Captain Eve—August 3.—“Here we are likely to remain for the next six weeks or so, training our horses and getting them fit. We are under canvas, and the horses in straw-matting stabling.... It is of course very hot, but it is very dry heat, and the nights are cool.... Dust and sand-storms are the worst thing....
“I have got young Pedder, a very nice fellow, transferred to me, and am now full up again with officers and have a very good squadron....”
2nd Lieutenant Pedder—August 3.—“We are staying here for at least two months in a desert about four miles from where we disembarked.... I have got no news: there is none out here, every day is precisely the same as the one before.... There’s a hot sand-storm raging this morning: we get it pretty regularly every day. I have got hold of one very nice new horse; of course all these horses are untrained, so we have an awful job with them. Yes, Stirling is all right, and Munster, who fell out at Port Said, has rejoined us.”
Captain Eve—August 3.—“We all wear neck-shades on our Cawnpore helmets, and all wear spine-pads and short sleeves. Later we shall wear our coats, but now no one does, and the men have khaki shorts too....
“I bought what they call a chágal in Bombay, a canvas bag for water, which you hang up full, and which keeps cool. We have all had them issued to us as well, so we are well off. They are invaluable, and the drinking-water is good, and we mostly live on that, some with lime-juice and tea....
“You have no idea the dust, heat, and discomfort in which I write. If the letter arrives in a mucky state you will know. You don’t know what a sand-storm is like, and that with real heat and all the sand turning to dirty mud under one’s hands and arms when one was sweating, and one’s indelible pencil staining one all over for the same reason.”
The heat, apparently, was more than uncomfortable, for in spite of the writer’s hearty appetite and contentment, and the sober joys of the “chágal” (which, by the way, rhymes approximately with “gargle,” as “jangal” becomes “jungle”), his letters for the next fortnight are written from hospital in Basra. Still they are contented enough.
“I shall be very comfortable indeed here, and shall stop till both my complaints are really right. This is a nice high, big, cool building right on the river, with electric fans, and light, and all that sort of thing—in fact, civilised comforts.”
The Thirteenth were certainly fortunate in that way, that they came to Mesopotamia too late to share the horrible discomforts and sufferings endured by the sick and wounded during the campaigns of 1914 and 1915, before the medical arrangements had been fully organised.
“The General came to see me last evening, and sat talking a long time. I thought it so nice of him. But he really is simply charming....