There was also on board an excellent engineer, full of "sunny retrospect." He could talk or listen, which is like unto a horse that can gallop and walk. As he explained on inquiry, he had never married, nor had he ever avoided marriage. Altogether he was a delightful fellow for company.
We passed the marshes of Kurna of an earlier engagement in this campaign, where our army had dislodged the Turk with guns mounted on planks between bellums, and whole brigades punted and poled their way up. "Forward the light bellums!" "Charge!" were the orders the commanding officers yelled on that day. Britain was always irresistible on the water! The whole affair is now called "Regatta week."
We also passed where the Garden of Eden was said to have been. As a matter of fact, the whole of this country, like the plains of India, is delta formation. The two rivers must have been higher up and consequently Eden also. The latter fact rather knocks out the little remaining romance about the place. Sir William Wilcocks puts the site at Hit, above Baghdad, and says that even going no further back than the tertiary epoch would place the delta there.
We reached Amara on the fourth day. It is a village of some considerable size pleasantly lining both banks of a beautiful straight reach in the Tigris. In the broad, clear water one sees reflected the languid droop of the eternal date palm, the great triangular sails of the mahela, the regular contour of the Bridge of Boats. It is not unpicturesque. Here, some months ago, a delightful coup was effected by the commander of H.M.S. Shaitan and about a dozen men. These were the first in the pursuit from Kurna, and the others not having arrived, determined on a bold policy, as at any moment the Arabs might have joined forces with the Turk and rendered the taking of Kurna quite difficult. These few men went ashore and, entering the barracks containing some several hundreds of men, demanded their surrender and the immediate handing over of the town. The prestige of the British Navy or the eloquent silence of the gunboat's guns did the rest. And so by this remarkable bluff Amara fell without bloodshed, and was held although reinforcements did not arrive until the next day.
Above Amara the country is still perfectly flat, but appears less marshy in winter than lower down. Here a thicker ground scrub teems with black partridge and quail, some of which we shot from the boat. A sub. in the Hussars, named Pope, brought off a wonderful revolver shot into a jackal's ribs from the boat: we practised revolver shooting hard.
Arabs clustered in tiny tribes every few miles along the river. The men, some of whom are quite naked, I thought remarkable for great size of limb and muscular development. They would sometimes accompany the boat for miles, doing their weird undulating dance, hopping round first on one foot and then on the other. They welcome us when we win and torture and loot our wounded when they get a chance. Here and there Jewish women and old men ladle water by a swinging scoop into a drain for their irrigation. The dress and general customs continually recall one's school days' pictures of Biblical times.
Two or three days later we got to Kut-el-Amara (pronounce Kut like foot), passing the battlefield of Essin en route. It was at Essin where Townshend, by leaving his tents on one bank of the river and crossing in the night, deceived the Turk into fancied security, and the next day flung him neck and crop out of a position of great strength.
Here the Hussars took my horse on by the desert and I left in the Shirin for Azizie. At Kut we had heard that Baghdad would fall that evening, and later that night reverse news that we had had very heavy casualties. The hospitals were removed from the barges, and reinforcements' kit of the West Kents and Hussars was left with us instead. "Fruit-salt" and I messed with the West Kents, awfully good fellows, one a youngster just from Clare College. The remaining West Kents marched, escorted by the 14th Hussars, and met us at some point on the river each day. One night we were stranded ashore and in awful rain. The tatti (rush) roof let most of the water through, and what it did not let through, collected in gutters that every now and then deluged over us. My sleeping bag became a tank. Suddenly came the dawn and we awoke to a steaming-hot sunny world.
A heavily-armed launch protected with boosa bales passed us. Their answer—"Headquarters"—was our first intimation of the seriousness of the position of our army. Two days after this, and about eight or nine since leaving Basra, we got to Azizie, a mere bend in the river with a few huts. There were many horses watering and several hundred Turkish prisoners on the bank. On every side we saw evidence of a hurried march. It was all hustle and haste. We went ashore, our last orders being to leave for Salaiman Pak, some thirty miles up river and fifteen from Baghdad. But once ashore, we saw from the ungroomed condition of the horses, the dust-covered harnesses and wagons, the exhausted men, many asleep in their roughly arranged lines, that our army after tremendous exertions had just arrived and halted. The C.R.A.'s flag hung over a mud hut. He explained that we had fought a big action at Ctesiphon where the Turks were heavily entrenched, that we had turned them out, and got into their second line when the enemy had retired to the Diala river, his third line. But the action, which was tactically a brilliant success, had cost us a third of our force. The word came that two Turkish divisions were reinforcing them, so we retired in the night. It seems that for a time both armies were in retreat, but the Turks, on hearing of our withdrawal, gave chase. They were, however, doubly respectful in having suffered casualties twice our own, and they held off some few miles from Azizie.