Messages and countless orders were sent. We waited day after day moored to the bank some miles from Baghdad. The death rate was increasing. This ship seems stricken. Then we were told we had to walk to Baghdad. Very few of us could have got there. Fortunately our resistance prevailed, although had we been the rank and file I am convinced this order would have been carried out. Finally the engineer in charge of the boat set off on a donkey for Baghdad, his legs doing a dangling jig from side to side. We were now within ten miles or so of Baghdad and the green date palms of the city were before us. Some days afterwards the Mejidieh came and took us in tow, but we made very slow headway against the current and had to tie up once more at night. Waterways worked by a horse running up and down on an incline and hauling over a wheel a rope attached to a large skin receptacle of water was the new irrigation scheme in this district. We passed more palm groves within high walls, and tried to think of Haroun-al-Rashid. Then minarets and the domes of mosques appeared, and we swung into view of a fine river-front of buildings less dilapidated than we had seen for many months. In going round the corner against the rapid current we had to make about eight attempts, each time resulting in our getting swung round, and to avoid the sandbanks we had to return. Assisted by men on shore with ropes we managed this at length and drew near the bank. It was about eight o'clock at night. We passed within a few feet of crowds of fezzed figures on the verandah cafés that stood on piles in the river on the right bank. We heard their carousals, and I remember the red line of their flaming pipes as they cried together yelling and cheering in exultation. Then we drew alongside the left bank near what we called the Water Tower. We were very hungry and ill, and alongside our dead on board many others were dying. The only visitors we had were disreputable Arabs and Turks who, as the night grew darker, swarmed on board and looted or thieved. I define loot as open theft under threat of violence, by a captor from a captive.
In the morning we were subjected to more looting, and if one left one's kit a second it disappeared. Having to carry some of our kit as best we could, the rest was imperilled. I lost my haversack with all my knives and plates and razor and toilet kit and scanty supply of medicine like chlorodyne and quinine, of which the Turks had none. We were left in the sun in rows still without food and under the eyes of a curious crowd. We bought a few things from women hawkers.
This same major who lies here dying in this house in Baghdad was, so soon as we disembarked, left lying uncovered from the sun on a stretcher apparently unconscious and covered by thousands of flies, in fact, black with them. Now and then a wasted arm rose a few inches as if to brush them off but fell back inadequate to the task. One wondered if he were dead. Our protests as we realized he had been left there hours before we arrived were more than vehement. One of our orderlies was finally allowed to remove him under cover from the fierce sun and to give him water. One saw British soldiers in a similar state dying of enteritis with a green ooze issuing from their lips, their mouths fixed open, in and out of which flies walked like bees entering and issuing from a hive. We were thankful to leave the ill-fated Julna, and personally I felt very grateful to Col. Brown-Mason, the P.M.O., our eternal friend Major Aylen (O.C. officers' hospital) and General G. B. Smith who, in the periods of long waiting, was most cheerful and encouraging.
We were split up into parties of sick in various hospitals so called. Two officers accompanied me and the sentry. We were told it was one minute's walk. Lieutenant Richardson, who had a shot back and could not stand for many seconds, had to walk. Lieutenant Forbes and I took his arms to assist him, and like three drunken men lurched forward through the bazaar. Poor Richardson collapsed several times on the way and finally fainted. It was at least a mile off, and our sentry lost his way. He was quite a decent fellow and did not object to some Armenian women who ran out with lemonade. We got a stretcher and at last arrived.
I am in a long room filled with bug and flea infested beds. Twice a day at hours impossible to conjecture a Turk brings in youghut, a curdled milk, in a bucket which we found most uninviting but have since learnt to take, and some rice and pilaf. We have been here some days, and through talking German to the son of the old cavalry commandant, I have actually been allowed to get dressed and go to the adjacent shops to buy castor oil with some of my remaining coins.
The American Consul has visited us. He is a kind man, and regrets that he has not any money left, as he gave all he could get to the first column, but he helped us with our luggage and sent along a few comforts such as tobacco and quinine. I heard that all the money at the fall of Kut was distributed among the garrison, and about three or four gold liras were to have reached me. They did not, however. I have only eighty piastres left, the balance of changing fifty rupees. At night it is very hot and we sleep on the roofs, as does all Baghdad. Major Cotton has grown worse. On arrival here he was taken to some contagious disease hospital by mistake, and met no one who knew who he was or who could speak for him, days after he came here. His sufferings and mental anguish had been terrible away from us all. Major Aylen gave him a tablespoonful of champagne brought up secretly from the camp by another party. After this the poor fellow became more coherent and quite restful. Late that night he begged me to take him on to the balcony. Notwithstanding the pain of my back I managed to get him on the verandah. He could not have weighed more than five stone. He said he was very grateful to feel the gentle movement of a breeze. Next morning he was dead. Details of other similar cases I won't write about.
May 26th.—Cavalry Barracks, Baghdad. I have been here some days, having decided that one could not hope to recover in an empty house, and so after a week or more there resolved on a supreme effort. We were sent to these Turkish barracks near the north gate on the maidan. It was no great distance but took much effort to get there. We left in the late afternoon, but owing to mistakes of the sentries, who took us to several wrong places, and to the fact that the Turkish sergeants at the barracks did not approve of our papers, we still wandered about after dark. He sent us back. This was repeated several times. We wandered round the place in the dark huddled up like sheep on the foul and stenching maidan by our postas who awaited the Commandant.
Towards 10 p.m., in the dark we got up from the mud pool, which reeked of the dead horses therein and the rubbish of the city. Sick, hungry and cold we plodded up the steps to empty rooms, our means of existence being only what remained to us, that is to say, what the various parties had not looted. This meant two or three tins of milk, a little bad tea, and possibly raisins.
The chief columns of officers have already left for Mosul. Daily I practise walking on the wall, a space that offers opportunity for a good promenade. I want to see how much I can do. Altogether I feel a little better but the dysentery has left me very weak, and after a half-mile have to sit down. I have contrived to send my British orderly to the town where, with the money I have raised by selling some of my kit, he has bought on occasion small pieces of meat or fish, a few vegetables, and even a small fowl which we shared among six sick people. We stewed the fowl to rags and drank the soup.