I have been allowed by special leave to visit General Smith in hospital. He had asked me during the last days of Kut to do A.D.C. again to him in captivity. This was an excellent chance for which I was most grateful, as it seemed doubtful whether I would last the trek. But I have no money and can't get any, and am averse to travelling on my general's supply, as money now is one's chance of life. I told him frankly that I am doubtful about being fit enough to carry on very efficiently for him, but as he is to travel in a carriage over the desert for all those hundreds of miles I could do a certain amount, and I hoped to be of use in knowing something of French and German. However, in my woebegone condition I was promptly turned down. I recognize now that I am in for the ordeal of the survival of the fittest with a heavy handicap. We hear sometimes terrible accounts of the hardships undergone over these hundreds of miles of foodless and often waterless land, to struggle over which is an achievement even for a strong man. But for one thing, we should be too dismayed to start—that is the hope and will strong within us to survive. One recognizes this show has become a competition between a man and a merciless fate. I believe I shall get through.
Major Middlemas and Lieutenant Greenwood shared my room and we slept on our blankets on the floor.
Later.—We have been allowed three times into the town and wandered through a bazaar full of bootshops and cafés. Gunner Holmes sticks faithfully to me. He is lucky to have escaped the lot of the others. Shortly after our arrival we saw what even the oldest soldiers amongst us regarded as the most awful spectacle of their lives—the sight of a column of British soldiers under Turk and Arab guards entering Baghdad after the march from Kut. They were literally walking corpses, some doubled with the pains of cholera, some limping from blows received en route. They were pressed on by their guards. Some had lost their boots and shoes or had parted with them for food. Some fell, but under the coercion of loud shouts or a Turkish heel got up and lurched forward again.
We heard from hospital of the awful sufferings of the men here who were quite unnecessarily confined in a bare baked-up field near the station. Indians and British were all mixed up, a deliberate effort of the Turk to encourage strife between the Mussulman prisoners and the others. For some days, mad with thirst, they struggled around a tiny foul pool into which the sick crawled and collapsed. It became stirred up with mud but the men, poor fellows, drank it.
They have no cover from the sun except a few wretched sticks propped on poles.
Baghdad is a very old city. But from its grimy and ill-kept streets and from its dust-smothered houses, the glamour of its ancient romance seems very far off. One minaret of Byzantine design we passed on our way to the town. There is nothing else to tell one of its glorious past, in fact it is said that all Baghdad was on the other bank. It is merely a drab, dull succession of buildings formed of the sun-baked mud of the desert. On the river, however, especially at sunset when the dirt and dust are obscured and only the pipes of the Baghdadis and Arabs blaze in the dusk, it is decidedly picturesque.
All the sick, even if only partly able to walk, start on the desert trek for Mosul in a few days. We have heard so much of waterless marches and barren lands crossed only by the nastiest Arabs, that one has the resistless desire to try one's chance. To move is to live; to stay here is to die.
Later.—I have made a small tour of some antique shops in the bazaar with a delightful youth named Lacy of the Hants. He has just left school and is as slender and green as the young willow, and yet he has contrived to keep his manners intact, to await quietly his turn and to prefer dignified acquiescence to selfishness. We found quite an amount of silver work and even china, some of which we heard had found its way here during the war from an old caravan route from China.
I have corrupted my first sentry by giving him a drink, swallowed a horrible cognac, the immediate effects of which were promising, and learned two Turkish words. One is "yok," which means "there is not," and the other is "yesak," which means forbidden!
Mosul, June 14th.—Nearly three weeks ago at Baghdad the convalescent and sick who were able to move at all were given several false starts, and then without notice marched in the fierce heat to the railway station nearly two miles off. We then lay down in the road until evening when the train was found to be unable to start. We bought some bread and at intervals managed leave from our guards to get water. In the early morning we left by train for Samarra, the rail head eighty miles off, a tiny village on the scorching plain. Dust storms enveloped us as we marched to quarters which were on the ground inside a serai. A few branches interwoven overhead afforded most inadequate shelter. Here we met some other officers who had been left behind from previous columns. Feverish preparations filled the interval while we awaited donkeys which were to transport us. One heard that previous columns had bought the few available stores, and that the Arabs had learned to put up prices. The novelty for the Turk of white prisoners was wearing off, and altogether we seemed in for a rough time. We were allowed to go down to the river near by to bathe under escort. On one occasion our padre quoted "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we thought of thee, O Zion." We realized we were the Third Captivity. In fact he might have selected another psalm.