COMEDY 121

 X THE BATTLE OF THE BUND 131

 XI EDEN REVISITED 159

 ILLUSTRATIONS

 PAGE

 The Garden of Eden, Kurna. _Frontispiece_

 Towing on the Tigris. 9

 A Convoy of Sick and Wounded. 27

 The Hospital Washing. 45

 Donkey Labour in the Heat of the Day. 63

 On the Shatt-el-Arab near Basra. 81

 Arab Belum on Tigris. 99

 Ezra's Tomb. 117

 Walled Village on Banks of Tigris. 135

 The Tigris near Kurna. 143

IN MESOPOTAMIA

I

THE GATEWAY OF THE GARDEN OF EDEN

There is nothing to suggest that you are approaching the gateway of theGarden of Eden when you reach the top of the Persian Gulf, unless thesun be that Flaming Sword which turns every way to keep the way of theTree of Life. Of cherubim we could see no signs. We lay motionlessawaiting orders by wireless. Of the country before us we knew next tonothing. We did not grasp that the great river at whose mouth we lay wascalled the Shatt-el-Arab and not the Tigris; and I do not think that asingle one of us possessed a copy of the "Arabian Nights. " Few of usknew anything about the gun-running troubles in the Persian Gulf ofrecent years, and of the exploits of the Royal Indian Marine. 

The approach to the Shatt-el-Arab is remarkably featureless. After thestark fissured coast hills of Persia and the strip of red Arabian coastthat marks Kuweit, the mouth of the river appeared as a yellow line onthe horizon intersected by the distant sails of fishing boats. At thebar where the sand has silted, a few steamers were lying. A steam yachtflying the White Ensign, with a pennant that trailed almost down to herdecks, showing the length of service she had seen, passed us and droppedher anchor a mile to the south. The silence was only broken by theclacking of the fans in the saloon. One gazed listlessly west wards atthe quivering haze that veiled Kuweit. There was a rumour that theship's launch was going there with a party of nurses and a sharp voicesounded: "Nobody allowed on shore without a helmet. " But it was too hotto move. At length a fishing boat emerged from the haze and slowlyapproached, rowed by four Arabs. It drew alongside, a spot of vividcolour against the dark sea. In it were half a dozen big fish. The Arabsbegan to harangue the occupants of the lower deck. We watched themcuriously, perhaps wondering if they had poisoned the fish. The Tommiesstared at them in silence. They were the first inhabitants of thecountry that we had seen. 

The business of transhipping at the bar is a burden to all concerned. Asteamer of shallower draught came alongside, and the derricks started togrind and clatter, and the big crates swung up from one hold andplunged down into the other for hour after hour. A squall arose and theships had to part company and we lay for two days tossing and rolling ina dun-coloured atmosphere. Then once more we joined up, and theunloading continued of the four hundred tons of equipment, which hadalready been dumped on shore at Alexandria. It is a costly businessbringing out a hospital to these parts. About midday we weighed anchoron the new ship, and crept up the channel over the bar. There were nogas buoys to mark its course, and Fao, which lies near the mouth of theriver, had no lighthouse, so night traffic was presumably impossible. 

The sudden sight of the belts of palm trees, the occasional square muddwellings, and the steamy, hot-house look of the banks came as asurprise. Those of us who had been to the Dardanelles had half expectedthat this end of Turkey would be much like the other--broken countryand sandy scrub, with hills. But here is only a broad swift river, astrip of vivid green verdure, and beyond the immense plain stretching tothe horizon. In the stream was a small tug bearing the letters A. P. O. C. At Abadan we saw the big circular tanks of the Anglo-Persian Oil Companywhere the oil from Ahwaz, which travels through miles of piping, isrefined. Above Abadan, which is just a cluster of circular tanks, slender chimneys and square houses on the arid plain, with a mass ofbarges lining the numerous wharfs, we passed Mohammerah. On the oppositebank--the west bank is called the right bank--you can see the Turkishtrenches where they opposed our first advance among the palms at thebattle of Sahil on November 16th, 1914, with a force of five thousandmen and twelve guns. The ground is intersected with narrow creeks cutfor irrigation purposes; and the trenches form little crescent-shapeddepressions almost hidden by the reeds and grasses. From the ship itlooks a lush green country here, for there are rice fields dotted aboutand the river broadens out and surrounds an emerald island. Our 4, 000ton vessel swept up-stream at a speed of ten knots, with a great washspreading behind her, and her funnels towering high above the palms. Ourdestination was reached at six in the evening, about sixty miles fromthe mouth of the river, and the whole way up the scene had beenpractically unvarying--river and plain, and countless palms. We hadpassed the vessels sunk by the Turks to bar the progress of the originalexpedition. Masts and a funnel are visible, standing clear of the mainchannel. 

Basra was like coming on a bit of the London Thames from a distance. Lines of big ships appeared suddenly, round a bend of the river, anchored in mid-stream. There were hospital ships, cargo vessels, transports, war-ships, monitors, tugs, river boats, oil-drivenlighters--the ones we made the landing from at Suvla, with a coat of newpaint and the letters ML instead of K--barges, launches, nativedhows--which travel to Mombasa and Bombay--and innumerable lesser craft. Basra itself lies up a creek, and is invisible from the river. What yousee on the shore is properly called Ashar, but the two places merge intoone another. Owing to the absolute flatness of the country, a sense ofsmallness is produced everywhere. There is no background to giveperspective, and the great breadth of the sable river dwarfs the shore. 

We dropped anchor a little below the town, near Korah creek. It wasSunday and at that time it was still the custom of the inhabitants ofBasra to collect on the banks of the creek and hold a kind of socialparade from which the suggestion of a slave market was not entirelyabsent. There was a continual procession of boats and painted _belums_, the native gondola, long and narrow, with curved ends, and either rowedor poled by two _belumchis_. In them were fair-skinned, unveiled womenwith many bangles on their arms, wearing robes of dark brilliant hues. On the shore, under the palms, wandered a crowd of white-robed Arabs, with red or blue turbans. Occasionally one saw a khaki uniform. It wasintensely hot and damp. A haze lay over the further reaches of theriver, and the sky had a brassy look unlike the intense turquoiseclarity of the Egyptian sky. The palm fronds seemed metallic. As far asthe eye could see along the right bank lay a confused mass of low whitebuildings, tents, huts of yellow matting and piles of stores. Gangs ofArabs and Indian coolies were at work at the low wooden landing stage, and over the scene towered the gaunt masts of the wireless station. Theleft bank was chiefly palm grove, save for a gap where stood a bigbuilding taken over by our flying men. 

[Illustration: TOWING ON THE TIGRIS. ]

A military authority came on board, wondering whether we were a cargoof wood or mules. A hospital had not been expected, and we passed thenext day in idleness. On the third day our four hundred tons of stuffwere swung off into _mahallas_, the native barges, which are wide craftdecorated with carving and paint, both stem and stern pointed and highout of the water, and amidships close down to the water-line. The Arabssquatting on the painted poops of these ships seemed sullen. They lookedas cut-throat a lot as you could desire. When the boats were loaded upthey drifted off, and by means of a tattered bit of sacking for a sail, and a long pole, managed to reach their destination somehow. It wascurious to see these primitive craft filled with the black cases of theprecious X-ray plant. 

The creeks round Ashar branch off at right angles to the Shatt-el-Arabat intervals of a few hundred yards, and extend for two or three milesinland. They are broad and richly bordered with palms and pomegranate. In places a network of vines festoons the trunks. A yellow tinge in theheart of the palms showed the coming crop of dates. Seen in a picturethese creeks are idyllic, winding broad, calm and peaceful through thegroves. Slim boats glide up and down them, nut-brown children splash inthem, and women, veiled in black, come from the little villages to drawwater in brass vessels at their margins with graceful movements. 

We landed from a roomy barge with a tug fastened alongside. The menwere cheery, and a mouth-organ and a mandoline wafted us on. Somethingdark and indeterminate swept by on the swift current. It was said to bethe body of a dead Turk, bound for the Persian Gulf, after its voyage oftwo hundred odd miles from Kut. We landed, uncomfortably hot. The menfell in and we prepared to march off. A swarthy Arab, in red and whiteheadgear held in position by two thick rings of camel hair, wearingcurved slippers and saffron-coloured robes, stood scowling before us, spitting at intervals. A group of sappers near by seemed unaffected byhis behaviour. The scowl and the spitting seem merely habits, induced bythe country. But it is necessary to orientate oneself very carefully inthe East. A long tramp followed up Dusty Lane, between scorching mudwalls. We passed dirty booths, naked children with frizzy hair, thinfaced women with swaggering hips, and occasional military police inshirt-sleeves carrying thick sticks. The sight of a large cat sitting ina niche, blinking in that excellent manner of inward ecstasy, wascheering. On, beyond the town the march continued, the sweat pouring offus, and tunics becoming stained with dark patches--through the camparea, past Indian troops; past horses, tossing and switching, surroundedby clouds of flies; past bullocks, huge, delicately pastel-tintedbeasts, sprawling under the feathery palms; past screaming mules, motorlorries, wayside canteens and squads of men, until Makina Plain came insight. It was in this neighbourhood that our site lay, alongside a creekwhere a liquorice factory had been in the days of peace. The firstimpression was desolating. The place looked like a bricklayer's yard. Aglance was sufficient to estimate it would take many long weeks beforeit was completed for use. Several large iron-roofed sheds stood by thewater's edge. Gangs of Arabs were at work; strings of donkeys carryingmud raised the dust in heavy clouds; carpenters in blue trousershammered and sawed; planks, bricks, barrels of concrete, and piles ofmatting littered the ground: and upon all the vertical rays of the sunbeat down unmercifully. The creek was full of the _mahallas_ that hadbrought up our equipment, and for the rest of that day our men toiledand sweated over the crates and boxes, and bedsteads and bales ofblankets, singing in monotone a rhythmic refrain in imitation of thenative coolies when carrying loads. The native chants are simple. 

Singer: "To-morrow we will eat rice and meat!"

Chorus: "May Allah grant it!"

Singer: "We are doing a great deal of work!"

Chorus: "May Allah reward us!"

 * * * * *

The Tommies' refrain was more picturesque. Imagine six men carrying acrate. 

Singer: (Softly) "Is it 'ot?" (Pause. )

Chorus: "I don't think!"

Singer: (Fuller and staccato) "'Ot as 'ell?"

Chorus: "I don't think!" etc. 

General Chorus: (repeatedly, with passion). 

 "Aller, Oller, Aller! Oh, Aller, Oller, Aller! Aller, Oller Oo!"

Bully beef came along in the afternoon, and we had landed with fullwater-bottles, for drinking water was unavailable. Towards evening somedouble-roofed tents were run up. The men settled down in the empty shedsalongside the creek. We got to bed in a thunderstorm--a vivid zigzagbanging affair that circled round most of the night. The rain turnedthe ground into something beyond description as regards its slipperyproperties. Only a native donkey can keep footing in such ground. Thereis no road metal available in Mesopotamia. It is a stoneless place. Thefrogs trumpeted in chorus all night; packs of dogs or jackals sweptabout in droves, once at full pelt through our tent, like devils of thestorm. It was nightmarish, but sleep brought that wonderful balancingforce that sometimes clothes itself in dreams, and steeps the spirit inall that is lacking. Just before falling asleep I reflected that Adamand Eve might well have been excused in such a country. 

II

BASRA

We reached Mesopotamia when the hot weather was beginning. The campaignto relieve Kut was at its height, and the wounded and sick were comingdown river in thousands. Apart from these there were big reinforcementcamps on Makina Plain, and all around us the daily sick rate was rapidlyincreasing, and men straight from England, unused to hot climates, werebeing sent in big batches off the incoming transports. There was verylittle ice to be had, and so far as we were concerned there were nofans, electric or otherwise, with which to ventilate the sheds. 

The urgency of the situation demanded that we should open what wards wecould for the reception of sick and wounded at once. We had no nurses, partly because there was no accommodation for them. Four sheds alongsidethe creek were got in order. Iron bedsteads draped in white, mosquitonets resembling bridal veils, bedside tables, and cupboards arrangedthemselves in rows. An immense hammering and shouting filled thestifling air. The sheds began to look moderately inviting--neat andclean, smelling faintly of antiseptics which smelt better than thethings in the creek. At first about fifty beds were put into each shed;in a short time beds were crowded into every available corner of theclearing. Fresh sheds were being erected by natives. Since the groundwas undermined by marsh, the sheds had to be built on piles driven sixfeet into the spongy soil. There was only one pile driver, whichresembled a cross-section of a lamp post, and was worked by a fatigueparty of wild-haired Indian troops from Afghanistan regions. One wouldhave thought from their flashing eyes when the pile driver crashed homethat they played a secret game in which each imagined his bitterestenemy was in the place of the pile. 

The problem of water arose at once. There was no general water supply atthat time, and each unit had to solve its own problem. Our supply had tocome from the creek, which was thick and turbid and contained amultitude of unsavoury things. At first it was sedimented with alum, which precipitated the suspended matter in a gelatinous mass, and theclear fluid was chlorinated with bleaching powder. There is only oneconsolation in drinking well chlorinated water. You know that itcontains nothing except chlorine. With whisky it forms a mixture thatit is difficult to describe. After a time two tanks were put in orderand arranged on brick furnaces, and from a third tank water that hadbeen allowed to settle was run off and boiled. These were satisfactory. An hour's exposure of the boiling water in jars of porousclay--chatties--made it decently cool. Chatties of great size wereprocured from the bazaar and placed outside each ward. Nowadays watercomes in pipes from the Shatt-el-Arab, being taken from the middlelayer, which is clearest. The best water comes from the Euphrates, whichjoins the yellow Tigris at Kurna about forty miles above Basra. It sendsdown a tributary which flows into the Tigris a few miles above Basra. From here water could have been conveyed in pipes. But the scheme wasthought unnecessarily elaborate and costly. 

It must be remembered that in a place like Mesopotamia water is themain problem. A clear, clean, pure water supply means an incalculablesaving of life. A dirty supply may mean the failure of the campaign. Inorder to get good water for troops nothing should be neglected oroverlooked, and no kind of compromise should be permitted. There isperhaps not a single act in war more criminal and more worthy of deaththan to allow troops to muddle along and get what water they can, underlocal arrangements, when a pure central supply is possible. 

Sick Tommies in tropical climates appreciate soda water. At first wewere told to get our supply from a native in the bazaar at Ashar. Theproblem at this time did not concern the soda water but the bottles. There was a great shortage of soda water bottles in Mesopotamia. Breaksand bursts were frequent, and it seemed impossible to import any newones, and they cost about sixpence each. Our hospital was situated at aconsiderable distance from the town. We were not allowed a motor launch, and the roads were often impassable for bullock tongas, owing to thefloods which were then prevalent. Soda water was therefore fetched by_belum_. You were poled down the creek to the river, and rowed throughthe maze of traffic to Ashar creek. Turning out of the broad swiftriver, up the noisy creek you came on the river-side cafés, built onpiles and filled with splenetic-eyed Arabs sipping coffee and variouscoloured sweet drinks. A cheap gramophone playing a thin Eastern music, may be sounding. The conversation is animated and guttural, constantlyinterspersed with that hollow, metallic rasp that is like the noise ofan engine exhaust. The town is of white mud and stone, with woodenbalconies painted a vivid blue, and flat roofs. A minaret rises behindit with a blue-tiled extremity supporting the upraised hand andcrescent. The streets are narrow and airless. In the shops are a mass ofarticles of all descriptions: tinned stuff, tobacco, clocks, hair-oil, cheap jewellery, odd bottles of doubtful wine, scent, rugs, coppervessels, sweets, sauces, pickles. Innumerable flies surround everything. On much of the tinned stuff were very old labels. No man of experienceup-country in India will touch tinned stuff of that description. Thesoda water factory was in a small courtyard. There was a big greengasometer of carbon dioxide, a glittering brass-bound pump and a fillingapparatus. Three tubs were on the floor containing a blue, a red and aclear fluid. These, said the Arab proprietor, were English disinfectantsin which the bottles were rinsed. Here you waited until your bottleswere refilled, at one anna (one penny) each. This represented a profitof 1, 200 per cent. The water which was used for filling them was takenfrom the centre of the Tigris. Ice was obtained elsewhere, made from anammonia plant, in bars two feet by six inches. The necessity for ice wasimperative, but it could only be supplied in small quantities then. These native plants were mostly taken over by the military as time wenton. A single bad heat-stroke case would often use up the whole day'ssupply to the hospital. That was why ice was an imperative necessity. Itmeant so many lives saved. In India ice is manufactured by machines inquantity wherever it is required. 

[Illustration: A CONVOY OF SICK AND WOUNDED. ]

After soda water, the sick Tommy requires certain delicacies in food. Eggs and chickens and fruit and vegetables were necessary. Thequartermaster soon began to lift up his voice. What with the supply andtransport depots of the Indian Army and our own Army Service Corps, andthe inevitable confusion of two different Army systems, he becameextremely irritable. This confusion existed in every department. On themedical side, there was the British scale of field ambulances andhospitals, and this differs entirely from the Indian scale. What couldhave been more suitable for muddling than this? Its effects could beseen in the expression of the quartermaster. 

I can see him clearly, a plump, stocky man, with arms akimbo, his helmeton the back of his head, the flesh of his face in folds of disgust withsweat pouring off him, and his once elegant waxed moustache drooping, saying in a chant: "The man who gets me out to this ---- country againisn't born yet. " That was when the bullock tongas, after travellingover the surface of this cradle of the earth all day in search ofcertain supplies, returned empty. Chickens and eggs were local produce. The natives put fancy prices on things. What we paid was supposed to bea controlled price. It must be remembered that we introduced a lot ofmoney into the country, and entirely changed the financial standards ofthe Arabs. Arab coolies got tenpence a day--that is, their pay was notfar short of the European Tommy. Sometimes they struck for higher wages. It did not breed a good spirit, but it may have been the best spiritunder the circumstances. It was, at times, necessary to use violence to_belumchis_, who insolently demanded absurd charges, and a certain padregained respect by administering a severe thrashing to one of theserascals. When the Russians came down, one of them was obstructed for amoment by an Arab on the river bank. The Russian officer--a bigfellow--picked him up and threw him into the river. 

The chickens were poor. Three might weigh in the aggregate a pound and ahalf. The supply of eggs was limited when procured through contractors, but it was possible to obtain a few from other sources. As regardsfruit, there was practically none. Potatoes were procurable in thispart, but not higher up the river. Owing to the intense heat and lack ofstorage accommodation, vast quantities of food perished. Piles of boxescontaining cigarettes, that had lain in the sun, were found to containnothing but fine dust on being opened. It was the same way withbiscuits. Potatoes rotted in millions. The whole problem was one ofimmense difficulty. The milk that was used was almost wholly tinned. Theuse of fresh milk which was tried later at Amara was not a verysuccessful experiment. It required careful boiling, and often curdledin mass. It was then boiled in a large number of small vessels, withbetter results, but the supply drawn from outlying villages, and broughtdown by river, was never adequate, and boiled milk is not very pleasant. Bread was baked in the neighbourhood by army bakers, and eventually, when proper ovens were made, was good. Sugar was plentiful, sandy incolour, and full of extraneous matter, but quite adequate. There was noshortage in tea. Fresh meat was a ration in Basra, but Indian cooksseemed to make a better job of it than British. It was tough and stringyand required a great deal of stewing. Rice was an occasional ration inBasra, and a daily ration higher up, where it took the place ofpotatoes. Lime juice, as a ration, was very uncertain. It was possibleto get it in the bazaar, and the Tommy could get it at the Y. M. C. A. Huts. Of these huts it is impossible to speak too highly. The Tommyalone knows what he would have done without them. You drank, in the hotweather, amazing quantities of fluid, and lime juice and water was theusual mixture until the sun went down. One paid two shillings andeightpence--two rupees--for one of those long, narrow, golden bottles, with leaves and fruit moulded on their exterior. Wines and spirits couldbe ordered through agents in Basra from Bombay at reasonable rates. Bombay is about five days by steamer from Basra. It was almost auniversal experience to find alcohol necessary in the evening. The mindwas exhausted, food was unattractive, conversation was impossible, thepassage of time immeasurably slow, and a restless irritation pervadedone until a dose of alcohol was taken. Its effect was humanising. Still, it is worth remembering that the Prophet forbade alcohol to the peopleof the country. But then he permitted other things. 

Owing to the complaints about food supplies, in the early part of June, in the second year of the campaign, there was published an order thatall troops were to have certain fruit and vegetable variations in diet. Lists of articles were given, and the scale was very generous andsensible. The actual supply of the stuff, however, did not come as wemight have been led to expect. This was because most of the articles inthe lists were starred, which meant that they were only supplied whenavailable, and I suppose India, which had to run several otherexpeditions besides Mesopotamia, could not possibly produce enoughmaterial to satisfy all requirements. At this time, too, many of thecargo vessels were occupied in bringing immense supplies of wood fromIndia, and the local produce of Mesopotamia did not go nearly farenough for the purpose. Some officers planted various seeds in patchesadjoining their quarters, but the business of watering them wastroublesome. A ration of fresh limes was served to our men on the 21stof June for the first time, but the supply of these ran out the nextday. Some of the men retained these small, wrinkled fruits ascuriosities. Fish, an intermediate diet for intestinal cases, was sorelymissed. But it was quite out of the question. The river fish, of course, were fairly numerous, but the uncertainty of their supply was too great, and they had to be cooked very soon after being caught. There was alwaysa great deal of amateur angling in the evenings, and in the creek by ourhospital a kind of mud fish was caught, full of small, apparentlyunattached bones, and tasting flat and stale. 

It is curious to reflect that, in the second year of the campaign, thisgreat country of future agricultural development which is traversed byimmense volumes of water and whose atmosphere resembles that of ahot-house, could not produce sufficient fruit or vegetables to supplythe relatively small military forces it contained. For these forces, ifstretched out along one bank in single file, each man at arm's lengthfrom his fellow, would not nearly have reached from the mouth of theShatt-el-Arab to Basra itself. And the front lay more than two hundredmiles above Basra. 

III

THE SICK AND WOUNDED

The sick and wounded began to arrive as soon as the wards were ready, coming up the creek in boats from the convoys that were in the river. The convoys consisted of river boats with a big barge lashed on eachside. The steamers were taken from many quarters, from the great riversof India, from the Nile--some saw service in the Nile War--and from theThames. Some were local and belonged to Messrs. Lynch, who ran a serviceto Baghdad before the war. Some burned coal and some oil. A largeconvoy--that is the steamer and its two lateral barges--might carrythree or four hundred cases in emergencies. The time they took totravel from the front down to Basra, which is a distance of about twohundred miles, depended very much on the luck they experienced ingetting through the Narrows. The passage of this bit of the river willbe described in a later page. Three days was a pretty quick journey. Travelling by night was impossible. In rounding the sharp bends of theriver, which winds across the plain in a most extraordinary manner, these convoys often cannoned helplessly against the banks. At well-knowncannoning places Arabs collected with baskets of eggs and chickens andmelons for sale. The sick and wounded lay closely packed on the deckunder a single thickness of canvas awning. In the great heat ofmidsummer this was insufficient protection, but it was impossible forthe medical officers of the ships to obtain any extra canvas, and itwas thought that reed matting in close proximity to the funnels would bedangerous. Tinned milk for bad cases and bully beef, stew, and bread andjam for those fit to eat it were the main rations, but soup and eggswere often available. The difficulties of catering for a crowded convoy, with only a small galley, were considerable. Water was taken from theriver, and chlorinated in tanks on board. 

On reaching Basra the convoys discharged their patients either at thebig British hospital, that was formerly the palace of a Sheik, andstands on the river's edge, or at one or other of the Indian hospitalsthat lie beside it. The accommodation for British troops was not greatat the time, so that it was the custom to transfer cases as soon aspossible into the hospital ships, which could come right alongside thepiers, and send them to India. Our hospital had four hundred bedsavailable within a short period. As a matter of fact, many more weresqueezed into odd places during times of pressure. 

The appearance of the sick and wounded defies description. Like theGallipoli lot, only worse, they were lean, gaunt, haggard skeletons, hollow-eyed, with rivulets of perspiration furrowing the dirt of theirfaces. Looking back from a better state of affairs to those days, thestrange spectres that staggered off the boat become softened in outline. It is only by the aid of pen, pencil, brush or film that their grimnessis kept alive in the mind. 

They cheered up considerably after a day or two, and when it came tocensoring their letters, not a word of complaint did one find; nor, forthat matter, any news. The absence of nurses was a disappointment forthem, but the luxury of a spring mattress, of cool water in quantity, and of being under a roof out of the sun made up for that in somedegree. They were full of rumours. Of the general situation they knewnothing. One said we had half a million men in the field. Anotherreckoned we had a division or two at the most. Many seemed to put thefigure at six divisions. A British division is about eighteen thousandmen, and an Indian division less. They were sure that Kut would berelieved. It was at the time when the news was looked for daily. Thewhole place was rich in tales. Every depot on shore, and every ship inthe stream, had its stories. Kut was to be occupied by us on thefollowing Sunday. General X had stated it quite decisively, with anelegant gesture of confidence. General Y had sworn it, banging thetable. General Z had mentioned it casually, a cigar between his teeth. The Turks were hopelessly demoralised. They had no ammunition, no food, and no heart. Hopes ran high, and everyone who came up from Ashar waseagerly questioned. We woke one morning to hear a great noise of steamsirens from the river, and for a time lay in blissful happiness, certainit could only mean one thing. It was like the night we lay on theGallipoli sand some days after the landing, in the darkness, sipping ourfirst tot of rum. Our hearts were merry, for had we not just heard thatAchi Baba had fallen, that Bulgaria and Roumania had declared war onTurkey, and that the crackle of musketry to the north-east was due tocertain Boers who were swarming up the heights overhanging the KishlarRocks? She must be a woman of temperament, Rumour, for when she smilesshe is so charming; but when she frowns, who can be so ugly?

During this time considerable activity prevailed throughout the Basraregion. Near by, on Makina Plain, a vast flat expanse of bare earthbeyond the shadow of the palm plantations, a perpetual dust arose. Transport columns, guns and troops were always on the move, and thecamps grew in size until the whole place was dotted with white canvasand yellow matting huts. The skirling of the pipes, the beating of thedrums, the sound of the bugle and the tramp of feet continually camefrom the road that ran along the bank opposite the hospital. Wagonsrumbled over the wooden bridge, and the deep note of the incomingsteamers reverberated over the groves. But a difficulty began to arise. All these incoming troops that were concentrating on the plain were newto the country. The heat was increasing rapidly. It had long passed thelimits of the most intense English summer, and the mercury was nowrising above 100 degrees in the shade. The sky was cloudless andbrassy. The floods each day left great areas of damp, steamy marsh whenthe tidal river fell. Mosquitoes were beginning to fill the night withtheir thin screaming. Small, almost impalpable, colourless insects, whose bite is like a red hot wire and who can penetrate the meshes of anordinary mosquito net with ease, began to infest the place. These weresand-flies. They are surely the most successfully maddening insect everdesigned by the Lord of Flies. They give rise to a malady known assand-fly fever, which is like influenza and drains the body of allvitality for many days. In addition to this, either the food, the water, the dust, or the day flies were spreading about a form of diarrhoeawhich rapidly turned into dysentery. The day flies were a swiftlygrowing army. Breeding grounds in the surrounding camps, in the horselines, the bullock lines and native villages were numerous. They werenothing like the flies at Mudros when the whole roof of a tent at nightmight be uniformly black with them, and eating was in the nature of afree fight. A couple of hundred or so to each tent was perhaps theaverage, but they made rest a matter of difficulty. The Red Crossfortunately supplied us with instruments of fly destruction, and lateron fly experts were sent out. 

[Illustration: THE HOSPITAL WASHING. ]

The result of all this was that the curve of sickness began to mountsteeply, and it became necessary to make some provision for the victims. Since our position was central as regards reinforcement camps, we weredelegated to deal with local sick, and after that arrangement very fewof the cases sent down from the front came our way. For the first fewdays the number of incoming sick could be dealt with adequately. But astime went on, and the mercury rose higher and higher in the lifelessair, the number increased and became formidable. Long lines of ambulancewagons and bullock tongas crept steadily from every quarter to thehospital. Beds were crowded into every corner of the wards. We had nofans. Imagine, you who live in civilisation, what an electric fan maymean. You can see it spinning in the corner of your club or restaurantand think nothing of it. But in that place it meant the differencebetween life and death. Picture yourself tossing in a high fever in thecentre of a stifling ward, with the temperature above 90 degrees allthrough the night, and not a breath of wind stirring. Then think what itwould mean to find yourself placed suddenly under the whirling vanes ofa big fan, lying with your mouth wide open, taking great gulps of thecool rushing air. When we moved up river, three months later, it wasrumoured the fans were on their way from India. 

The maladies that were commonest were malaria, diarrhoea, dysentery, jaundice and heat-stroke. There were some scattered cases of cholera, and a few of typhoid. The typhoid began in earnest later on, as well assand-fly fever. Besides these there was a skin disease which we calledBasra sore--a very indolent ulcer which is not painful, but tends tospread over the legs and arms, leaving a flexible, bluish scar when iteventually heals. There was also an ill-defined syndrome, termedvariously Mesopotamitis or acute debility, or the Fear of God. Officially one described it as the effects of heat. But of all these themost pitiful was heat-stroke. 

IV

HEAT-STROKE

I do not know of any other malady so dramatic, or so painful to witness, as heat-stroke, with the exception, perhaps, of acute cholera. It issomething that belongs to Mesopotamia in a peculiar sense, in that itseems to express in visible and concentrated form the silent hostilityof the country which was noticed by the ancients. For Mesopotamiawelcomes no man. It is a profound enigma. What do those two giganticrivers mean that rush through those vast stretches of barren land? Forwhat ultimate destiny were they designed? It is like looking on twoenormous electric cables, carrying a current of incalculable amperage, lying beside a vast but motionless machinery, because no contact hasbeen made. Whatever the answer may be it has been long in coming. Dwelling beside them, one cannot help speculating, for there is a kindof fatality that concerns the disposition of matter in Nature. Oilfields and rubber trees existed, one might say, as enigmas, until theinternal combustion engine and motor cars dawned on the world andexplained their riddle. This was their fate. And of Mesopotamia, whoshall say that it may not be concerned with a yet unborn attitude in usEuropeans when we will turn wholly to the produce of the earth?

To gain some idea of heat-stroke it is necessary to grasp the conditionsthat produce it. A typical hot day begins with a dawn that comes as asudden hot yellow behind the motionless palms. A glittering host ofdragon-flies rises up from the swamps, wheeling and darting after themosquitoes. In the growing light mysterious shapes slink past. They arethe camp dogs returning from their sing-song, which has kept you awakehalf the night. Inside the mosquito net you see various gorged littleinsects struggling to get out of the meshing through which they passedso easily when they were slim and hungry. The hot beam of the sun picksout your tent, and the mercury goes up steadily. At five you are bathedin perspiration as you lie in bed. It has been in the neighbourhood of90 degrees throughout the night; you have probably spent most of itsmoking in a chair in the moonlight listening to horses whinnying, donkeys braying, dogs barking and yelping without a pause, and mengroaning and tossing in the steamy sick tents. The business of gettingup is one of infinite weariness. There is nothing fresh in the morningfeeling. At eight the mercury is probably 100 degrees. At times, as youdress after a tepid bath, it is necessary to sit down and take a rest. Your vesture is simple--a thin shirt, open at the collar, and a pair ofshorts, stockings and shoes. During the day your feelings do notcorrespond to the height of the mercury, for after breakfast a certainamount of energy possesses you, and the morning's work becomes possible. But after a couple of hours, in the neighbourhood of eleven, when it maybe anything from 110 to 120 degrees in the shade, a kind of enervationsets in. This is partly due to lack of food. For some reason we found itnecessary to eat a considerable amount. The theory of a simple diet, alittle fruit, meat once a day and in small quantity, did not work outin practice. After midday the world is a blinding glare and the intakeof air seems to burn the lungs. A comparative stillness descends on thescene. On the plain activities cease. Through the double canvas roofingof a tent the sun beats down like a giant with a leaden club. Thetemperature in the wards increases. At the worst moments you feeldistinctly that it would be possible, by giving way to something thatescapes definition, to go off your head. A spirit of indifference toeverything is necessary. Any kind of worry is simply a mode of suicide. A man, for instance, who feels continually he ought to be up and doing, and that to lie still in vacancy is a sin, does not do well, unless, perhaps, he dwells in a cool stone house, under fans, with plenty ofice, as was the luck of some. There must be no inner conflicts. Crankssoon suffer. Life becomes simplified. An oriental contempt of the West, with all its preoccupations, grows insensibly. When a dripping orderlycame to rouse you to see some case, you understood perfectly theattitude of mind that has produced the idea of Kismet. Why move? If theman dies, it is Allah's will. It is Allah's will that he is sick. Lethim remain in the hands of Allah. 

It was during the afternoon and evening that heat-stroke occurred in themain when the humidity of the air began to go up. A great many of thenew troops had no idea of the danger of the sun. The Tommy does notestimate a situation very quickly. The attempt to change the main mealof the day to an evening hour did not meet with success, and during theafternoon the men would sit bucking away in their tents, and refuse toadapt themselves to the idea of a siesta. Moreover, the Tommy isobstinate by nature and does not like to give in. He goes on marchingin the sun, even though he feels bad, and the collapse is swift andfatal. 

At about five o'clock, with the temperature falling and the humidity ofthe air increasing, a period of intense discomfort set in. Perspirationwas so profuse that clothes became wringing wet like bathing suits, evenif you were sitting still. A kind of air hunger ensued. The few birds inthe groves sat with their beaks wide open. It was then that theambulance wagons began to roll in with their burden of heat-strokecases, and continued until after sunset. It is a malady which, as I havesaid, is dramatic and painful to witness. .. . 

A heat-stroke station was prepared at the water's edge containing acouple of baths and an ice chest, and patients were put into the chillwater as soon as possible. They were slapped and punched and laved tillthey began to turn blue and the temperature fell. Then they were put ina blanket, if any collapse showed, or just left naked on a bed in theopen. Fear played a powerful part in the malady. It tended to produce itand to cause relapses, and it was good practice to use directcounter-suggestion whenever the patient was conscious, as well as brandyand morphia. The worst of it was that many of those patients whorecovered over night died next afternoon as they lay in the suffocatingward. What was possible with wet sheets and small pieces of ice wasdone, but it was a wretched business, and those who were in Basra atthat time and saw those spectacles will never forget them; nor will theyforget the silent, impotent rage that filled the mind at the thought ofthe giant-bodied, small-headed Colossus of war which makes a uselesssacrifice of men in ways such as these every day. But it had one usefuleffect, perhaps. A really Zoroastrian reverence for the sun came afterseeing a case, and a man learnt to look on his pith helmet and spine padas his best friends. 

V

MIRAGE

On the 28th of April, after a week of conflicting rumours, we heard thatKut had fallen. As a nation we take reverses with consummate coolness. Whatever one thought inwardly, work went on as usual, and in the men'slines there was very little comment. Up to the last moment Rumour wasoptimistic. She spread a most mysterious yarn about the ship that triedto escape Turkish vigilance and get to Kut with supplies. It was, shesaid, full of gold. For what purpose she did not specify, but it soundedpromising. This was her last fling. After that she changed her mask andlooked ugly. Forty thousand Arabs were mustering at Kuweit. Germancruisers were in the Persian Gulf, sinking shipping right and left. TheTurks were coming down on Nasireyah in tremendous force. Trouble wasbrewing at Shaiba. In the last respect she proved correct, though thetrouble was not great. At Shaiba, which lies about twenty miles west ofBasra across the plain, a remarkable battle was fought in the April ofthe year before. A Turkish force of twelve thousand regulars and thirtyodd guns, with numerous Arabs, was routed at an extreme and criticalmoment, it is said, owing to a mistake. The mistake, for once, was onthe part of the Turks. Fighting had been very severe. We had no reservesand things were looking black. Numerous Arab tribesmen who had remainedas neutral spectators were beginning to take it into their heads that wewere losing, and that only means one thing to them. It means they atonce join forces with the victorious side, and add their ghastlydevilry to the general merriment. The Turks, under Suleiman Askari, hadbeen certain of victory. Victory would have meant the evacuation ofBasra, if not of Mesopotamia. So sure had the Turks been that they hadstruck a medal for the occasion, celebrating the triumph of the captureof Basra. Our men found sacks full of these cheap aluminum badges in theTurkish trenches, and they were sold afterwards in the bazaar at Basraby the thousand. But the Turks never wore them, for, at the most extremeand critical moment, across the plain there came a swirling column ofdust, a flashing of wheels, and a thundering of hoofs. The sight was toomuch for the Turks. Another battery, or even a whole brigade ofartillery, after those three exhausting days of fighting, was not worthwaiting for. So they rose from their trenches and began to flee, andthe Arabs, changing their minds with incredible swiftness, fell on themin the rear and cut and slashed them about considerably. In themeanwhile the strange column galloped up. But there were no guns. Inplace of guns stood a strangely assorted collection of wagons, springcarts, tongas--anything on wheels--that a certain doctor had gottogether and brought up at full speed to take away the wounded. TheTurkish Commander, Suleiman Askari, committed suicide. 

[Illustration: DONKEY LABOUR IN THE HEAT OF THE DAY. ]

A New Zealander came into hospital one day from Shaiba way. He was awireless man, and being so, had found something in the desert thatpuzzled the science of his mind. He explained the matter. Out there itis a white, undulating expanse, burning hot, but with more air than inBasra. There are extraordinary effects of perspective. A man standing ashort way off may assume gigantic proportions, or look like a dwarf. Amotor car near by would seem to lose its solidity and dissolve into afew filmy lines. The mirage of water is everywhere. An Arab might lie inthe open and no one would see him. A post might look like a horseman atfull gallop. It was a country of topsy-turveydom as regards thesubjective estimate of the eyes. But what puzzled the wireless man wasthis. He thought he understood how eye-strain and difference ofrefractive power of the layers of heated air, or reflected light fromthe ground and such physical considerations could cause these illusions. But what he could not understand was how it came about that several menwould experience exactly the same illusion. Why should a postsimultaneously appear as an Arab on horseback or an Arab crawlingstealthily on the ground to half a dozen men? Mirage, like Rumour, is acurious thing. It may have some inner connection with the set of aman's feelings. It has its pleasant side when it paints water and palmswhere there is no water nor any palms. It has its sinister side when itclothes the most innocent features of the landscape in images of dread. Who knows how it touched up that flying column of ambulance wagons inthe eyes of the Turks? There are certain areas that are constantly thesite of mirage. Our gunners found this a continual difficulty at thefront, for the hostile Arabs, knowing the mirage areas, would get intothem and make ranging impossible. A transport column on the move throughmirage is a curious sight. You see, across the plain, a long line ofblack dots, which are the wagons on the move. But apparently they arepassing through the centre of a narrow lake, that runs in the samedirection as their line of advance. The reflection in the lake isperfect in every detail and that is suspicious, for a train of wagonsand horses crossing a shallow lake would stir up the water and disturbreflection. But there is another thing that helps you to recognisemirage. At the tail of the column rises a cloud of dust and here andthere along the line you can make out a little wreath of dust risingapparently from the surface of the mirroring water. 

The fall of Kut did not ease the pressure at the hospitals. The sickrate was increasing steadily. The Shimal, the north-west wind that comesjust in time to make it possible for you to believe in Providence, wasnot due until the middle of June. Down by the river-side, where theofficial meteorological station stood, the day temperature was far over100 degrees, and up in the airless creeks, in the palm groves, it wasmuch higher. Clinical thermometers cracked if they were left lying abouton tables. Our staff was getting seriously depleted. No Tommy had towork so hard as those hospital orderlies, and it is not surprising thatour casualties in sick men were very heavy. Clerks in the office becameward masters at a moment's notice. But in spite of all this the spiritof the place remained unshaken. However great the heat, it did notdestroy that sense of humour which is the glory of the British Army. Rather be beaten and retain that sense than be victorious and lose it. And if you come to think of it, no man who retains his sense of humouris ever really beaten. 

VI

THE DAY'S WORK

The great distances that separate the main stations in Mesopotamia, andthe long sea voyage between Basra and Bombay, threw a considerablestrain on that part of the army that sits in offices and deals with armyforms. At Poona the supreme headquarters of the campaign resided amidthe clear breezes of the Indian hills. The consequence was that in caseswhere two or three copies of a form would have sufficed on the Westernfront, there it was necessary to multiply them indefinitely, so as tosatisfy all the various authorities down the line. For example, insending sick to India, a nominal roll is compiled with name, number, rank, regiment, nature of disease and so on. This, in triplicate, is anordinary procedure anywhere. But in Basra it was necessary, for somereason, to make out over twenty copies, and this is a long business on atypewriter that will only do a small number at a time, and is wanted forother things. It also caused a great delay before indents couldmaterialise. You wished, say, to order a truss for a patient. Out there, owing to the heat, articles of this nature perished quickly. Youreported the measurements to the quartermaster. He made a copy of theindent in triplicate, as well as an office copy. The indents went to theAssistant Director of Medical Services for approval. They were then sentback to the quartermaster. He then sent them to the Base Medical Depot, who acknowledged their receipt and said they would be sent to India assoon as possible. In India they passed through other complicatedmachinery and the weeks went by. A truss, I suppose, is worth a fewshillings. 

There were three other factors that added to the difficulties, apartfrom distance. One was the bar at the mouth of the river, which made itimpossible for deeply laden vessels coming up the Persian Gulf anddrawing many feet of water to pass without unloading in part intoanother vessel. The other was that strip of river between Kurna andAmara known as the Narrows, where river boats with supplies stuckconstantly, especially when the floods fell and the water was low. Oneboat sticking here would hold up all traffic. 

The third factor was the effect of the excessive heat. This effect, rather subtle in itself, might be called the psychological factor of thesituation, for there is not the slightest doubt that it produced a kindof cussedness in everyone, from the highest to the lowest, and sappedenergy and made changes unwelcome. For excessive and prolonged heat--andthe hot season lasted seven or eight months--rouses a defensivemechanism of inertia whose aim is to preserve life. You saw that in theearliest cases of incipient heat-stroke. A man felt suddenly all thepower go out of his legs. He wanted to lie down, and this was the bestthing he could do. 

Mental exertion became almost impossible. Reading was not easy, writingwas a burden, and thinking a matter of extreme difficulty. Your interestlay in watching the simplest thing. A Japanese fly-trap with itsslowly-turning, sticky surfaces was fascinating. There was a spice oforiental cruelty in the way it slowly entrapped the fly, and it wasexactly that which made the appeal. You soon understood how it comesabout that the Eastern takes all the natural facts of life for granted, without bothering about fine shades, and acts on them unquestioningly. What is called altruism in the West seems artificial. It is not cynicismexactly that the place breeds, and I never met anyone who wassentimental in Mesopotamia, but it is a kind of descent that occurs to alevel of values that are coloured black and white, quite plain. A manwho expected to throw a spell over the country and act as a stimulant oneveryone would truly need to possess a prodigious character. "In thetropics there is going on continually and unconsciously a tax on thenervous system which is absent in temperate climates. The nervoussystem, especially those parts which regulate the temperature of thebody, is always on the strain, and the result is that in time it suffersfrom more or less exhaustion. " The common effect of this is a"deficient mental energy generally commencing with unnatural drowsinessor loss of appetite and a yearning for stimulants which culminates inthat lowering of nerve potential which we know so well as neurasthenia. "Thus write the professors of medicine in India on the effects ofprolonged heat. I would add to it a large mental element, partly inducedby the lack of any kind of amusement, by the want of interest, and bythe peculiar effect of a landscape that is entirely flat and uniform. Anartificial mountain scenery, painted on canvas, such as one used to seeat Earl's Court, would have been a blessed relief. I think a London fogwould have been delightful. Towards the end of September, a few small, fleecy clouds appeared one day in the sky and everyone ran out andstared solemnly at them as if they were angels. But there is one phrasethat sums up the prolonged effects of heat better than any scientificrigmarole. It takes the silk out of a man. 

In Basra there was published daily a small, excellent newspaper whichgave the latest Reuters and printed selections from papers that came bythe mail. It was sorely missed when we went up river. I believe it wasedited by a lady. There was a club in Ashar where it was possible to situnder electric fans. In old Basra there was an Arab theatre, containinga few dancing girls and a cinematograph. But the arrival of the mailswas the great feature of life out there. They came roughly once a week, and it is difficult to describe with what emotions they were received. The whole district became revivified for a space under their influence. 

Through the month of June the sickness increased and work went onsteadily increasing. We had 400 beds in the wards at that time, and itwas necessary to find accommodation for an average of 700 patients. Anyone who was likely to be sick for any length of time was sent toIndia whenever the opportunity arose. Down at the British Hospital onthe river front they were sending cases off that were likely to be morethan three days ill. It was an oriental polyglot scene down there on thehospital quay in the comparative cool of evening, when the big whitehospital ship lay off the bank and crowds of ticketed patients sat underthe shelters waiting their turn to embark. Now and then a pale nurse, dressed in white, with white helmet and red-lined parasol would walkthrough the throng. Arab _belumchis_, Jews, Persians, Armenians, Sikhs, Gurkhas, Pathans, and Ghats crowded the bank, voluble and picturesque. Dhobies thrashed clothes at the river edge. Bhisties drew water inkerosene tins. Convalescent Tommies in blue dungaree, fishedstolidly--wishing they were bound for India. The roofs of the squarewhite buildings were filled with nurses taking tea. Launches whirled upand discharged Staff officers. All down the centre of the stream lay bigvessels. Already the place had a cosmopolitan spirit--a new-borngenius--and one could see it dimly in the future, when the Baghdadrailway runs through it to Kuweit, a white city, garish with paintedpromenades and electric lights, with as many languages sounding in thestreet as in Port Said. 

The dates were now hanging in big masses of oval, greeny-yellow fruit, some in clusters of two hundredweight and more, and the palm leaves wereturning brown at their points. The scarlet of the pomegranate trees hadvanished from the date groves and the floods were beginning to fall. Ithad been necessary to surround the hospital clearing with a mud wall, orbund, about four feet in height, in order to keep out the water, for attimes there is as much as a six foot rise when the tide comes up theShatt-el-Arab. 

At any simple job of this kind the Arabs are quite good. They canplaster mud on a roof, or make a bund, or run up a mud and reed hut, orraise the level of the flooring of a ward, and they take their time overit. But anything that savours of machinery is usually beyond them. Itwas a common saying amongst the Arabs that sickness stopped as soon asthe dates were gathered in. That proved to be untrue. It was a longwhile until the dates were ripe, and after they were gathered sicknessstill continued. The amount of heat those dates required before theyturned yellow and soft, and their skins began to crinkle faintly, wasextraordinary. For weeks and weeks they remained hard and green, thoughexposed to the fiercest heat of the sun. Pomegranates, in the same way, hung for months before their skins turned to that beautiful deepmahogany hue of the ripe fruit. 

[Illustration: ON THE SHATT-EL-ARAB NEAR BASRA. ]

On a particular day at the end of June one might have fancied a crisishad been reached. Curiously enough, by the irony of coincidence, theReuters of that day contained the news that it had been stated inParliament that, in the interests of the public, no statement would bemade about the state of affairs in Mesopotamia. 

That night it was rumoured that Verdun had fallen. .. . 

The gift of a large fleet of motor ambulances presented by the cinemapeople at home was a great boon, for urgent cases could be transportedto hospital rapidly, instead of jolting over the plain in bullocktongas. Unfortunately, the axles of these cars were not quite equal tothe rough work, and in a short time they were sent away to other sphereswhere roads were better. The ground in our neighbourhood was soundermined by floods that on one occasion one of these cars, standingempty, suddenly broke through the upper crust up to its axles. A greatdeal of perspiration flowed before it was extricated. 

In the meanwhile the creek was full of _mahallas_ loading up equipment, for we had received orders to go higher up-river. 

VII

THE NARROWS

We left Basra when the Arabs, and the Indian troops, were celebratingthe Mohammedan feast of Ramadhan. During the feast, which lasts a month, night is turned into day. No food is allowed, in theory, from sunrise tosunset. Drums beat, dogs howl, cocks crow and the revellers shout andwail and clap their hands in long, rhythmic, staccato periods, andexplosions of powder occur under the crescent moon. 

A small, double-decked, squat river boat which had been captured fromthe Turks took us on board. It burned oil fuel. A single canvas awningwith many gaps in it covered the upper deck. The lower deck was nearlytaken up by engine and boiler, save for a small saloon aft, and watertanks and a galley forward. Our strength was about 100 men with twentyIndians belonging to the hospital, and there were a few odd detailstravelling as well and the crowding was considerable. On each side ofthe steamer were big barges. On the port side was a barge of mules. Onthe starboard side a barge of fodder, and various bales and cases, surmounted by a crowd of coolies. The smell from either side was like aZoo. We set off in high spirits, for we had heard that Amara, whither wewere bound, was a Paradise compared to Basra. The heat was excessive. Behind the funnel on deck, where our quarters lay, it was 125 degrees, and the awning did not do much towards keeping out the burden of thesun. The country through which we passed was green-tinged with sparsepalms, and absolutely flat. In the river were long strings of_mahallas_, being towed by teams of Arabs. These craft may take sixteendays to reach Amara. In the heat of the day the towing team gets intothe river and moves slowly along up to their waists in water. Owing to along stop at Margil, which lies two miles above Basra, and is the siteof the Supply people, we did not make much progress the first day. Atsunset it is necessary to tie up, or anchor, in the stream. The nightwas not so bad save for mosquitoes, and after a sousing of river water, drawn forward of the mule barge, and a cup of tea at dawn, we feltcheerful. We started at four-thirty and passed Kurna. 

Kurna is the Garden of Eden. It lies at the junction of the Euphratesand Tigris, and is a small hamlet of white houses. Here there is a widearea of date palms and a great brown, tranquil stretch of river. A whitedoorway in a yellow wall, shaped like a pear, marks the supposedposition of Paradise. The doorway bears a tablet with an Arabicinscription. Behind the doorway, just visible over the wall, a treegrows. This may or may not be the Tree of the Knowledge of Good andEvil, because a dwarfed sinister tree lower down, to which barges tieup, is given the name. But I prefer the one in its walled garden, afaded, simple, harmless-looking tree. And the result of eating its fruitcan be moralised on here, for on one side of it is the bazaar square, where whisky and beer and tobacco are sold, and on the other side is thetelegraph office with the news of the war blazoned on the iron-studdeddoor and an armed sentry before it. 

Beyond Kurna the Tigris takes some immense curves so that at times youseem to see the sails of _mahallas_ all round the horizon. We lay ondeck, staring idly at the unvarying landscape which quivered under thesun. Occasionally Arab villages were passed, constructed out of thematting made from reeds, which is a local industry. The reeds grow inbig patches all the way up the river banks. On the second night we tiedup below Ezra's tomb. There was local Arab trouble in this part at thetime and we passed an outpost of native troops; also a mud hut, standingsolitary in a swamp in the plain and bearing the words "LeicesterLounge" in black lettering. It seemed deserted. 

At night there was a lot of lamp-signalling all round the horizon innaval code. One caught M. M. O. Repeatedly and then a lot of figures. Somefires lit up the sky line to the north. On that night the heat wasbeyond description. A plague of sand-flies and mosquitoes descended onthe ship. No one slept a wink. The mules screamed and kicked. There wasnot a breath of air. A heavy smell pervaded the ship, and at times itseemed that one's mind wandered a little. Before dawn a great cry cameout of the steamy darkness from some worshipping Arab and was repeatedtwice. After a long silence a cock crew far across the plain and wasanswered a hundred times. Then came a misty blue light and a suddenglare of yellow. The day had begun and the engines started. 

A monitor passed, bristling with guns and painted a vivid green. Ezra'stomb is a mosque standing stark on the brown plain beside the river in aclump of palms. It is kept in beautiful preservation, for it is visitedby pilgrim Jews. Against the lovely blue of the dome, with its circleof gold, a tall palm leans, bending sharply inward as if to kiss theProphet's last resting-place in some sudden mood of devotion. Some wayabove it lies a big village, and as we passed crowds of Arabs lined thebank. Naked boys dived into the river after money. The women, dashingtypes with nose rings, clad in robes of wonderful vermilion and purplecolours, ran along the banks with fowls and eggs for sale. Herds ofblack buffalo, submerged up to the nose, basked in the water. 

At one lonely place we passed a small shelter, a roof of yellow mattingsupported by a few posts, containing six rather pale-hued women withrichly coloured robes and bangles seated in a semi-circle on the ground. Outside stood the lord of the manor, very swarthy, in dazzling white, with a rifle slung over his shoulder, scowling ferociously as hesurveyed the plains. He was a kind of policeman, I believe, in our pay. At any rate he seemed to be, like policemen in general, a strong loverof domestic life. Six wives may have contributed a little towardsovercoming the extreme monotony of life in the place. 

Above Ezra's tomb begin the Narrows. The Tigris becomes very narrow, pouring its filthy yellow water at a great speed between the sharply cutbanks. The turns are so sharp, being at times much more acute than aright angle, that the only way to get round is to charge the bank, bumpoff with a great churning of paddles and creaking of lashings andclanging of the telegraph from the bridge, and work the steamer's noseinto the centre of the stream again. The banks, at these spots, areperfectly smooth and polished owing to the constant impacts. Bythemselves the river steamers could get round more skilfully, but withtheir clumsy barges on each side it was impossible. The S-boats--thestern wheelers--of which there are only a few, do not carry barges, andtherefore their handiness and speed are much greater. They can run fromBasra to Sheik Saad, close to the front, within three days, and cantravel by night if necessary. 

At three in the afternoon as we bumped and scraped and panted up thetortuous river, we came on the familiar sight of a convoy stuck, broadside on, across the river in front of us. A little smoke came fromher funnel. The sun beat savagely down on her apparently deserted decks. Behind her there was nothing but shimmering plain and the occasionalflash of water. Our engine-room telegraph rang. The engines stopped andwe slewed into the bank and dropped anchor. Then the skipper and hisnavigating lieutenants withdrew to their cabins and the engine-roomstaff, composed of an Englishman who had run boats up to Baghdad for tenyears, and a few Christian Baghdadies--powerful dark men, who seemed tospeak a kind of French--disposed themselves for rest on the lower deck, and a great peace descended on the scene. Away over the horizon, northand south, some columns of smoke were visible coming from other convoysthat were converging on the Narrows. It was necessary to wait for thetide, as well as for a tug. There was nothing to do but to watch theplain. At first sight it appeared lifeless, an expanse of golden browns, reds and yellows, with a sharp purple rim on the skyline. But closerobservation showed long lines of cattle, mere dots in the distance, moving slowly in search of pasture. In the shadow of a hummock an Arabboy and girl sat together motionless. A mile along the level two Arabswere rhythmically swinging water up from a cutting by means of a shallowvessel with ropes attached to the side. The flash of it caught the eye, and there was a patch of vivid emerald where the water fell. To thenorth it was possible to make out the arms of a semaphore lying idle. There was no sound in the place. The river itself flowed silently. Onlythe occasional deep drone of a hornet or the note of a mosquito came tothe ear. The sun seemed to be drawing the land together, sucking up allthe sap it contained. 

As we sat and gazed at these bending and twisting Narrows the idea arosethat it might be possible, by a little cutting, to do away with theworst bits and open up a straight channel. For there were two mainplaces of obstruction, called the Devil's Elbow and Pear Drop Reach. But it is necessary to say this with caution, for tampering with greatrivers like the Tigris may cause unthought-of trouble. It upsets thenatural balance of the waters. 

Gradually the other convoys drew near and dropped anchor above and belowthe obstructing vessel. Some native troops in one of them got out on thebank and began to bathe, or wandered about looking for fuel to cooktheir evening meal, and towards evening a string of Arab women andchildren, from some remote village, came along with eggs and melons andpumpkins. In the meanwhile a kind of activity prevailed in the region ofthe obstruction. A tug boat appeared and ropes were stretched out toposts on the land and the water was being churned to foam by thepaddles. It was said that General Y was on a convoy ahead, and GeneralX, who was going up to replace him, was in a convoy behind us. It waspossible to count seven convoys in all, and smoke columns were stillrising in the south. It was not until darkness fell that the ship waspulled off, and it was too late to move on that night. So we ate ourbully beef and settled down for the night. Once more our sensations wereindescribable. The sand-flies were like a million little red-hot wires. There was not a breath of air and the mules screamed and fought andgasped alongside. One hundred and fifty people packed on a small deck, round a funnel that is still burning hot, make a poor job of sleeping insuch a climate. 

It was the devout prayer of everyone that we might reach our destinationnext day and get off the ship and away from those mules. That was not tobe. We reached Amara in the darkness of the evening, and anchored nearthe Rawal Pindi Hospital. Owing to a case of cholera that had developedthat day on the starboard barge, we were put in quarantine, so it wasnecessary to unpack one's kit again and shake down for the night ondeck. One of the most refractory mules kicked itself loose of itsmoorings and fell into the stream in the darkness. Several men riskedtheir lives in rescuing it. One would have thought, seeing that it hadbeen the noisiest and most vicious brute on the barge, that drowning wasscarcely good enough for it. And what is a wife to think of her husbandwhen she is told that he was drowned while gallantly attempting torescue from the swift current of the Tigris a mule that could swim farbetter than he could? As no one was drowned, perhaps it is unnecessaryto ask the question. 

[Illustration: ARAB BELUM ON TIGRIS. ]

VIII

AMARA

We reached Amara about the middle of July. At that time there waspractically nothing happening at the front, but the sickness was great. Amara, by reason of its openness, was a little fresher than Basra, butthe temperature was high. It was 125 degrees in the shade on the dayfollowing our arrival. 

The white low houses line along the river front on the left bank in amore orderly fashion than at Ashar. A bridge of boats connects the twobanks. This bridge, which existed before the war, swings open from thecentre and lets traffic through. On the right bank a few houses werescattered amongst thick groves of palms. There is somehow a moreoriental spirit at Amara than at Basra. The _belums_ are morefantastically curved, the mystery of the town more apparent, and thenarrow-domed bazaar, full of dim light and vivid colour, is permeatedwith the spirit of the Arabian Nights. There are some cunning craftsmenin the bazaar, particularly the silver-and gold-smiths, who makeexquisite inlaid work. They do this after the manner of true artists, inthat they work seemingly more by a process of thought and feeling ratherthan with the aid of tools. For they sit on the ground with a bowl ofwater, a small charcoal fire, a strip of metal, and a deeply preoccupiedlook, and after a time the article is finished. The overlaying of silverby antimony is their particular craft. Owing to the orders theyreceived, they soon began to charge prohibitive prices. At certain timesit was possible to get egret feathers, and also astrachan--the skin ofunborn lambs--in the bazaar. The old copper vessels that were sold inmany of the shops were sometimes very beautiful. 

The suspected cholera case proving doubtful, we were put out ofquarantine next morning, and moved across the river to the site of thehospital which we were to take over. It lay round a bend in the river onthe right bank above and well out of the town. To the north lay theriver, to the south the desert. A large number of mud and reed huts, inlong rows, stood on the plain, covering an area of about a quarter of asquare mile. These were the wards. There was a sense of space that wasrefreshing after the cramped and littered area of the clearing atBasra, with its surrounding marshes and palm groves. We officers wereput in tents in a small palm and pomegranate thicket at the periphery ofthe hospital area. The nursing quarters were at the other end, nearerthe town. These quarters were built of wood and low roofed, with a layerof mud on the top. The nurses were in many cases volunteers who had seenservice in Mudros, and these had just got the Royal Red Cross Medal, equivalent to a D. S. O. Very pleased they were with it, and greatly theydeserved it. Their quarters were divided by thin mud walls into narrowcompartments, and they found the lack of sound-deadening propertiestrying. But that is a universal experience of this war--the continualoverhearing of conversation, the necessity for being in a crowd, and thelack of moments of privacy. They slept out of doors, on the river front, in a wired enclosure, patrolled by a sentry. The sentries were apeculiarity of the place which distinguished it from Basra. For in thatregion looters came in from the desert, some from the villages and somefrom camps of nomad Arabs. Their great ambition was firearms. The secondambition seemed to be clothing. There must exist somewhere a completecolony of khaki-clad Arabs, of all ranks up to Staff officers, probablyin some district Persia-way, in the Pashtikhu hills. They were extremelydaring. They would come in at night on horseback, leave their horses outon the plain and stroll in under the sentries' noses. For many months aspirit of compromise was shown in the matter, but eventually a strongerline was taken and the Sheiks of the surrounding country were put underthe penalty of a heavy fine if looting continued. Occasionally men werestabbed by these marauders, who carried long, curved knives, but themain object was looting and not killing. 

It was a singular spot to find a large number of women, away up in theheart of that elemental country of fire and water and earth. But theyremained untouched by any kind of pessimism, nor were they greatlyinterested in the campaign as a military affair. All their interest wasin their work. They were a wonderful stimulus. Where a man unwittinglytended to let things slide they exhorted and energised. In details, theydid not seem to show that gradual decadence that creeps imperceptiblyover men when isolated and overworked. It is perhaps so subtle that ittakes a woman to detect it. Women may be theoretically unscientific, butthey are essential to the maintenance of the scientific spirit andpractice. Naturally they suffered sickness, but not nearly so much asone might have expected; for discipline plays a tremendous part in theavoidance of sickness. It is not so much a physical factor as a moralone. It seemed possible to induce a practice of going sick very easily, and in that climate it was only necessary to permit some inner act ofsurrender that escapes simple definition, but resembles the lowering ofa dog's tail, and one became a sick man. It was not exactly malingering. 

Beyond the western boundary of the hospital, behind the officers' tents, lay an oriental garden. An oil engine and pumps at the river's edgesupplied the water to it through channels. The machine was worked by anArab who, as far as one could tell, prayed to it. In the garden, full ofmoist heat and splashes of colour, lived a colony of jackals, thoseextraordinary spirits of hell, whose wailing and hysteria are soamazing. I do not know how Darwin would have accounted for theparticular note they strike. It is probably on a level with the roaringof the lion, in that it is designed to terrify. But the jackal does notterrify by such obvious methods as the lion. He plays on your eerie, ghostly, superstitious side. He brings up into the imagination themalignity and hopelessness of the damned. He seems to people the nightwith wailing horrors. To a man dying of thirst in the desert, the jackalmust just give the final touch of despair that makes death andnothingness seem best. It must be strange to die, surrounded by jackalsat their chthonian litanies. 

Shortly after we reached Amara, the news came that Sir Victor Horsleyhad died. It was in a season of extreme heat, when death comes suddenlyin many forms. Eighty officers attended his funeral in columns offours, the most junior in front. He had a coffin. Wood was precious inAmara. There were some other bodies sewn up in army blankets. A long, dusty march of a mile to the cemetery, a shallow earth grave, a briefceremony, the same for all, and a weary tramp home in the sun--that wasthe final picture. There is one detail to add, and that is the lovelyplaying of the "Last Post" over the graves. In him we lost the finestsurgeon in Mesopotamia. 

For many days after this we moved about as it were in a vast furnace. The nights were broken by sand-flies. Personally, I found the only wayof keeping them out was to wear socks on the feet and hands, and smearthe face and neck with some kind of ointment, on which their feet slip, so that they cannot find a purchase when in the act of driving theirsucking apparatus into the skin. In the morning, what with the sweat andthe grease, and the tropical exhaustion, one looked like few things onearth. Oil of citronella is only of temporary use; paraffin and creosoteare of little good. Butter muslin nets are out of the question, as theheat is stifling under them. The burning of aromatic or pungentcompounds is useless, and as for killing them, one might lie awake allnight, scuffling and dabbing and slapping at the almost invisible formswithout gaining the slightest benefit. In the day time they hide incracks in the ground, under bits of matting or anywhere out of the sun. Sand-fly fever is a malady that begins like influenza. One aches allover. All the side of life that is enjoyment fades away. It isimpossible to smoke, or eat, or drink, or read, or talk. In Malta, whereit is indigenous, a convalescence of three weeks is allowed. It was notpossible to allow that in Amara. The fever lasts two or three days, coming down in two main stages. The use of opium is recommended. Asregards the use of opium in Mesopotamia, it was possible to gain theidea from actual experience that it was a most valuable drug during thehot season. If limited to three drugs and no more, for work in thatcountry, I should prefer opium, Epsom salts and quinine. The quininethat we obtained through official channels was in the form of pinktablets and came from the cinchona plantations at Darjeeling that arerun by the Indian Government. These tablets are coloured pink to preventfraudulent selling, for they are handed out to natives in malarialdistricts in large quantities, free of charge, and natives are not greatbelievers in medicine. The tablets are extremely hard and insoluble. Prolonged exposure to the action of dilute mineral acids produces noeffect on them. We had, for the men, quinine parades, when five grainswere swallowed as a prophylactic against malaria every day. They wereamusing affairs to watch--serried ranks with water-bottles, standing toattention while the sergeant dispenser walked with proper dignity downthe line handing a pink tablet to each man, who gulped it spasmodically, took a draught of water and returned to attention. It reminded one of areligious ceremony, of some strange communion service. In giving thequinine in large doses it was essential to dissolve it, if any effectwas aimed at. Even then it rarely produced symptoms of quininepoisoning. The home preparations were more satisfactory to use. Asregards opium, it was useful, apart from sand-fly fever, in thosefrayed, sleepless states of mind that prolonged heat induces. TheEnglish idea that a dose of morphia or laudanum at once induces theopium habit, though very safe, is not altogether sound. Other hypnoticswere usually not strong enough to give long sleep; but here, to producean effect with hypnotics, it seemed necessary to double the dose. Thismay have had something to do with some deterioration in drugs caused bythe big demands of the war. But I do not think it was the onlyexplanation. Of course, for those who dreaded the use of opium, andpreferred chloral or bromide, it was only necessary to glance into thetents where the Chinese carpenters slept at night. There one saw rows ofcomatose figures and if you cared to lift the lips from the gums ofthose sleepers, you would usually see a little sticky mass of opiumwedged in between the teeth. That was one way of solving the problem ofsand-flies and heat at night and no doubt an admirable illustration ofthe dangers of the drug. But it is possible to find illustrations foreverything. 

At Amara, paratyphoid A was commonest in the troops coming down from theFront. It was not a very grave disorder, but sometimes, particularlywhen complicated by other factors, it was fatal. It must be rememberedthat many patients reached us as emaciated skeletons, in the last stageof exhaustion. Special wards were set aside for typhoid cases. Dysenterywas also increasing, and wards were reserved for these cases. It wasmainly what is called bacillary dysentery, for which Epsom salts is oneof the best remedies. All typhoid cases, as soon as convalescent, weresent to India. That was because they often carry the germs in theintestinal tract a long time after recovery and therefore may become asource of infection. They spent on an average three months in Indiabefore returning for service. There was no place in Mesopotamia whereconvalescent patients could be sent with a reasonable prospect ofgaining full health. About twenty miles beyond Aligarbi lie thePashtikhu hills and there in those high altitudes a big militarysanatorium might have been established. This would have saved endlesstransport difficulties, if a light railway had been constructed. But nodoubt the military situation rendered the carrying out of such an ideaimpracticable. Heat-stroke in Amara was common enough, but it did notseem so fatal as at Basra. This, perhaps, was due to the air, which wasdrier and fresher. The supply of ice was also more adequate. 

We had some unlucky spells. It is a curious thing that luck seems toenter into the matter of death rates. I mean that sometimes for two orthree days at a time cases seemed to go wrong and die, on the slightestprovocation. At other times, when the luck changed, the most hopelesscases would clear up. It was the same way in the operating theatre. Itis the same way with everything, whether it be card playing, orbusiness, or war, or love, or thinking, or sport. There are phases inwhich something seems to overshadow the scene. The direction of thecurrent changes. For a time everything seems to go wrong. The machinerybehind life, that is always helping you on, stops and reverses. Andthere is another aspect of the same thing which doctors sometimes see ina remarkable way. It is the occurrence of similar kinds of cases at thesame time. For part of it there is the scientific explanation ofinfection by germs. 

[Illustration: EZRA'S TOMB. ]

The Shimal was now blowing from the north-west, bringing the dust infrom the desert. At times it produced a strange effect. The atmospherebecame dun-coloured, thickened at places into opaque and rushing veils. Under the pressure of the strong, hot wind the big _mahallas_, withtheir white sails in tense curves, careered down the river with only astreak of white foam under the prow to show they were not suspended inthe air. The further bank, pale and unsubstantial, was outlined fitfullyin the hurrying gloom. A kind of lividity spread over the picture, bleaching it of all colour. Everything in the wards became silted overwith fine powder, and the big yellow and black hornets and thelong-legged wasps that seem to have two or three pendant abdomens andare the hue of Burgundy marigolds, came hurtling through the unglazedwindows to crawl, half-stunned, about the mud floors. How the wardSisters anathematised these days! The storms provoked a feeling notunlike east winds at home. They brought out small aches and pains andone got irritable. A thunderstorm would have cleared away the effect, but the sky remained cloudless and brazen. 

IX

ARABIAN COMEDY

Nothing was happening at the front. Occasionally there was spasmodicshelling and bomb dropping, but the heat prevented any general activity. Headquarters was under howitzer fire at times. One shell landed in themess waiter's tent and damaged nine men. 

There was a tale told at the time concerning a powerful Sheik near thefront who was neutral. His son becoming ill, he sent to the Turks, andalso to us, for a doctor. The Turks, or rather the Germans, sent aGerman doctor, and a German lady as well, the latter as a bribe. We senta medical officer, unattended. The Sheik kept them all. So far as Iknow he may still be keeping them, and remaining strictly neutral. Itmust be remembered that the Arabs--as well as many Indians--have beenled to believe that not only the Kaiser is a Mohammedan, but the Germanpeople in general. 

Towards the end of July there were day temperatures of 124 degrees inthe shade, and the wind, when it blew, seemed as if it had passed over aburning city. It was impossible to do anything save what was absolutelynecessary. The sickness amongst the medical staff became rather serious, and at times we had to look after far more cases than we could treatadequately. But in these moments of temporary dislocation, the presenceof nurses made all the difference and that state of confusion that hadexisted in Basra never occurred. 

The day's programme was unvarying. After a somewhat exhausting night werose at seven. The best hours of sleep were usually after sunrise, forthen the sand-flies vanished. After breakfast of tea, eggs and bread, the ward work started. This lasted until about midday. Then came lunch, accompanied by many flies, and afterwards a long siesta, during whichone wore the minimum of clothing. At four or five one dressed again, after a bath, and took a look at the wards to see any bad cases. Thenthe evening began, in which life became more possible. Dinner wasusually a cheerful meal. After dinner what to do was a great problem. One just did nothing. During all this time everyone became thin. Anysickness, even a slight attack of diarrhoea, brought down weightrapidly. There was the case of a certain sergeant, whose immense girthwas much revered by the Arabs. One can understand, perhaps, how itcomes about that fatness is admired in the East. It is so rare. It ismuch easier to be thin. The sergeant went into hospital for a few days. When he came out he had lost his glory even as Samson was shorn of hisstrength in a night. His clothes hung about him in huge folds. What hadtaken him years to produce was lost in six days, and with it went therespect of the Arabs. There is practically no fat in the country. Therewas no dripping for puddings. The cattle were all lean. 

It is necessary to say a word about the Indian _personnel_ attached tothe hospital. These were the water carriers, washers and sweepers. Theyhad been immensely pleased at the idea of leaving Basra. But at Amara, where they found things little better, there was some lamentation. Intemperament they were mere children requiring a father. But of onevenerable and aged man I would like to record a few things. He was agaunt, tall, grey-bearded fellow as thin as a stick-insect, and heperformed the most menial of all services, being a sweeper by caste. Butwhat he did was done with passionate devotion. He had seen service inFrance and spoke a few curious French words. Troops on active service inFrance certainly are taught some strange phrases. All day he toiled withhis kerosene tins and brushes and when he had nothing to do he inventedsomething. He would, for instance, dust the palm trees outside the mess, pausing always to salute even the shadow of an officer on the horizon ina stiff cramped fashion, and then applying himself with silent zeal tohis remarkable task. He came one day in some grief and said that he hadheard that his daughter in his village in India was to have married acertain man. He, the father, had contributed 100 rupees towards the costof the ceremony. The suitor had taken the money and then announced hisintention of marrying someone else. News of the fraud had reached thevenerable old man in Mesopotamia and caused him to tremble with wrath. Could the great Sahib, who was his father and mother, write to theViceroy of India and demand justice? To which the great Sahib inquestion, after considering the matter gravely, replied, "Write to thepig who is the son of a pig and say to him that unless he marries thydaughter before two moons have passed then will the Viceroy himself beinformed by a telegram which I myself will send, and justice shall beserved out in this evil matter. " The joy of the old man was great and hehastened away to get the letter written. Next day he was clattering histins and brushes with a devotion to duty that was as worthy of a medalas many things in the war. I was told the marriage was now certain tocome off. Still, it seems a bad beginning to matrimony, and if a man isa pig, and the son of a pig, his children will presumably also be pigs. 

There was an Arab theatre at Amara, and in September they produced aplay, in Arabic. It was based on a topical incident. No Arab was allowedto go into camps, hospitals and so on, without a pass, and this wasamazing to the Oriental mind. The scene was a bare stage, lit by flares, and an audience of bearded Arabs, Arab police and a few British officersin the front row. On the stage sat a fat woman mournfully shaking atambourine, and between whiles going to sleep. Up the middle centre laya fat man, groaning. It was evident that he was playing a sick part. Beside him lamented his wife, a dancing girl, squat-nosed and heavyhipped. The low comedian entered. It is not in the interests of thepublic to describe him too closely. Eventually he assumed the part ofphysician. His treatment of the patient followed the plan of exorcisinga devil. He hit and kicked him, spat on him and jumped on him. There wasno improvement and the man died. The problem was now how to bury him. The low comedian said he would attend to that and heaved the fat man onhis shoulders and went off to the cemetery. After an interminable pausehe reappeared still carrying the corpse. He dumped it on the ground andmade a gesture of despair. "It is no good, " he said. "I cannot bury him. I haven't got a pass!" This brought the house down and the fat womanwoke up and applied herself vigorously to the tambourine. At the theatreat Basra, when European films were shown, the Arabs always laughed verymuch at the amount of kissing that white folk indulged in. It seemed tostrike them as an extraordinary way of passing the time. 

Arab women are not beautiful. Their faces are aquiline, their cheekbones high, and their lips coarse. Their figures are lithe and they walkwell, with a sinuous swagger. But there is a sharp, harsh tone aboutthem and one could imagine them very accomplished in bitter speeches. Their eyes are their best feature, but they contain an expression thatis hard, restless and challenging. They mess themselves about withhenna. Some wear nose rings and all wear bangles that clash as theywalk. They were interested in the nurses and seemed for some obscurereason mildly amused. As labourers they were employed in large numberscarrying baskets of earth on their heads, or mixing mud and straw forplastering purposes. At a comparatively early age they lose whateverlooks they possess and become most extraordinarily malevolent hags. TheArab men, as they age, usually look rather fine and dignified. The youngArab is not attractive. He looks heavy, sullen and sensual, and hisexpression is full of greed and cunning. 

X

THE BATTLE OF THE BUND

It was when the moon began to wane that the Arab marauders becametroublesome. Shots whizzed about the place at night, and one continuallyheard the high pitched, nervous challenge of native sentries: "'Alt, whogoes da?" It was unwise to move about after dark without a lantern. Inpeace time Amara is not free from this kind of trouble and aninterpreter remarked that just as much shooting used to go on then. Itwas as well not to be absent-minded. One of the Sisters on her way backfrom a ward at night was challenged, and thought it was some deliriouspatient. She approached him resolutely and the click of a rifle broughther to her senses. Towards the end of August the amount of lootingbecame serious. On the other side of the river was a big camp, wheretroops were sent to refit and rest. Here the thieves played many cunningtricks and there was some killing. They were adroit in stampeding horsesand in the confusion that followed making off with several. The sentrieswere not allowed to load their rifles, as promiscuous firing was asource of danger to the occupants of the tents, which were crowdedtogether on the plain. At times the looters slipped down the river inboats, and it became necessary to stop all night traffic. Any craft seenduring the night was fired at from the bank. 

We had our own particular problem. The hospital lay exposed to theplain. A bund, or mud wall, marked the outer boundary. The nativesentries who were allotted to guard the place were insufficient innumber, as the area was considerable and thefts were constant. Thedoctors and orderlies volunteered to do sentry duty, and one Arab wasshot and one wounded. This did not stop the stealing. Kit of every kinddisappeared. At times a man woke up to find an Arab calmly removing hismosquito net, while another stood over him with a knife. It was a goodpolicy to remain motionless for a short time. It was better thanremaining motionless for ever. During the day time a large number ofArab men and women were employed in the hospital area. There were aboutfifty or so who sat all day under a matting shelter making mortar bysome mysterious process of hammering, singing their eternal nurseryrhymes that sound like "Ina Dina Dinah Do" over and over again. Allthese Arabs were turned out of the compound before nightfall by thelocal Arab police--picturesque fellows, who wore khaki uniforms and Arabhead cloths--but it is probable that they had something to do with thethefts. They were certainly guilty of other thefts and on one occasionthe Indians, who had suffered severely as their tents lay nearest to theplain, very nearly murdered an Arab whom they found with some crusts ofbread and some cooking utensils tied up in his clothing. 

[Illustration: WALLED VILLAGE ON BANKS OF TIGRIS. ]

It seems to be a common belief among some people that the R. A. M. C. Orderly is a man with nothing to do. It was an erroneous idea to hold inMesopotamia, and when we were informed that we could arrange our ownguards, there was some resentment. However, there was some chance of aninteresting time, so parties were organised to watch along the bund. On one occasion a show was arranged which might be termed the GrandBattle of the Bund. It was a battle without casualties. A crowded messbegan the evening. Some naval men from a monitor lying alongside werepresent, very keen on doing some strafing, as everyone was, where Arabswere concerned. They related their own manner of dealing with suchthings higher up the river--"Turned a machine-gun on their cattle andannihilated the lot. That got the wind up them all right!" Atnine-thirty our party, composed of twenty officers, all the messwaiters, and various other people--mostly victims of robbery--whosilently attached themselves, and also some crack shots from the A. B. 'sof the monitor, turned out somewhat noisily, all armed to the teeth withrifles, shot guns, blue flares, revolvers and clubs and dispersed intothe surrounding gloom. The bund was about four hundred yards long, andwe lay at intervals of five yards or so, leaving a big gap at one end. But strategy went by the board. The great idea was to strafe Arabs. There was a murdered officer to avenge and some Tommies. The officer, bythe way, was killed on the other side of the water. To revenge him, hisbrother officers turned out next night and lined the periphery of thecamp towards the plain. It is said that Arabs, knowing of this, landedby boat behind them, crept into their deserted lines, looted everythingand departed. The tale may or may not be true. 

That bund was remarkably uncomfortable. One lay against its slopingside, scrambling to get a foothold and peering over the edge into thedim regions beyond. It was a moonless night, but clear and brilliantwith stars. 

The hours went slowly by. At last the Higher Command became weary andordered a flare to be fired, and everyone to shoot at anything he saw onthe plain. The flare was a prearranged signal for the monitor to turn onthe searchlight. The flare went off and burst high above us. In a momentall was dark again. We waited for the searchlight to shine on the scenefrom over the fringe of river-side palms. At last it came, ghostly, fitful and strange, a sudden radiance in the dark plain, reaching farout of the shadows on the horizon. 

There was a pause. Nothing resembling an Arab was to be seen. Firingbegan in a desultory way, as a flat celebration of people determined todo something. Then everyone went home leaving, no doubt, a dozen Arabschuckling in some nullah lower down. 

The looting continued. It culminated in our area in some big theftsfrom the officers' tents. We had arranged patrols among ourselves. It iseerie work. In the groves the shadows are thick and black. You crookyour finger round the trigger and wonder. .. . On the occasion of the Arabraid on our quarters we had for the moment abandoned the patrols, partlybecause it was at a time when, owing to sickness, there were fewofficers fit for it, and partly because the moon was bright. One woke upin the dawn light to find one's tent ransacked, and every bit ofclothing gone. Footprints in the dust at the head of the bed gave anunpleasant sensation. It would have been little good waking in themiddle of the affair, although one slept with a revolver under thesheet, when a watching Arab stood over one, knife in hand. After thissome strong action was taken and the Sheiks, as I have mentioned, werefined. There was also a little affair of stern punishing round Nasireyahthat had a wholesome effect which spread as far as Amara. It is the onlyway to deal with the Arabs of this generation. 

Apart from looting, the great danger that continually threatened us wasfire. All the buildings were constructed of extremely inflammablematerial. There was no fire apparatus, save buckets. The canvas of thetents became so dry in the sun that a spark caused a conflagration. Onone occasion an officer's tent caught fire at night. A burst of flamesenveloped the canvas in a moment and the occupants, who were asleep, barely escaped. It was impossible to remove the articles inside thetent. Fortunately, the tent was in an isolated part, and only thesurrounding palm trees suffered. But if a fire had really started in themain portion of the hospital, the whole place would have been gutted ina twinkling. On one night a great glare arose from the river and itseemed as if Amara was in flames. A series of tremendous explosionsfollowed. It was an ammunition barge somewhere in the stream that hadsuddenly blazed up. It was towed away to a safer place, but if thesparks that showered through the air had set fire to any house along theTigris front, the entire town might have been in ruins by the morning. 

[Illustration: THE TIGRIS NEAR KURNA. ]

During August scurvy was threatening the men at the front. Many Indianswent down with it. It is an unpleasant disorder. The gums looked as ifthey were blown out like little pneumatic tyres. They werereddish-purple, ulcerated, and the stench was oppressive. Hard, woodenyswellings appeared on the legs, and the victim became very decrepit. Oneof the main preoccupations in the wards was the differential diagnosisbetween atypical malaria and typhoid fever, for the malaria that onereads of in textbooks did not exist save exceptionally. A man had anirregular temperature for days and it was often extremely difficult togive a name to the cause. Fortunately one had the assistance of apathological laboratory, where blood could be examined and treated. Ingeneral, the typhoid cases were consistently heavy and depressed, whilethe malaria cases had spells of cheerfulness. 

Life in the wards was not so bad for the patients. There was a certainamount of literature--it was never abundant--and there was a gramophone. There was also the occupation of killing flies with a fly-swotter, playing card games and dominoes, grousing, yarning, sleeping and eating. In the cool of the evening, the convalescents would line the river bankand watch the convoys. There was bathing in the river. At times therewere rumours of sharks, for sharks go up river as high as Baghdad. It isnot possible to go far out in the stream unless one is a very powerfulswimmer. The current is very swift. Tortoises used to line the margin ofthe river in the evening, with their heads sticking out above water, while crowds of angry birds accused them from the wet mud of the shore. Wild duck, partridge, snipe, sand-grouse and doves were fairly numerous, and in the evenings it was possible to get a good bag. It was worthshooting jackals, for their skins were in very good condition. Thehospital had a football ground and later on, towards the end of the hotseason, a tennis court was made with the aid of a mixture of mud andstraw. A cheery innovation was started shortly after the middle of theyear. Concert parties, organised in India from the talent of the Army, came out and gave entertainments in the evening, and very good some ofthem were. 

An effort was made to further the interests of medical science, and theAmara clinical society was started at which doctors met weekly anddiscussed cases and diagnoses, and papers were read. There is, I think, no better proof that, in its central core, medicine is an art, and not ascience, than the kind of discussion that goes on at medical meetings. It exactly resembles the discussions that go on in political debatingsocieties. The monotony of life was interrupted at frequent intervals byofficial inspections. Every General who passed up or down felt itincumbent on him to visit the hospital. A crowd of lean men in khaki, each with what looked like a large collection of stamps on his leftbreast, a posse of Bengal Lancers, the warning note of the bugle, asudden cessation of scrubbing and dusting in the wards, the temporaryassumption of an intelligent air, of straps and leggings and tunics, afew explanations or carefully veiled suggestions, some hearty laughs, apopping of soda-water bottles in the mess, a receding cloud of dust onthe plain--and the inspection was over. 

One often wonders at this constant habit of official inspections, whenan unofficial inspection, made by an able man who strolled inunannounced, would be so much more intelligent and valuable. It isalmost painful to witness the preparation that goes on before anofficial visit. There is a suggestion of something archaic, somethinginferior to the spirit of life, in the whole process; as if one were notan actively employed hospital, up to the neck in honest work, but merelya passive model on a large scale, in which everything was always insymmetrical rows, in which the patients were accustomed to be exactlyparallel to the edges of their beds, in which everyone preferred tostand to attention if they could do so without dying. It was as if allthe rough strong machinery of the place never went at full speed, butwas carefully painted and polished until it looked like a musical boxwithout a soul or a purpose. 

These inspections were incessant and entirely suspended the work of thehospital while they lasted. When they occurred in the morning, it wasnecessary to hurry through the usual work, get everything cleaned up, assume full uniform, take all books, papers and games from the patients, and wait patiently for the arrival of the inspecting party. As often asnot a message would come after a long delay, to say that the inspectionwould be postponed until a later hour. 

During September one of the native interpreters came into the venerealtent as a patient. At the time it was under my care. There was, by theway, very little venereal disease amongst the troops, though, of course, the country is full of it. He was a little olive Jewish boy, alert inmanner, and muscular, and a good linguist. When war broke out he wasliving in Baghdad, where he had learned French and English at one of theMission Schools there, for he was a Christian. When Turkey came in, hefled from Baghdad with many others who wished to avoid conscription. Hetravelled down the river to Basra. He described the journey as very bad, with little food and a constant fear of being caught. On reaching Basrahe heard rumours of our coming expedition, but the most extreme apathyexisted in the town. The Turks were indifferent, walking about smokingcigarettes and "making the shoulders to rise a leetle" as they talked. But they kept a watchful eye on the Arabs. When the Turks evacuatedBasra a panic ensued. He was living at the time in a merchant's houseand they barricaded the doors and windows and got out any weapons theycould find. The Arabs from the plains poured into the town and began toloot. They looted the customs house in particular, and other officialplaces. He saw many street fights in the white dust under the glare ofthe sun, but he said it was usually the Arab looters fighting amongstthemselves. Their fights would last a long time, the men circling roundone another with knives, or sniping from street corners. There was agreat deal of musket firing at night. This state of lawlessness went onfor three days, and then we made our first appearance in the form of agun-boat that fired three rounds from one of her guns, "Not to hitsomething, but to make a salaam. " The barricaded ones felt morecomfortable. When the Sixth Division marched in he became smitten by thegeneral appearance of these veterans, and hearing that interpreters wererequired, made an application and was accepted. He marched up with theDivision to Kut, and eventually on to Ctesiphon. "It was such a peety, "he remarked, "for we did all know perfectly well--for I had toldthem--that the inhabitants of Baghdad would destroy us themselves. " Iasked him what the city was like and if it was safe in peace times. "Oh, it is all the same in the whole country, " he said. "It is all unsafeunless you theenk. You must always theenk a lot in this country, andnot be in a hurry. " At Ctesiphon he said that our troops, a divisionstrong, fought wonderfully and had beaten the Turks, who were far morenumerous, but a fresh division from Constantinople arrived in time toalter the complexion of affairs. In the rout, he apparently managed tocrawl on to a steamer full of wounded. It stuck on the way down and wassurrounded by Arabs, who shouted from the darkness for them tosurrender. They had a machine-gun and got through. The Arabs, he said, did not cause any trouble on our Lines of Communication until theretreat began, and then they began work with enthusiasm. At Kut he wentthrough the siege. At the surrender he had the foresight to disguisehimself as an Arab. The Turks hanged a lot of interpreters. He escapedand lay low, wondering how to get down the river. "The Turks did nottreat the British soldiers very well. The officers, oh, yes. But themen, no. There was leetle to eat. " Two months later, when things werequieter, he went to a party of Arabs who were going down the river andmade an offer. "I did not trust them, so I went to a Christian house andleft three pounds there, and then I gave them three pounds and told themif I arrived safely I would write a letter and they could get the othermoney when they came back. " The Arabs, finding no way of doing himin--after much thinking, I suppose--agreed and they set off. They wentdown the Shatt-el-Hai way, to the Euphrates, and after a lot of trouble, he got through to the British lines, where he resumed his duties asinterpreter. 

He was a curious mixture of daring and cowardice, like most of thenatives in Mesopotamia. He was very pleased with the hospital, butexpressed a crafty sentiment. "You have too many hospitals, " he said. "The Turks do not have these hospitals, for then all their men wouldbecome sick. It is nicer to be in a hospital than in a desert. " Thisthought brings to the memory an incident that occurred in one of thewards. A new case was admitted, and next morning the doctor overhauledhim. He found nothing wrong. "Well, what is the matter with you?"

"There ain't nothing the matter, " was the reply. "You see it's likethis, sir. My pal Bill, in my platoon, he was out of 'orspital daybefore yesterday, and he says: 'Ginger, me boy, if you want a nice bedfor ter sleep in, such as you've forgotten the sight of, you go into'orspital. ' So next day I reports myself sick, carrying on a lot and thenew doctor what joined us last week, 'e sends me straight 'ere. And theywashes me all over, and tucks me up between the sheets, and I've 'adthe finest sleep since I came to this 'ere blooming country, sixteenmonths ago. And I'd be obliged, sir, if you'd discharge me. "

A great many men suffered from bad teeth, and the suitable treatment oftheir cases became a problem. In the ordinary establishment of a generalhospital, in the Army, there are about thirty medical officers, but noprovision is made for dentists. In Mesopotamia decay of the teeth wasrapid. Dentists in small numbers were sent from India. I hesitate to putdown the amount that one dentist told me he was making each month. Wehad, for some time, only one dentist, and his waiting list was severalhundred cases, all requiring urgent attention. Some of the bad casesbecame permanent base men--that is, they were attached for duty at thebase--and assisted in hospital work. If each hospital had had a dentistattached to it as a matter of routine, and a couple of mechanics forrepairing dentures, receiving the same pay as a doctor, the problem ofteeth, which is always troublesome, would have been to a considerableextent solved. I do not know why teeth decayed so rapidly. It may havebeen due to incipient scurvy, or to the nature of the rations, or to thegeneral state of health, or it may have been caused by some septiccondition of the mouth, induced by the heat and dryness. Some youngfellows lost every tooth in their possession in a year. Hair suffered inthe same way, but to a lesser extent. Some exhaustion of the thyroidgland may have been at the bottom of the trouble. 

XI

EDEN REVISITED

Towards the end of October the weather became cooler, and in Novemberthe nights were chilly. Sickness diminished rapidly. At this seasonthere is a kind of charm about Mesopotamia. Clouds begin to inhabit theskies and the colour effects, especially those of dawn and sunset, arelovely. It is a time intermediate between the season of heat and theseason of floods--a brief time, but one in which the country is at itsbest. Mosquitoes and sand-flies vanish. A lovely bird, a deep blue andrusset, sings in the groves. The blue jay screams and darts through thepalm trees. It is possible to understand how in the Eastern poets thebeauty of women is constantly compared with the moon. It is the onlything to compare it to. In a country like Mesopotamia, with its entirelack of scenery, the moon in all her phases is by far the most beautifulthing that one sees. After the heat of the day, when the sun has seemeda destroyer rather than a fructifier, the slender crescent rising overthe plain is like a girl dressed in silver. This poverty in nature mustperplex the Mesopotamian artist. The only objects that the nativejewellers etch into their silver work are Ezra's tomb, the native boat, the jackal, the palm tree and the camel. And that is about all thematerial the country yields. It is this simplicity that leaves only twocourses open to the inhabitants. They must either fall back upon theirsenses and become sensualists or seek a higher path and become mystics. 

There is little love lost between the Indians and the Arabs. The Arabsin Mesopotamia have long feared the incursion of India into theircountry, for they knew that the Indian farmer under the Britishengineers would make Mesopotamia blossom like a rose. The swiftness withwhich seeds grow when properly watered is uncanny. We had a gardenattached to the mess and watered by a variety of people. The firstattempt was a failure owing to the absent-mindedness of the waterers, each of whom, during an exceedingly hot spell, tacitly assumed that theother man would do his duty. The second attempt was successful. Peasstraight out of packets and scattered in a long furrow rose from theearth with a kind of ferocity, as if they hated the soil in which theyfound themselves. There was one disadvantage in the produce of thisgarden--its flavour was rather weak. 

Coming down the river at the end of the year the railway was a great newfeature of the country. Small tank engines were crawling over the plainand all along the banks were piles of sleepers and gangs of Arabs. Wereached the entrance of the Narrows at dusk and anchored for the night. It was a night that differed entirely from those we endured when goingup. There was a concert party on board, and a cavalry major whopossessed some tomato soup. That night the sky was superb with stars. Taurus rose, with Aldebaran as red as fire; then Castor and Pollux calmin their symmetry, with the Pleiades above like a shattered diamond. Then glittering Orion slowly swung above the horizon. In the middle ofthe night there was a crash of musketry, and a sudden uproar. The majorappeared, speaking Hindustani very rapidly, his eyes closed. It appearedthat some Arabs had crept on to the barge next the shore and tried toloot some mail bags. Quiet was soon restored. At dawn a crescent moon, upholding Venus at her fairest, hung in the east, throwing a soft whiteflame over the dark water. 

That night we reached Kurna and tied up alongside the Garden of Eden. Itwas pitch black. A string of little Arab boys suddenly emerged from abrightly illuminated door each with a sack and slipped on board. Thiswas the mail for Basra, from the dwellers in Eden. About nine a dim, white-robed procession passed down the river-side with a lamp, a torchand a beating drum and vanished into a building. A wedding was beingcelebrated in the Garden of Eden. Next morning that bride of yesterdaymight have cast her white veil over the scene. Through the clingingmist the life of the little hamlet gradually became visible. A caférevealed itself, a collection of wooden settles in a small square, andbeyond a big dark doorway. A fat Arab in yellow appeared and gazed atus. Then an old wizened fellow, a _haji_ from his green turban showinghe had seen Mecca, came up and they conversed. Green Turban was plainlylamenting. He pointed to our ship, to the telegraph-office, to a squadof Gurkhas marching past wearing their ration baskets as hats, and threwup his hands. The fat café proprietor shrugged his shoulders and pointedto the bazaar. His argument was plain. Business was good and he wascontent with the changes. Green Turban drew his robes closer round him, shook his head and went off, a sad, gaunt figure on whose face wasstamped that expression which is common all the world over when newwine and old bottles make contact. As he passed up the bank a barge loadof howitzers, their yellow muzzles gazing skywards, churned its way upstream. 

The railway from Kurna to Amara was nearing completion towards the endof November. It is possible for vessels of considerable size to traversethe whole length of the Shatt-el-Arab up to its point of commencement atKurna. The railway, so long in coming, will make a great difference tothe troops in the country during the next hot season. For, with properlines of communication and with properly equipped buildings for the sickand wounded, a great deal of the sufferings that were endured in theearly stages of the campaign will be entirely done away with. 

The major, a dreamy soul, while brooding over the golden brown plain onour way down river, now and then sought to fathom the mystery of thecountry's future. As we left Kurna and entered the fair, broad-bosomedShatt-el-Arab he suddenly swept his arm round the horizon. "All thisshow of ours out here is nothing in itself, " he said. "It's a beginningof something that will materialise a hundred or two hundred or athousand years hence. We are the great irrigating nation and that's whywe're here now. We'll fix this land up and get it going and then farahead all the agricultural produce which we made possible will move thewheels of a new humanity. Pray God, yes--a new humanity! One thatdoesn't stuff itself silly with whisky and beef and beer and die ofapoplexy and high explosives. "

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