One young officer of the Regiment, 2nd Lieutenant Payne, speaks as if the work had been hard, and not free from fighting, even after Lajj. He had passed some years in Canada, and had perhaps learnt there to be more outspoken than the very reserved British officer generally is. “Since that date” (3rd March), he writes on the 13th, “we have been fighting day and night without any rest or sleep, till men and horses dropped with exhaustion, and had Baghdad not fallen the day before yesterday there would have been few of the Thirteenth left to tell the tale.” His letter goes on to describe various incidents of the past week. The following are extracts:—
“Next morning, 4 A.M.,[48] the Division had to move on, and our squadron was left as escort to the transport, which didn’t leave till the afternoon, so we took our men back to the awful battlefield to see if we could pick up any men alive, and to bury the dead. We buried sixteen men and three officers in the same grave, but got nothing in personal effects, as they had been stripped, some of them naked. All the time we were working we had to keep a Hotchkiss gun going to keep off the Arabs, who were coming in fast to pick up loot, of which there was tons in the way of arms and saddlery.[49]...
“That same night we passed through another strong point at Ctesiphon that they had not stopped to defend, and in the moonlight I rode over to see the great arch of Ctesiphon that is supposed to have been built in the time of Nebuchadnezzar or one of those birds. It has a great façade of about 200 feet high that opens into a courtyard, and alongside is this wonderful arched roof that looks as though it had been a banqueting-hall.”
The writer is a little out in his dates, but the majority of his countrymen knew not much more about the matter than he did.
“The enemy had gone back to their last and strongest position above Diala, where there is a fork in the river. We weren’t successful in smashing that place, so our Division and half the Infantry crossed the river with the intention of striking the railway north of the city, and we were out three days and nights without any rest, trying to force a way round, and the farther we went the farther we had to come for water, as it was death for men and horses to be cut off from the river. In forcing our way down to water on the morning of the 12th[50] we lost an officer and man, being sniped from the other side of the river. We were all done up, no sleep, little food, and the horses dropping under us after three weeks’ fierce fighting, and slowly making our way to carry on the attack on the flank of the Infantry, which always necessitated the enemy widening his front and weakening his strength, when news came that the Black Watch entered Baghdad at 5.30 A.M.
“It was too good to believe, but then orders were passed down, ‘The Thirteenth Hussars will report at once to G.H.Q. at railway station for orders re garrisoning town.’ There was new life in all of us at once; we hadn’t had a sight of Baghdad and didn’t think we were likely to for an age, but the next minute we were hoofing it at a trot along the highroad that had been used for hundreds of centuries, over trenches that the Turks had held the night before, and over dead bodies of both attackers and attacked. But we got into the city. One seething mass of Arabs greeted us; the same scum that the day before would have delivered up any of our wounded to the Turks now brazenly brought out wounded Turks to us that were not able to get away in the rush, dirty devils always ready to join in with the winning side, but always with an eye to scrupper the unfortunate of either if they can catch him unprotected.
| TURKISH BARRACKS |
| ARMY COMMANDER’S HOUSE |
| BRITISH, AMERICAN, AND FRENCH CONSULATES |
| BAGHDAD |
“After standing by for an hour or so Jeffrey was told to take two squadrons and one squadron of machine-gunners to protect Kazimain, three miles up to (?) the river. So I found myself in command of ‘D’ Squadron, and here we are in the lap of luxury (Eastern). Kazimain is where all the pilgrims come to the great mosque, and is entirely composed of caravanserai sort of hotel quarters: there are 5000 of these buildings. We are quartered in the biggest, and even the men are able to have a wooden bedstead to lie on each. It is a big square building with a courtyard in the middle, in which we have picketed over 250 horses comfortably. Jeffrey and I and the Intelligence Officer have a large stone-floored room with four bedsteads in it; there are no windows, of course, but you let down great heavy wooden shutters when the sun is too hot. The Sheikh (elder of the town) brought in beautiful carpets and bedding for us, and the women and children in hordes followed us in the street, all making a tinkly sort of yodelling song. They are in terror of the Turks coming in, and sacking the place, and taking their women. We weren’t looking our best by any means: no change of clothes, unshaven, and unwashed for five days, the dust from the storms begrimed into our skins, and our clothes in rags. But to-day we are all happy and clean. The men, who haven’t had a bath or change since January 24th,[51] can now be seen having their boots polished by Arab children, and strutting about like lords; they do so love to have something to order about. You would laugh to see them when we take prisoners: they make them hold their stirrup-irons while they mount their horses, and hand them their coats to put on—anything for the sake of exercising power....
“However, it was all too good to be true—to go to sleep and not get up till daylight, and have your sleep out, was too good to last more than two days, and we have orders to turn the job over to an Infantry battalion, and rejoin the remainder of the Regiment in Baghdad, where we go into the Cavalry barracks, which no doubt will be just as nice: but the heavenly paradise of it all here, with the river alongside, and all the water you like, fresh good green stuff, and milk. This is buffalo milk, but quite good, and we get lettuces, onions, and mutton—in fact, we don’t have to open a tin of any sort. Our bread is chupatti, the round flat things which the Jews make....”
War certainly teaches a man to be content with the essential things of life.