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War in the Garden 
 of Eden 
 
'//^/'i / /.f"'-/ /'"^y '6 " /,. 
 
 Korii.it Roosevelt 
 
 From the (Iniwiiiif by .lohn S. Sar«.-iil, July S, 1<)17 
 
War in the Garden 
 of Eden 
 
 By 
 Kermit Roosevelt 
 
 Captain Nfotor Machine-Gun Corpi 
 
 British tipcditionary Forces 
 
 Captain Field Artillery 
 
 AmericaQ Expeditionary Forcei 
 
 Illustrated from Photographs by the Author 
 
 New York 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 1919 
 
list? 
 
 Copyright, 1919, bt 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published September, 1919 
 
 Copyright, 1919, by THE METROPOLITAN PUBLICATIONS, INC. 
 
 UL 
 
 ©CLA5 353 26 
 
To 
 
 The Memory of My Father 
 
Contents 
 
 rAGB 
 
 I. Off for Mesopotamia 3 
 
 11. The Tigris Front 31 
 
 III. Patrolling the Ruins of Babylon . . 63 
 
 rV. Skirmishes and Reconnaissances Axonq 
 
 THE Kurdish Front 85 
 
 V. The Advance on the Euphrates , .101 
 
 VI. Baghdad Sketches 135 
 
 VII. The Attack on the Persian Front . . 153 
 
 VIII. Back through Palestine 189 
 
 IX. With the First Division in France and 
 
 Germany 211 
 
Illustrations 
 
 Kermit Roosevelt Frontispiece 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 Map of Mesopotamia showing region of the fighting . . 8 
 
 Ashar Creek at Basra 14 
 
 Golden Dome of Samarra 34 
 
 Rafting down from Tekrit 34 
 
 Captured Turkish camel corps 50 
 
 Towing an armored car across a river 66 
 
 Reconnaissance 66 
 
 The Lion of Babylon 78 
 
 A dragon on the palace wall 78 
 
 Hauling out a badly bogged fighting car 92 
 
 A Mesopotamian garage 92 
 
 A water-wheel on the Euphrates 106 
 
 A "Red Crescent" ambulance 124 
 
 A jeweller's booth in the bazaar 140 
 
 Indian cavalry bringing in prisoners after the charge . 158 
 
 ix 
 
X ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACraa PAGE 
 
 The Kurd and his wife 168 
 
 Sheik Muttar and the two Kurds 168 
 
 Kirkuk 180 
 
 A street in Jerusalem 196 
 
 Japanese destroyers passing through the gut at Taranto 206 
 
I 
 
 off for Mesopotamia 
 
WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 I 
 
 OFF .FOR MESOPOTAMIA 
 
 It was at Taranto that we embarked for 
 Mesopotamia. Reinforcements were sent out 
 from England in one of two ways — either all 
 the way round the Cape of Good Hope, or by 
 train through France and Italy down to the 
 desolate little seaport of Taranto, and thence 
 by transport over to Egypt, through the Suez 
 Canal, and on down the Red Sea to the Indian 
 Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The latter 
 method was by far the shorter, but the sub- 
 marine situation in the Mediterranean was 
 such that convoying troops was a matter of 
 great diflBculty. Taranto is an ancient Greek 
 town, situated at the mouth of a landlocked 
 harbor, the entrance to which is a narrow 
 channel, certainly not more than two hundred 
 yards across. The old part of the town is 
 built on a hill, and the alleys and runways 
 winding among the great stone dwellings serve 
 
 as streets. As is the case with maritime towns, 
 
 s 
 
4 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 it is along the wharfs that the most interest 
 centres. During one afternoon I wandered 
 through the old town and listened to the fisher- 
 folk singing as they overhauled and mended 
 their nets. Grouped around a stone archway- 
 sat six or seven women and girls. They were 
 evidently members of one family — a grand- 
 mother, her daughters, and their children. 
 The old woman, wild, dark, and hawk-featured, 
 was blind, and as she knitted she chanted 
 some verses. I could only understand occa- 
 sional words and phrases, but it was evidently 
 a long epic. At intervals her listeners would 
 break out in comments as they worked, but, 
 like *'Othere, the old sea-captain," she "neither 
 paused nor stirred." 
 
 There are few things more desolate than 
 even the best situated "rest-camps" — the long 
 lines of tents set out with military precision, 
 the trampled grass, and the board walks; but 
 the one at Taranto where we awaited embarka- 
 tion was peculiarly dismal even for a rest- 
 camp. So it happened that when Admiral Mark 
 Kerr, the commander of the Mediterranean 
 fleet, invited me to be his guest aboard H.M.S. 
 Queen until the transport should sail, it was 
 in every way an opportunity to be appreciated. 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 5 
 
 In the British Empire the navy is the "senior 
 service," and I soon found that the tradition 
 for the hospitaHty and cultivation of its officers 
 was more than justified. The admiral had 
 travelled, and read, and written, and no more 
 pleasant evenings could be imagined than 
 those spent in listening to his stories of the 
 famous writers, statesmen, and artists who 
 were numbered among his friends. He had 
 always been a great enthusiast for the devel- 
 opment of aerial warfare, and he was recently'^ 
 in Nova Scotia in command of the giant Hand- 
 ley -Page machine which was awaiting favorable 
 weather conditions in order to attempt the non- 
 stop transatlantic flight. Among his poems^ 
 stands out the "Prayer of Empire," which, 
 oddly enough, the former German Emperor 
 greatly admired, ordering it distributed 
 throughout the imperial navy ! The Kaiser's 
 feelings toward the admiral have suffered an 
 abrupt change, but they would have been 
 even more hostile had England profited by 
 his warnings: 
 
 " There's no menace in preparedness, no threat in being 
 strong, 
 If the people's brain be healthy and they think no 
 thought of wrong." 
 
6 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 After four or five most agreeable days aboard 
 the Queen the word came to embark, and I 
 was duly transferred to the Saxoriy an old 
 Union Castle liner that was to run us straight 
 through to Busra. 
 
 As we steamed out of the harbor we were 
 joined by two diminutive Japanese destroyers 
 which were to convoy us. The menace of the 
 submarine being particularly felt in the Adri- 
 atic, the transports travelled only by night 
 during the first part of the voyage. To a lands- 
 man it was incomprehensible how it was possi- 
 ble for us to pursue our zigzag course in the 
 inky blackness and avoid collisions, particularly 
 when it was borne in mind that our ship was 
 English and our convoyers were Japanese. Dur- 
 ing the afternoon we were drilled in the method 
 of abandoning ship, and I was put in charge of a 
 lifeboat and a certain section of the ropes that 
 were to be used in our descent over the side into 
 the water. Between twelve and one o'clock that 
 night we were awakened by three blasts, the 
 preconcerted danger-signal. Slipping into my 
 life-jacket, I groped my way to my station on 
 deck. The men were filing up in perfect order 
 and with no show of excitement. A ship's 
 oflBicer passed and said he had heard that we 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 7 
 
 had been torpedoed and were taking in water. 
 For fifteen or twenty minutes we knew nothing 
 further. A Scotch captain who had charge of 
 the next boat to me came over and whispered : 
 *'It looks as if we'd go down. I have just seen 
 a rat run out along the ropes into my boat ! " 
 That particular rat had not been properly 
 brought up, for shortly afterward we were 
 told that we were not sinking. We had been 
 rammed amidships by one of the escorting 
 destroyers, but the breach was above the 
 water-line. We heard later that the destroyer, 
 though badly smashed up, managed to make 
 land in safety. 
 
 We laid up two days in a harbor on the 
 Albanian coast, spending the time pleasantly 
 enough in swimming and sailing, while we 
 waited for a new escort. Another night's run 
 put us in Navarino Bay. The grandfather of 
 Lieutenant Finch Hatton, one of the oflScers 
 on board, commanded the Allied forces in the 
 famous battle fought here in 1827, when the 
 Turkish fleet was vanquished and the inde- 
 pendence of Greece assured. 
 
 Several days more brought us to Port Said, 
 and after a short delay we pushed on through 
 the canal and into the Red Sea. It was 
 
8 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 August, and when one talks of the Red Sea 
 in August there is no further need for com- 
 ment. The Saxon had not been built for the 
 tropics. She had no fans, nor ventilating 
 system such as we have on the United Fruit 
 boats. Some unusually intelligent stokers had 
 deserted at Port Said, and as we were in con- 
 sequence short-handed, it was suggested that 
 any volunteers would be given a try. Finch 
 Hatton and I felt that our years in the tropics 
 should qualify us, and that the exercise would 
 improve our dispositions. We got the exer- 
 cise. Never have I felt anything as hot, and 
 I have spent August in Yuma, Ari-zona, and 
 been in Italian Somaliland and the Amazon 
 Valley. The shovels and the handles of the 
 wheelbarrows blistered our hands. 
 
 We had a number of cases of heat-stroke, 
 and the hospital facilities on a crowded trans- 
 port can never be all that might be desired. 
 The first military burial at sea was deeply im- 
 pressive. There was a lane of Tommies drawn 
 up with their rifles reversed and heads bowed; 
 the short, classic burial service was read, and 
 the body, wrapped in the Union Jack, slid 
 down over the stern of the ship. Then the 
 bugles rang out in the haunting, mournful 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 9 
 
 strains of the "Last Post," and the service 
 ended with all singing "Abide With Me.'* 
 
 We sweltered along down the Red Sea and 
 around into the Indian Ocean. We wished to 
 call at Aden in order to disembark some of our 
 sick, but were ordered to continue on without 
 touching. Our duties were light, and we 
 spent the time playing cards and reading. 
 The Tommies played "house" from dawn till 
 dark. It is a game of the lotto variety. 
 Each man has a paper with numbers written 
 on squares; one of them draws from a bag 
 slips of paper also marked with numbers, calls 
 them out, and those having the number he 
 calls cover it, until all the numbers on their 
 paper have been covered. The first one to 
 finish wins, and collects a penny from each of 
 the losers. The caller drones out the num- 
 bers with a monotony only equalled by the 
 brain-fever bird, and quite as disastrous to the 
 nerves. There are certain conventional nick- 
 names: number one is always "Kelley's eye," 
 eleven is "legs eleven," sixty-six is "clickety 
 click," and the highest number is "top o' the 
 'ouse." There is another game that would be 
 much in vogue were it not for the vigilance 
 of the oflScers. It is known as "crown and 
 
10 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 anchor," and the advantage Hes so strongly in 
 favor of the banker that he cannot fail to make 
 a good income, and therefore the game is for- 
 bidden under the severest penalties. 
 
 As we passed through the Strait of Ormuz 
 memories of the early days of European suprem- 
 acy in the East crowded back, for I had read 
 many a vellum-covered volume in Portuguese 
 about the early struggles for supremacy in the 
 gulf. One in particular interested me. The Por- 
 tuguese were hemmed in at Ormuz by a greatly 
 superior English force. The expected rein- 
 forcements never arrived, and at length their 
 resources sank so low, and they sujffered in 
 addition, or in consequence, so greatly from 
 disease that they decided to sail forth and give 
 battle. This they did, but before they joined 
 in fight the ships of the two admirals sailed 
 up near each other — the Portuguese commander 
 sent the British a gorgeous scarlet ceremonial 
 cloak, the British responded by sending him 
 a handsomely embossed sword. The British 
 admiral donned the cloak, the Portuguese 
 grasped the sword; a page brought each a 
 cup of wine; they pledged each other, threw 
 the goblets into the sea, and fell to. The 
 British were victorious. Times indeed have 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 11 
 
 sadly changed in the last three hundred years ! 
 
 I was much struck with the accuracy of the 
 geographical descriptions in Camoens' letters 
 and odes. He is the greatest of the Portuguese 
 poets and wrote the larger part of his master- 
 epic, *'The Lusiad," while exiled in India. For 
 seventeen years he led an adventurous life in 
 the East; and it is easy to recognize many har- 
 bors and stretches of coast line from his inimi- 
 table portrayal. 
 
 Busra, our destination, lies about sixty miles 
 from the mouth of the Shatt el Arab, which is 
 the name given to the combined Tigris and 
 Euphrates after their junction at Kurna, an- 
 other fifty or sixty miles above. At the entrance 
 to the river lies a sand-bar, effectively block- 
 ing access to boats of as great draft as the 
 Saxon. We therefore transshipped to some 
 British India vessels, and exceedingly comfort- 
 able we found them, designed as they were for 
 tropic runs. We steamed up past the Island 
 of Abadan, where stand the refineries of the 
 Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It is hard to 
 overestimate the important part that company 
 has played in the conduct of the Mesopotamian 
 campaign. Motor transport was nowhere else 
 a greater necessity. There was no possi- 
 
12 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 bility of living on the country; at first, at 
 all events. General Dickson, the director of 
 local resources, later set in to so build up 
 and encourage agriculture that the army should 
 eventually be supported, in the staples of life, 
 by local produce. Transportation was ever 
 a hard nut to crack. Railroads were built, 
 but though the nature of the country called 
 for little grading, obtaining rails, except in 
 small quantities, was impossible. The ones 
 brought were chiefly secured by taking up the 
 double track of Indian railways. This process 
 naturally had a limit, and only lines of prime 
 importance could be laid down. Thus you 
 could go by rail from Busra to Amara, and from 
 Kut to Baghdad, but the stretch between 
 Amara and Kut had never been built, up to 
 the time I left the country. General Maude 
 once told me that pressure was being continu- 
 ally brought by the high command in England 
 or India to have that connecting-link built, but 
 that he was convinced that the rails would be 
 far more essential elsewhere, and had no inten- 
 tion of yielding. 
 
 I don't know the total number of motor 
 vehicles, but there were more than five thou- 
 sand Fords alone. On several occasions small 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 13 
 
 columns of infantry were transported in Fords, 
 five men and the driver to a car. Indians of 
 every caste and religion were turned into driv- 
 ers, and although it seemed sufficiently out of 
 place to come across wizened, khaki-clad Indo- 
 Chinese driving lorries in France, the incon- 
 gruity was even more marked when one be- 
 held a great bearded Sikh with his turbaned 
 head bent over the steering-wheel of a Ford. 
 
 Modern Busra stands on the banks of Ashar 
 Creek. The ancient city whence Sinbad the 
 sailor set forth is now seven or eight miles in- 
 land, buried under the shifting sands of the 
 desert. Busra was a seaport not so many 
 hundreds of years ago. Before that again, 
 Kurna was a seaport, and the two rivers prob- 
 ably only joined in the ocean, but they have 
 gradually enlarged the continent and forced 
 back the sea. The present rate of encroach- 
 ment amounts, I was told, to nearly twelve 
 feet a year. 
 
 The modern town has increased many fold 
 with the advent of the Expeditionary Force, 
 and much of the improvement is of a neces- 
 sarily permanent nature; in particular the 
 wharfs and roads. Indeed, one of the most 
 striking features of the Mesopotamian cam- 
 
14 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 paign is the permanency of the improvements 
 made by the British. In order to conquer the 
 country it was necessary to develop it, — ^build 
 railways and bridges and roads and tele- 
 graph systems, — and it has all been done in a 
 substantial manner. It is impossible to con- 
 template with equanimity the possibility of the 
 country reverting to a rule where all this 
 progress would soon disappear and the former 
 stagnancy and injustice again hold sway. 
 
 As soon as we landed I wandered off to the 
 bazaar — "suq" is what the Arab calls it. In 
 Busra there are a number of excellent ones. 
 By that I don't mean that there are art trea- 
 sures of the East to be found in them, for al- 
 most everything could be duplicated at a better 
 price in New York. It is the grouping of 
 wares, the mode of sale, and, above all, the 
 salesmen and buyers that make a bazaar — 
 the old bearded Persian sitting cross-legged in 
 his booth, the motley crowd jostling through 
 the narrow, vaulted passageway, the veiled 
 women, the hawk-featured, turbaned men, the 
 Jews, the Chaldeans, the Arabs, the Armenians, 
 the stalwart Kurds, and through it all a leaven 
 of khaki-clad Indians, purchasing for the regi- 
 mental mess. All these and an ever-present 
 
u 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 15 
 
 exotic, intangible something are what the 
 bazaar means. Close by the entrance stood 
 a booth festooned with lamps and lanterns of 
 every sort, with above it scrawled "Aladdin- 
 Ibn-Said." My Arabic was not at that time 
 sufficient to enable me to discover from the 
 owner whether he claimed illustrious ancestry 
 or had merely been named after a patron saint. 
 
 A few days after landing at Busra we em- 
 barked on a paddle-wheel boat to pursue our 
 way up-stream the five hundred intervening 
 miles to Baghdad. Along the banks of the 
 river stretched endless miles of date-palms. 
 We watched the Arabs at their work of fertil- 
 izing them, for in this country these palms 
 have to depend on human agency to transfer 
 the pollen. At Kurna we entered the Garden 
 of Eden, and one could quite appreciate the 
 feelings of the disgusted Tommy who ex- 
 claimed: *'If this is the Garden, it wouldn't 
 take no bloody angel with a flaming sword to 
 turn me back." The direct descendant of the 
 Tree is pointed out; whether its properties 
 are inherited I never heard, but certainly the 
 native would have little to learn by eating the 
 fruit. 
 
 Above Kurna the river is no longer lined 
 
16 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 with continuous palm -groves; desert and 
 swamps take their place — the abode of the 
 amphibious, nomadic, marsh Arab. An un- 
 ruly customer he is apt to prove himself, and 
 when he is *' wanted" by the officials, he re- 
 tires to his watery fastnesses, where he can 
 remain in complete safety unless betrayed by 
 his comrades. On the banks of the Tigris 
 stands Ezra's tomb. It is kept in good repair 
 through every vicissitude of rule, for it is a 
 holy place to Moslem and Jew and Christian 
 alike. 
 
 The third night brought us to Amara. The 
 evening was cool and pleasant after the scorch- 
 ing heat of the day, and Finch Hatton and I 
 thought that we would go ashore for a stroll 
 through the town. As we proceeded down 
 the bank toward the bridge, I caught sight of 
 a sentry walking his post. His appearance was 
 so very important and efficient that I slipped 
 behind my companion to give him a chance 
 to explain us. "Halt! Who goes there?'* 
 "Friend," replied Finch Hatton. "Advance, 
 friend, and give the countersign." F. H. started 
 to advance, followed by a still suspicious me, 
 and rightly so, for the Tommy, evidently mem- 
 ber of a recent draft, came forward to meet us 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 17 
 
 with lowered bayonet, remarking in a business- 
 like manner: *'There isn't any countersign.*' 
 
 Except for the gunboats and monitors all 
 river traffic is controlled by the Inland Water 
 Transport Service. The officers are recruited 
 from all the world over. I firmly believe that 
 no river of any importance could be mentioned 
 but what an officer of the I. W. T. could be 
 found who had navigated it. The great req- 
 uisite for transports on the Tigris was a 
 very light draft, and to fill the requirements 
 boats were requisitioned ranging from penny 
 steamers of the Thames to river-craft of the 
 Irrawaddy. Now in bringing a penny steamer 
 from London to Busra the submarine is one of 
 the lesser perils, and in supplying the wants of 
 the Expeditionary Force more than eighty ves- 
 sels were lost at sea, frequently with all aboard. 
 
 As was the custom, we had a barge lashed 
 to either side. These barges are laden with 
 troops, or horses, or supplies. In our case we 
 had the first Bengal regiment — a. new experi- 
 ment, undertaken for political reasons. The 
 Bengali is the Indian who most readily takes 
 to European learning. Rabindranath Tagore 
 is probably the most widely known member of 
 the race. They go to Calcutta University and 
 
18 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 learn a smattering of English and absorb a 
 certain amount of undigested general knowl- 
 edge and theory. These partially educated 
 Bengalis form the Babu class, and many are 
 employed in the railways. They delight in 
 complicated phraseology, and this coupled with 
 their accent and seesaw manner of speaking 
 supply the English a constant source of cari- 
 cature. As a race they are inclined to be vain 
 and boastful, and are ever ready to nurse a 
 grievance against the British Government, 
 feeling that they have been provided with an 
 education but no means of support. The 
 government felt that it might help to calm 
 them if a regiment were recruited and sent to 
 Mesopotamia. How they would do in actual 
 fighting had never been demonstrated up to 
 the time I left the country, but they take readily 
 to drill, and it was amusing to hear them or- 
 dering each other about in their clipped Eng- 
 lish. They were used for garrisoning Baghdad. 
 After we left Amara we continued our wind- 
 ing course up-stream. A boat several hours 
 ahead may be seen only a few hundred yards 
 distant across the desert. The banks are so 
 flat and level that it looks as if the other ves- 
 sels were steaming along on land. The Arab 
 river-craft was most picturesque. At sunset 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 19 
 
 a mahela, bearing down with filled sail, might 
 have been the model for Maxfield Parrish's 
 Pirate Ship. The Arab women ran along the 
 bank beside us, carrying baskets of eggs and 
 chickens, and occasionally melons. They were 
 possessed of surprising endurance, and would 
 accompany us indefinitely, heavily laden as 
 they were. Their robes trailed in the wind 
 as they jumped ditches, screaming out their 
 wares without a moment's pause. An Indian 
 of the boat's crew was haggling with a woman 
 about a chicken. He threw her an eight-anna 
 piece. She picked up the money but would 
 not hand him the chicken, holding out for her 
 original price. He jumped ashore, intending 
 to take the chicken. She had a few yards* 
 start and made the most of it. In and out 
 they chased, over hedge and ditch, down the 
 bank and up again. Several times he almost 
 had her. She never for a moment ceased 
 screeching — an operation which seemed to 
 affect her wind not a particle. At the end of 
 fifteen minutes the Indian gave up amid the 
 delighted jeers of his comrades, and returned 
 shamefaced and breathless to jump aboard the 
 boat as we bumped against the bank on round- 
 ing a curve. 
 
 One evening we halted where, not many 
 
20 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF , EDEN 
 
 months before, the last of the battles of Sunnai- 
 yat had been fought. There for months the 
 British had been held back, while their be- 
 leaguered comrades in Kut could hear the roar 
 of the artillery and hope against hope for the 
 relief that never reached them. It was one 
 phase of the campaign that closely approxi- 
 mated the gruelling trench warfare in France. 
 The last unsuccessful attack was launched a 
 week before the capitulation of the garrison, 
 and it was almost a year later before the 
 position was eventually taken. The front-line 
 trenches were but a short distance apart, and 
 each side had developed a strong and elaborate 
 system of defense. One flank was protected 
 by an impassable marsh and the other by the 
 river. When we passed, the field presented an 
 unusually gruesome appearance even for a 
 battle-field, for the wandering desert Arabs 
 had been at work, and they do not clean up 
 as thoroughly as the African hyena. A num- 
 ber had paid the penalty through tampering 
 with unexploded grenades and *'dud" shells, 
 and left their own bones to be scattered around 
 among the dead they had been looting. The 
 trenches were a veritable Golgotha with skulls 
 everj^where and dismembered legs still clad 
 with puttees and boots. 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 21 
 
 At Kut we disembarked to do the remain- 
 ing hundred miles to Baghdad by rail instead 
 of winding along for double the distance by 
 river, with a good chance of being hung up for 
 hours, or even days, on some shifting sand-bar. 
 At first sight Kut is as unpromising a spot as 
 can well be imagined, with its scorching heat 
 and its sand and the desolate mud-houses, 
 but in spite of appearances it is an impor- 
 tant and thriving little town, and daily becom- 
 ing of more consequence. 
 
 The railroad runs across the desert, following 
 approximately the old caravan route to Bagh- 
 dad. A little over half-way the line passes the 
 remaining arch of the great hall of Ctesiphon. 
 This hall is one hundred and forty-eight feet 
 long by seventy-six broad. The arch stands 
 eighty-five feet high. Around it, beneath the 
 mounds of desert sand, lies all that remains of 
 the ancient city. As a matter of fact the city 
 is by no means ancient as such things go in 
 Mesopotamia, dating as it does from the third 
 century B. C, when it was founded by the 
 successors of Alexander the Great. 
 
 My first night in Baghdad I spent in Gen- 
 eral Maude's house, on the river-bank. The 
 general was a striking soldierly figure of a 
 man, standing well over six feet. His military 
 
22 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 career was long and brilliant. His first service 
 was in the Coldstream Guards. He distin- 
 guished himself in South Africa. Early In the 
 present war he was severely wounded In France. 
 Upon recovering he took over the Thirteenth 
 Division, which he commanded in the disas- 
 trous Gallipoli campaign, and later brought 
 out to Mesopotamia. When he reached the 
 East the situation was by no means a happy 
 one for the British. General Townshend was 
 surrounded in Kut, and the morale of the Turk 
 was excellent after the successes he had met 
 with in Gallipoli. In the end of August, 1916, 
 four months after the fall of Kut, General 
 Maude took over the command of the Meso- 
 potamian forces. On the 11th of March of the 
 following year he occupied Baghdad, thereby 
 re-establishing completely the British prestige 
 In the Orient. One of Germany's most serious 
 miscalculations was with regard to the Indian 
 situation. She felt confident that, working 
 through Persia and Afghanistan, she could 
 stir up sufficient trouble, possibly to completely 
 overthrow British rule, but certainly to keep 
 the English so occupied with uprisings as to 
 force them to send troops to India rather than 
 withdraw them thence for use elsewhere. The 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 23 
 
 utter miscarriage of Germany's plans is, in- 
 deed, a fine tribute to Great Britain. The 
 Emir of Afghanistan did probably more than 
 any single native to thwart German treachery 
 and intrigue, and every friend of the Allied 
 cause must have read of his recent assassina- 
 tion with a very real regret. 
 
 When General Maude took over the com-' 
 mand, the effect of the Holy War that, at the 
 Kaiser's instigation, was being preached in 
 the mosques had not as yet been determined. 
 This jehad, as it was called, proposed to unite 
 all "True Believers" against the invading 
 Christians, and give the war a strongly re- 
 ligious aspect. The Germans hoped by this 
 means to spread mutiny among the Moham- 
 medan troops, which formed such an appreci- 
 able element of the British forces, as well as to 
 fire the fury of the Turks and win as many of 
 the Arabs to their side as possible. The Arab 
 thoroughly disliked both sides. The Turk 
 oppressed him, but did so in an Oriental, and 
 hence more or less comprehensible, manner. 
 The English gave him justice, but it was an 
 Occidental justice that he couldn't at first 
 understand or appreciate, and he was dis- 
 tinctly inclined to mistrust it. In course of 
 
24 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 time he would come to realize its advantages. 
 Under Turkish rule the Arab was oppressed 
 by the Turk, but then he in turn could op- 
 press the Jew, the Chaldean, and Nestorian 
 Christians, and the wretched Armenian. Un- 
 der British rule he suddenly found these latter 
 on an equal footing with him, and he felt that 
 this did not compensate the lifting from his 
 shoulders of the Turkish burden. Then, too, 
 when a race has been long oppressed and down- 
 trodden, and suddenly finds itself on an equal- 
 ity with its oppressor, it is apt to become arro- 
 gant and overbearing. This is exactly what 
 happened, and there was bad feeling on all 
 sides in consequence. However, real funda- 
 mental justice is appreciated the world over, 
 once the native has been educated up to it, 
 and can trust in its continuity. 
 
 The complex nature of the problems facing 
 the army commander can be readily seen. 
 He was an indefatigable worker and an unsur- 
 passed organizer. The only criticism I ever 
 heard was that he attended too much to the 
 details himself and did not take his subordi- 
 nates sufficiently into his confidence. A bril- 
 liant leader, beloved by his troops, his loss 
 was a severe blow to the Allied cause. 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 25 
 
 Baghdad is often referred to as the great 
 example of the shattered illusion. We most 
 of us have read the Arabian Nights at an early 
 age, and think of the abode of the caliphs as a 
 dream city, steeped in what we have been 
 brought up to think of as the luxury, romance, 
 and glamour of the East. Now glamour is a 
 delicate substance. In the all-searching glare 
 of the Mesopotamian sun it is apt to appear 
 merely tawdry. Still, a goodly number of 
 years spent in wandering about in foreign 
 lands had prepared me for a depreciation of 
 the "stuff that dreams are made of," and I 
 was not disappointed. It is unfortunate that 
 the normal way to approach is from the south, 
 and that that view of the city is flat and unin- 
 teresting. Coming, as I several times had 
 occasion to, from the north, one first catches 
 sight of great groves of date-palms, with the 
 tall minarets of the Mosque of Kazimain tow- 
 ering above them; then a forest of minarets 
 and blue domes, with here and there some 
 graceful palm rising above the flat roofs of 
 Baghdad. In the evening when the setting sun 
 strikes the towers and the tiled roofs, and the 
 harsh lights are softened, one is again in the 
 land of Haroun-el-Raschid. 
 
26 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 The great covered bazaars are at all times 
 capable of *' eating the hours," as the natives 
 say. One could sit indefinitely in a coffee- 
 house and watch the throngs go by — the stal- 
 wart Kurdish porter with his impossible loads, 
 the veiled women, the unveiled Christian or 
 lower-class Arab women, the native police, 
 the British Tommy, the kilted Scot, the desert 
 Arab, all these and many more types wandered 
 past. Then there was the gold and silver 
 market, where the Jewish and Armenian artif- 
 icers squatted beside their charcoal fires and 
 haggled endlessly with their customers. These 
 latter were almost entirely women, and they 
 came both to buy and sell, bringing old brace- 
 lets and anklets, and probably spending the 
 proceeds on something newer that had taken 
 their fancy. The workmanship was almost 
 invariably poor and rough. Most of the 
 women had their babies with them, little mites 
 decked out in cheap finery and with their eye- 
 lids thickly painted. The red dye from their 
 caps streaked their faces, the flies settled on 
 them at will, and they had never been washed. 
 When one thought of the way one's own chil- 
 dren were cared for, it seemed impossible that 
 a sufficient number of these little ones could 
 
OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 27 
 
 survive to carry on the race. The infant mor- 
 tahty must be great, though the children one 
 sees look fat and thriving. 
 
 Baghdad is not an old city. Although there 
 was probably a village on the site time out of 
 mind, it does not come into any prominence 
 until the eighth century of our era. As the 
 residence of the Abasside caliphs it rapidly 
 assumed an important position. The culmina- 
 tion of its magnificence was reached in the end 
 of the eighth century, under the rule of the 
 world-famous Haroun-el-Raschid. It long con- 
 tinued to be a centre of commerce and indus- 
 try, though suffering fearfully from the various 
 sieges and conquests which it underwent. In 
 1258 the Mongols, under a grandson of the great 
 Genghis Khan, captured the city and held it 
 for a hundred years, until ousted by the Tar- 
 tars under Tamberlane. It was plundered in 
 turn by one Mongol horde after another until 
 the Turks, under Murad the Fourth, eventually 
 secured it. Naturally, after being the scene 
 of so much looting and such massacres, there is 
 little left of the original city of the caliphs. 
 Then, too, in INIesopotamla there is practically 
 no stone, and everything was built of brick, 
 which readily lapses back to its original state. 
 
28 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 For this reason the invaders easily razed a 
 conquered town, and Mesopotamia, so often 
 called the "cradle of the world," retains but 
 little trace of the races and civilizations that 
 have succeeded each other in ruling the land. 
 When the Tigris was low at the end of the 
 summer season, we used to dig out from its 
 bank great bricks eighteen inches square, on 
 which was still distinctly traced the seal of 
 Nebuchadnezzar. These, possibly the rem- 
 nants of a quay, were all that remained of the 
 times before the advent of the caliphs. 
 
II 
 
 The Tigris Front 
 
II 
 
 THE TIGRIS FRONT 
 
 A few days after reaching Baghdad I left 
 for Samarra, which was at that time the Tigris 
 front. I was attached to the Royal Engineers, 
 and my immediate commander was Major 
 Morin, D. S. O., an able officer with an envia- 
 ble record in France and Mesopotamia. The 
 advance army of the Tigris was the Third In- 
 dian Army Corps, under the command of 
 General Cobbe, a possessor of the coveted, 
 and invariably merited, Victoria Cross. The 
 Engineers were efficiently commanded by Gen- 
 eral Swiney. The seventy miles of railroad 
 from Baghdad to Samarra were built by 
 the Germans, being the only Mesopotamian 
 portion of the much-talked-of Berlin-to-Bagh- 
 dad Railway, completed before the war. It 
 was admirably constructed, with an excellent 
 road-bed, heavy rails and steel cross-ties made 
 by Krupp. In their retreat the Turks had 
 been too hurried to accomplish much in the 
 
 31 
 
32 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 way of destruction other than burning down 
 a few stations and blowing up the water-tow- 
 ers. The roUing-stock had been left largely in- 
 tact. There were no passenger-coaches, and 
 you travelled either by flat or box car. Every 
 one followed the Indian custom of carrying 
 with them their bedding-rolls, and leather- 
 covered wash-basin containing their washing- 
 kit, as well as one of the comfortable rhoorkhee 
 chairs. In consequence, although for travel 
 by boat or train nothing was provided, there 
 was no discomfort entailed. The trains were 
 fitted out with anti-aircraft guns, for the Turk- 
 ish aeroplanes occasionally tried to *'lay eggs," 
 a by no means easy affair with a moving train 
 as a target. Whatever the reason was, and I 
 never succeeded in discovering it, the trains 
 invariably left Baghdad in the wee small 
 hours, and as the station was on the right 
 bank across the river from the main town, and 
 the boat bridges were cut during the night, we 
 used generally, when returning to the front, 
 to spend the first part of the night sleeping on 
 the station platform. Generals or exalted staff 
 oflScers could usually succeed in having a car 
 assigned to them, and hauled up from the yard 
 in time for them to go straight to bed in it. 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 33 
 
 Frequently their trip was postponed, and an 
 omniscient sergeant-major would indicate the 
 car to the judiciously friendly, who could then 
 enjoy a solid night's sleep. The run took 
 anywhere from eight to twelve hours; but when 
 sitting among the grain-bags on an open car, 
 or comfortably ensconced in a chair in a "cov- 
 ered goods," with Vingt Ans Apres, the time 
 passed pleasantly enough in spite of the with- 
 ering heat. 
 
 While still a good number of miles away 
 from Samarra we would catch sight of the sun 
 glinting on the golden dome of the mosque, 
 built over the cleft where the twelfth Imam, 
 the Imam Mahdi, is supposed to have dis- 
 appeared, and from which he is one day to 
 reappear to establish the true faith upon earth. 
 Many Arabs have appeared claiming to be the 
 Mahdi, and caused trouble in a greater or less 
 degree according to the extent of their follow- 
 ing. The most troublous one in our day was 
 the man who besieged Kharthoum and cap- 
 tured General "Chinese" Gordon and his men. 
 Twenty -five years later, when I passed through 
 the Sudan, there were scarcely any men of 
 middle age left, for they had been wiped out 
 almost to a man under the fearful rule of the 
 
34 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 Mahdi, a rule which might have served as 
 prototype to the Germans in Belgium. 
 
 Samarra is very ancient, and has passed 
 through periods of great depression and equally 
 great expansion. It was here in A. D. 363 
 that the Roman Emperor Julian died from 
 wounds received in the defeat of his forces at 
 Ctesiphon. The golden age lasted about forty 
 years, beginning in 836, when the Caliph Hu- 
 tasim transferred his capital thither from 
 Baghdad. During that time the city extended 
 for twenty-one miles along the river-bank, 
 with glorious palaces, the ruins of some of 
 which still stand. The present-day town has 
 sadly shrunk from its former grandeur, but still 
 has an impressive look with its great walls and 
 massive gateways. The houses nearest the 
 walls are in ruins or uninhabited; but in peace- 
 time the great reputation that the climate of 
 Samarra possesses for salubrity draws to it 
 many Baghdad families who come to pass the 
 summer months. A good percentage of the 
 inhabitants are Persians, for the eleventh and 
 twelfth Shiah Imams are buried on the site 
 of the largest mosque. The two main sects 
 of Moslems are the Sunnis and the Shiahs; 
 the former regard the three caliphs who fol- 
 lowed Mohammed as his legitimate successors. 
 

 Golden Dome of Samarra 
 
 Rafting down from Tekrit 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 35 
 
 whereas the latter hold them to be usurpers, 
 and believe that his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, 
 husband of Fatimah, together with their sons 
 Husein and Hasan, are the prophet's true 
 inheritors. Ali was assassinated near Nejef, 
 which city is sacred to his memory, and his 
 son Husein was killed at Kerbela; so these 
 two cities are the greatest of the Shiah shrines. 
 The Turks belong almost without exception 
 to the Sunni sect, whereas the Persians and a 
 large percentage of the Arabs inhabiting Meso- 
 potamia are Shiahs. 
 
 The country around Samarra is not unlike 
 in character the southern part of Arizona and 
 northern Sonora. There are the same barren 
 hills and the same glaring heat. The soil is 
 not sand, but a fine dust which permeates 
 everything, even the steel uniform-cases which 
 I had always regarded as proof against all con- 
 ditions. The parching effect was so great 
 that it was not only necessary to keep all 
 leather objects thoroughly oiled but the covers 
 of my books cracked and curled up until I 
 hit upon the plan of greasing them well also. 
 In the alluvial lowlands trench-digging was a 
 simple affair, but along the hills we found a 
 pebbly conglomerate that gave much trouble. 
 
 Opinion was divided as to whether the Turk 
 
36 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 would attempt to advance down the Tigris. 
 Things had gone badly with our forces in Pal- 
 estine at the first battle of Gaza; but here we 
 had an exceedingly strong position, and the 
 consensus of opinion seemed to be that the 
 enemy would think twice before he stormed it., 
 Their base was at Tekrit, almost thirty miles 
 away. However, about ten miles distant stood 
 a small village called Daur, which the Turks 
 held in considerable force. Between Daur 
 and Samarra there was nothing but desert, 
 with gazelles and jackals the only permanent 
 inhabitants. Into this no man's land both 
 sides sent patrols, who met in occasional skir- 
 mishes. For reconnaissance work we used 
 light-armored motor-cars, known throughout 
 the army as Lam cars, a name formed by the 
 initial letters of their titles. These cars were 
 Rolls - Royces, and with their armor - plate 
 weighed between three and three-quarters and 
 four tons. They were proof against the ordinary 
 bullet but not against the armor-piercing. 
 When I came out to Mesopotamia I intended 
 to lay my plans for a transfer to the cavalry, 
 but after I had seen the cars at work I 
 changed about and asked to be seconded to 
 that branch of the service. 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 37 
 
 A short while after my arrival our aeroplanes 
 brought in word that the Turks were massing 
 at Daur, and General Cobbe decided that when 
 they launched forth he would go and meet 
 them. Accordingly, we all moved out one 
 night, expecting to give "Abdul," as the 
 Tommies called him, a surprise. Whether it 
 was that we started too early and their aero- 
 planes saw us, or whether they were only 
 making a feint, we never found out; but at all 
 events the enemy fell back, and save for some 
 advance-guard skirmishing and a few prison- 
 ers, we drew a blank. We were not prepared 
 to attack the Daur position, and so returned 
 to Samarra to await developments. 
 
 Meanwhile I busied myself searching for an 
 Arab servant. Seven or eight years previous, 
 when with my father in Africa, I had learned 
 Swahili, and although I had forgotten a great 
 deal of it, still I found it a help in taking up 
 Arabic. Most of the officers had either British 
 or Indian servants; in the former case they 
 were known as batmen, and in the latter as 
 bearers; but I decided to follow suit with the 
 minority and get an Arab, and therefore learn 
 Arabic instead of Hindustanee, for the former 
 would be of vastly more general use. The town 
 
38 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 commandant, Captain Grieve of the Black 
 Watch, after many attempts at length pro- 
 duced a native who seemed, at any rate, more 
 promising than the others that offered them- 
 selves. Yusuf was a sturdy, rather surly-looking 
 youth of about eighteen. Evidently not a pure 
 Arab, he claimed various admixtures as the 
 fancy took him, the general preference being 
 Kurd. I always felt that there was almost cer- 
 tainly a good percentage of Turk. His father 
 had been a non-commissioned officer in the 
 Turkish army, and at first I was loath to take 
 him along on advances and attacks, for he 
 would have been shown little mercy had he 
 fallen into enemy hands. He was, however, in- 
 sistent on asking to go with me, and I never 
 saw him show any concern under fire. He 
 spoke, in varying degrees of fluency, Kurdish, 
 Persian, and Turkish, and was of great use to 
 me for that reason. He became by degrees a 
 very faithful and trustworthy follower, his 
 great weakness being that he was a one-man's 
 man, and although he would do anything for 
 me, he was of little general use in an officers' 
 mess. 
 
 I had two horses, one a black mare that I 
 called Soda, which means black in Arabic, and 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 39 
 
 the other a hard-headed bay gelding that was 
 game to go all day, totally unaffected by shell- 
 fire, but exceedingly stubborn about choosing 
 the direction in which he went. After numer- 
 ous changes I came across an excellent syce 
 to look after them. He was a wild, unkempt 
 figure, with a long black beard — a dervish by 
 profession, and certainly gave no one any 
 reason to believe that he was more than half- 
 witted. Indeed, almost all dervishes are in 
 a greater or less degree insane; it is probably 
 due to that that they have become dervishes, 
 for the native regards the insane as under 
 the protection of God. Dervishes go around 
 practically naked, usually wearing only a few 
 skins flung over the shoulder, and carrying a 
 large begging-bowl. In addition they carry a 
 long, sharp, iron bodkin, with a wooden ball 
 at the end, having very much the appearance 
 of a fool's bauble. They lead an easy life. 
 When they take'a fancy to a house, they settle 
 down near the gate, and the owner has to sup- 
 port them as long as the whim takes them to 
 stay there. To use force against a dervish 
 would be looked upon as an exceedingly un- 
 propitious affair to the true believer. Then, 
 too, I have little doubt but that they are 
 
40 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 capable of making good use of their steel bod- 
 kins. Why my dervish wished to give up 
 his easy-going profession and take over the 
 charge of my horses I never fully determined, 
 but it must have been because he really loved 
 horses and found that as a dervish pure and 
 simple he had very little to do with them. 
 When he arrived he was dressed in a very 
 ancient gunny-sack, and it was not without 
 much regret at the desecration that I provided 
 him with an outfit of the regulation khaki. 
 
 My duties took me on long rides about 
 the country. Here, and throughout Meso- 
 potamia, the great antiquity of this *' cradle 
 of the world" kept ever impressing itself upon 
 one, consciously or subconsciously. Every- 
 where Were ruins ; occasionally a wall still 
 reared itself clear of the all-enveloping dust, 
 but generally all that remained were great 
 mounds, where the desert had crept in and 
 claimed its own, covering palace, house, and 
 market, temple, synagogue, mosque, or church 
 with its everlasting mantle. Often the streets 
 could still be traced, but oftener not. The 
 weight of ages was ever present as one rode 
 among the ruins of these once busy, prosper- 
 ous cities, now long dead and buried, how long 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 41 
 
 no one knew, for frequently their very names 
 were forgotten. Babylon, Ur of the Chaldees, 
 Istabulat, Nineveh, and many more great cities 
 of history are now nothing but names given to 
 desert mounds. 
 
 Close by Samarra stands a strange cork- 
 screw tower, known by the natives as the Mal- 
 wiyah. It is about a hundred and sixty feet 
 high, built of brick, with a path of varying 
 width winding up around the outside. No 
 one knew its purpose, and estimates of its an- 
 tiquity varied by several thousand years. One 
 fairly well-substantiated story told that it had 
 been the custom to kill prisoners by hurling 
 them off its top. We found it exceedingly use- 
 ful as an observation-post. In the same man- 
 ner we used Julian's tomb, a great mound ris- 
 ing up in the desert some five or six miles up- 
 stream of the town. The legend is that when 
 the Roman Emperor died of his wounds his 
 soldiers, impressing the natives, built this as a 
 mausoleum; but there is no ground whatever 
 for this belief, for it would have been physically 
 impossible for a harassed or retreating army 
 to have performed a task of such magnitude. 
 The natives call it *'The Granary," and claim 
 that that was its original use. Before the war 
 
42 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 the Germans had started in excavating, and 
 discovered shafts leading deep down, and on 
 top the foundations of a palace. Around its 
 foot may be traced roadways and circular 
 plots, and especially when seen from an aero- 
 plane it looks as if there had at one time been 
 an elaborate system of gardens. 
 
 We were continually getting false rumors 
 about the movements of the Turks. We had 
 believed that it would be impossible for them 
 to execute a flank movement, at any rate in 
 sufficient strength to be a serious menace, for 
 from all the reports we could get, the wells 
 were few and far between. Nevertheless, there 
 was a great deal of excitement and some con- 
 cern when one afternoon our aeroplanes came 
 in with the report that they had seen a body 
 of Turks that they estimated at from six 
 to eight thousand marching round our right 
 flank. The plane was sent straight back with 
 instructions to verify most carefully the state- 
 ment, and be sure that it was really men they 
 had seen. They returned at dark with no alter- 
 ation of their original report. As can well be 
 imagined, that night was a crowded one for us, 
 and the feeling ran high when next morning the 
 enemy turned out to be several enormous herds 
 of sheep. 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 43 
 
 As part consequence of this we were ordered 
 to make a thorough water reconnaissance, with 
 a view of ascertaining how large a force could 
 be watered on a march around our flank. I 
 went off in an armored car with Captain Mar- 
 shall of the Intelligence Service. Marshall had 
 spent many years in Mesopotamia shipping 
 liquorice to the American Tobacco Company, 
 and he was known and trusted by the Arabs all 
 along the Tigris from Kurna to Mosul. He 
 spoke the language most fluently, but with an 
 accent that left no doubt of his Caledonian 
 home. We had with us a couple of old sheiks, 
 and it was their first ride in an automobile. It 
 was easy to see that one of them was having 
 difficulty in maintaining his dignity, but I was 
 not quite sure of the reason until we stopped 
 a moment and he fairly flew out of the car. 
 It didn't seem possible that a man able to ride 
 ninety miles at a stretch on a camel, could be 
 made ill by the motion of an automobile. 
 However, such was the case, and we had great 
 difficulty in getting him back into the car. 
 We discovered far more wells than we had 
 been led to believe existed, but not enough to 
 make a flank attack a very serious menace. 
 
 The mirage played all sorts of tricks, and 
 the balloon observers grew to be very cautious 
 
44 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 in their assertions. In the early days of the 
 campaign, at the battle of Shaiba Bund, a 
 friendly mirage saved the British forces from 
 what would have proved a very serious defeat. 
 Suleiman Askari was commanding the Turkish 
 forces, and things were faring badly with the 
 British, when of a sudden to their amazement 
 they found that the Turks were in full retreat. 
 Their commanders had caught sight of the 
 mirage of what was merely an ambulance and 
 supply train, but it was so magnified that they 
 believed it to be a very large body of reinforce- 
 ments. The report ran that when Suleiman 
 was told of his mistake, his chagrin was so 
 great that he committed suicide. 
 
 It was at length decided to advance on the 
 Turkish forces at Daur. General Brooking 
 had just made a most successful attack on 
 the Euphrates front, capturing the town of 
 Ramadie, with almost five thousand prisoners. 
 It was believed to be the intention of the army 
 commander to try to relieve the pressure 
 against I General AUenby's forces in Palestine 
 by attacking the enemy on all three of then: 
 Mesopotamian fronts. Accordingly, we were 
 ordered to march out after sunset one night, 
 prepared to attack the enemy position at day- 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 45 
 
 break. During a short halt by the last rays of 
 the setting sun I caught sight of a number of 
 Mohammedan soldiers prostrating themselves 
 toward Mecca In their evening prayers, while 
 their Christian or pagan comrades looked stol- 
 idly on. It was late October, and although the 
 days were still very hot and oppressive, the 
 nights were almost bitterly cold. A night- 
 march Is always a disagreeable business. The 
 head of the column checks and halts, and those 
 in the rear have no idea whether it is an in- 
 voluntary stop for a few minutes, or whether 
 they are to halt for an hour or more, owing to 
 some complication of orders. So we stood 
 shivering, and longed for a smoke, but of course 
 that was strictly forbidden, for the cigarettes 
 of an army would form a very good indication 
 of its whereabouts on a dark night. All night 
 we marched and halted, and started on again; 
 the dust choked us, and the hours seemed in- 
 terminable, until at last at two in the morning 
 word was passed along that we could have an 
 hour's sleep. The greater part of the year In 
 Mesopotamia the regulation army dress con- 
 sisted of a tunic and "shorts." These are 
 long trousers cut off just above the knee, and the 
 wearer may either use wrap puttees, or leather 
 
46 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 leggings, or golf stockings. They are a great 
 help in the heat, as may easily be understood, 
 and they allow, of course, much freer knee 
 action, particularly when your clothes are wet. 
 The reverse side of the medal reads that when 
 you try to sleep without a blanket on a cold 
 night, you find that your knees are uncom- 
 fortably exposed. Still we were, most of us, 
 so drunk with sleep that it would have taken 
 more than that to keep us awake. At three 
 we resumed our march, and attacked just at 
 dawn. The enemy had abandoned the first- 
 line positions, and we met with but little re- 
 sistance in the second. Our cavalry, which 
 was concentrated at several points in nullahs 
 (dry river-beds), suffered at the hands of the 
 hostile aircraft. The Turk had evidently de- 
 termined to fall back to Tekrit without putting 
 up a serious defense. They certainly could 
 have given us a much worse time than they 
 did, for they had dug in well and scientifically. 
 Among the prisoners we took there were some 
 that proved to be very worth while. These 
 Turkish officers were, as a whole a good lot 
 — well dressed and well educated. Many 
 spoke French. There is an excellent gunnery 
 school at Constantinople, and one of the oflScers 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 47 
 
 we captured had been a senior instructor there 
 for many years. We had with us among our 
 inteUigence officers a Captain Bettelheim, born 
 in Constantinople of Belgian parentage. He 
 had served with the Turks against the Italians 
 and with the British against the Boers. This 
 gunnery officer turned out to be an old com- 
 rade of his in the Italian War. Many of the 
 officers we got knew him, for he had been 
 chief of police in Constantinople. Apparently 
 none of them bore him the slightest ill-will 
 when they found him serving against them. 
 
 Among the supplies we captured at Daur 
 were a lot of our own rifles and ammunition 
 that the Arabs had stolen and sold to the Turks. 
 It was impossible to entirely stop this, guard 
 our dumps as best we could. On dark nights 
 they would creep right into camp, and it was 
 never safe to have the hospital barges tie up 
 to the banks for the night on their way down 
 the river. On many occasions the Arabs 
 crawled aboard and finished off the wounded. 
 There was only one thing to be said for the 
 Arab, and that was that he played no favorite, 
 but attacked, as a rule, whichever side came 
 handier. We were told, and I believe it to 
 be true, that during the fighting at Sunnaiyat 
 
48 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 the Turks sent over to know if we would agree 
 to a three days' truce, during which time we 
 should join forces against the Arabs, who were 
 watching on the flank to pick off stragglers or 
 ration convoys. 
 
 That night we bivouacked at Daur, and were 
 unmolested except for the enemy aircraft that 
 came over and "laid eggs." Next morning we 
 advanced on Tekrit. Our orders were to make 
 a feint, and if we found that the Turk meant 
 to stay and fight it out seriously, we were to 
 fall back. Some gazelles got into the no man's 
 land between us and the Turk, and in the 
 midst of the firing ran gracefully up the line, 
 stopping every now and then to stare about 
 in amazement. Later on in the Argonne for- 
 est in France we had the same thing happen 
 with some wild boars. The enemy seemed in 
 no way inclined to evacuate Tekrit, so in ac- 
 cordance with instructions we returned to our 
 previous night's encampment at Daur. On 
 the way back we passed an old "arabana," a 
 Turkish coupe, standing abandoned in the 
 desert, with a couple of dead horses by it. It 
 may have been used by some Turkish general 
 in the retreat of two days before. It was the 
 sort of coupe one associates entirely with well- 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 49 
 
 kept parks and crowded city streets, and the 
 incongruity of its lonely isolation amid the 
 sand-dunes caused an amused ripple of com- 
 ment. 
 
 Our instructions were to march back to 
 Samarra early next morning, but shortly be- 
 fore midnight orders came through from Gen- 
 eral Maude for us to advance again upon 
 Tekrit and take it. Next day we halted and 
 took stock in view of the new orders. The 
 cavalry again suffered at the hands of the 
 Turkish aircraft. I went to corps headquarters 
 in the afternoon, and a crowd of "red tabs," 
 as the staff -officers were called, were seated 
 around a little table having the inevitable tea. 
 A number of the generals had come in to dis- 
 cuss the plan of attack for the following day. 
 Suddenly a Turk aeroplane made its appear- 
 ance, flying quite low, and dropping bombs 
 at regular intervals. It dropped two, and 
 then a third on a little hill in a straight line 
 from the staff conclave. It looked as if the 
 next would be a direct hit, and the staff did 
 the only wise thing, and took cover as flat 
 on the ground as nature would allow; but the 
 Hun's spacing was bad, and the next bomb 
 fell some little way beyond. I remember 
 
50 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 our glee at what we regarded as a capital 
 joke on the staff. The line-officer's humor 
 becomes a trifle robust where the "gilded 
 staff" is concerned, notwithstanding the fact 
 that most staff-officers have seen active and 
 distinguished service in the line. 
 
 Our anti-aircraft guns — "Archies" we called 
 them — were mounted on trucks, and on account 
 of their weight had some difficulty getting up. 
 I shall not soon forget our delight when they 
 lumbered into view, for although I never hap- 
 pened personally to see an aeroplane brought 
 down by an "Archie," there was no doubt 
 about it but that they did not bomb us with 
 the same equanimity when our anti-aircrafts 
 were at hand. 
 
 That night we marched out on Telvrit, and 
 as dawn was breaking were ready to attack. 
 As the mist cleared, an alarming but ludicrous 
 sight met our eyes. On the extreme right 
 some caterpillar tractors hauling our "heavies*' 
 were advancing straight on Tekrit, as if they 
 had taken themselves for tanks. They were 
 not long in discovering their mistake, and 
 amid a mixed salvo they clumsily turned and 
 made off at their best pace, which was not 
 more than three miles an hour. Luckily, they 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 51 
 
 soon got under some excellent defilade, but 
 not until they had suffered heavily. 
 
 Our artillery did some good work, but while 
 we were waiting to attack we suffered rather 
 heavily. We had to advance over a wide 
 stretch of open country to reach the Turkish 
 first lines. By nightfall the second line of 
 trenches was practically all in our hands. 
 Meanwhile the cavalry had circled way around 
 the flank up-stream of Tekrit to cut the enemy 
 off if he attempted to retreat. The town is on 
 the right bank of the Tigris, and we had a small 
 force that had come up from Samarra on the 
 left bank, for we had no means of ferrying 
 troops across. Our casualties during the day 
 had amounted to about two thousand. The 
 Seaforths had suffered heavily, but no more 
 so than some of the native regiments. In 
 Mesopotamia there were many changes in the 
 standing of the Indian battalions. The Ma- 
 harattas, for instance, had never previously 
 been regarded as anything at all unusual, but 
 they have now a very distinguished record to 
 take pride in. The general feeling was that 
 the Gurkhas did not quite live up to their 
 reputation. But the Indian troops as a whole 
 did so exceedingly well that there is little 
 
52 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 purpose in making comparisons amongst them. 
 At this time, so I was informed, the Expedi- 
 tionary Force, counting all branches, totalled 
 about a million, and a very large percentage 
 of this came from India. We drew our sup- 
 plies from India and Australia, and it is inter- 
 esting to note that we preferred the Australian 
 canned beef and mutton (bully beef and bully 
 mutton, as it was called) to the American. 
 
 At dusk the fighting died down, and we 
 were told to hold on and go over at daybreak. 
 As I was making my way back to headquarters 
 a general pounced upon me and told me to get 
 quickly into a car and go as rapidly as 
 possible to Daur to bring up a motor ration- 
 convoy with fodder for the cavalry horses 
 and food for the riders. A Ford car happened 
 to pass by, and he stopped it and shoved me 
 in, with some last hurried injunction. It was 
 quite fifteen miles back, and the country was 
 so cut up by nullahs or ravines that in most 
 places it was inadvisable to leave the road, 
 which was, of course, jammed with a double 
 stream of transport of every description. 
 When we were three or four miles from Daur 
 a tire blew out. The driver had used his last 
 spare, so there was nothing to do but keep 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 53 
 
 going on the rim. The car was of the deliv- 
 ery-wagon type — "pill-boxes" were what they 
 were known as — and while we were stopped 
 taking stock I happened to catch sight of a 
 good-sized bedding-roll behind. "Some one's 
 out of hick," said I to the driver; "whose roll 
 is it.f^" "The corps commander's, sir," was 
 his reply. After exhausting my limited vo- 
 cabulary, I realized that it was far too late to 
 stop another motor and send this one back, so 
 I just kept going. Across the bed of one more 
 ravine, the sand up to the hubs, and we were 
 in the Daur camp. I managed to rank some 
 one out of a spare tire and started back again. 
 My driver proved unable to drive at night, 
 at all events at a pace that would put us any- 
 where before dawn, so I was forced to take 
 the wheel. By the time I had the convoy 
 properly located I was rather despondent of 
 the corps commander's temper, even should I 
 eventually reach him that night, which seemed 
 a remote chance, for the best any one could do 
 was give me the rough location on a map. 
 Still, taking my luminous compass, I set out to 
 steer a cross-country course. I ran into five 
 or six small groups of ambulances filled with 
 wounded, trying to find their way to Daur, 
 
54 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 and completely lost. Most had given up — 
 some were unknowingly headed back for 
 Tekrit. I could do no more than give them 
 the right direction, which I knew they had no 
 chance of holding. Of course I could have no 
 headlights, and the ditches were many, but 
 in some miraculous way, more through good 
 luck than good management, I did find corps 
 headquarters, and what was better still, the 
 general's reprimand took the form of bread and 
 ham and a stiff peg of whiskey — the first food 
 I had had since before daylight. 
 
 During the night the Turks evacuated the 
 town. Their forces were certainly mobile. 
 They could cover the most surprising distances, 
 and live on almost nothing. We marched in 
 and occupied. White flags were flying from 
 all the houses, which were not nearly so much 
 damaged from the bombardment as one would 
 have supposed. This was invariably the case; 
 indeed, it is surprising to see how much shelling 
 a town can undergo without noticeable effect. 
 It takes a long time to level a town in the way 
 it has been done in northern France. In this ^ 
 region the banks of the river average about one 
 hundred and fifty feet in height, and Tekrit is 
 built at the junction of two ravines. No two 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 55 
 
 streets are on the same level; sometimes the 
 roofs of the houses on a lower level serve as 
 the streets for the houses above. Many of the 
 booths in the bazaar were open and transact- 
 ing business when we arrived, an excellent 
 proof of how firmly the Arabs believed in Brit- 
 ish fair dealing. Our men bought cigarettes, 
 matches, and vegetables. Yusuf had lived 
 here three or four years, so I despatched him 
 to get chickens and eggs for the mess. I ran 
 into Marshall, who was on his w^ay to dine 
 with the mayor, who had turned out to be an 
 old friend of his. He asked me to join him, 
 and we climbed up to a very comfortable 
 house, built around a large courtyard. It was 
 the best meal we had either of us had in days 
 — great pilaus of rice, excellent chicken, and 
 fresh unleavened bread. This bread looks like 
 a very large and thin griddle-cake. The Arab 
 uses it as a plate. Eating with your hands is 
 at first rather difficult. Before falling to, a ewer 
 is brought around to you, and you are sup- 
 plied with soap — a servant pours water from 
 the ewer over your hands, and then gives you 
 a towel. After eating, the same process is 
 gone through with. There are certain formah- 
 ties that must be regarded — one of them being 
 
56 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 that you must not eat or drink with your left 
 hand. 
 
 In Tekrit we did not find as much in the way 
 of suppHes and ammunition as we had hoped. 
 The Turk had destroyed the greater part of 
 his store. We did find great quantities of 
 wood, and in that barren, treeless country it 
 was worth a lot. Most of the inhabitants of 
 Tekrit are raftsmen by profession. Their 
 rafts have been made in the same manner 
 since before the days of Xerxes and Darius. 
 Inflated goatskins are used as a basis for a 
 platform of poles, cut in the up-stream forests. 
 On these, starting from Diarbekr or Mosul, 
 they float down all their goods. When they 
 reach Tekrit they leave the poles there, and 
 start up-stream on foot, carrying their deflated 
 goatskins. The Turks used this method a 
 great deal bringing down their supphes. In 
 pre-war days the rafts, keleks as they are 
 called, would often come straight through to 
 Baghdad, but many were always broken up 
 at Tekrit, for there is a desert route running 
 across to Hit on the Euphrates, and the sup- 
 plies from up-river were taken across this in 
 camel caravans. 
 
 The aerodrome lay six or seven miles above 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 57 
 
 the town, and I was anxious to see it and the 
 comfortable billets the Germans had built 
 themselves. I found a friend whose duties 
 required motor transportation, and we set off 
 in his car. A dust-storm was raging, and we 
 had some difficulty in finding our way through 
 the network of trenches. Once outside, the 
 storm became worse, and we could only see a 
 few yards in front of us. We got completely 
 lost, and after nearly running over the edge 
 of the bluff, gave up the attempt, and slowly 
 worked our way back. 
 
 When we started off on the advance I was 
 reading Xenophon's Anabasis. On the day 
 when we were ordered to march on Tekrit a 
 captain of the Royal Flying Corps, an ex- 
 master at Eton, was in the mess, and when I 
 told him that I was nearly out of reading mat- 
 ter, he said that next time he came over he 
 would drop me Plutarch's Lives, I asked him 
 to drop it at corps headquarters, and that a 
 friend of mine there would see that I got it. 
 The next day in the heat of the fighting a 
 plane came over low, signalling that it was 
 dropping a message. As the streamer fell 
 close by, there was a rush to pick it up and 
 learn how the attack was progressing. Fortu- 
 
58 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 nately, I was far away when the packet was 
 opened and found to contain the book that 
 the pilot had promised to drop for me. 
 
 After we had been occupying the town for a 
 few days, orders came through to prepare to 
 fall back on Samarra. The line of communi- 
 cation was so long that it was impossible to 
 maintain us, except at too great a cost to the 
 transportation facilities possessed by the Ex- 
 peditionary Forces. Eight or ten months later, 
 when we had more rails in hand, a line was 
 laid to Tekrit, which had been abandoned by 
 the Turks under the threat of our advance 
 to Kirkuk, in the Persian hills. It was diffi- 
 cult to explain to the men, particularly to the 
 Indians, the necessity for falling back. All 
 they could understand was that we had taken 
 the town at no small cost, and now we were 
 about to give it up. 
 
 For several days I was busy helping to pre- 
 pare rafts to take down the timber and such 
 other captured supplies as were worth remov- 
 ing. The river was low, leaving a broad stretch 
 of beach below the town, and to this we brought 
 down the poles. Several camels had died near 
 the water, probably from the results of our 
 shelling, and the hot weather soon made them 
 
THE TIGRIS FRONT 59 
 
 very unpleasant companions. The first day 
 was bad enough; the second was worse. The 
 natives were not in the least affected. They 
 brought their washing and worked among them 
 — they came down and drew their drinking- 
 water from the river, either beside the camels 
 or down-stream of them, with complete indiffer- 
 ence. It is true this water percolates drop by 
 drop through large, porous clay pots before it 
 is drunk, but even so, it would have seemed 
 that they would have preferred its coming from 
 up-stream of the derelict "ships of the desert.'* 
 On the third day, to their mild surprise, we 
 managed with infinite difficulty to tow the 
 camels out through the shallow water into the 
 main stream. 
 
 We finally got our rafts built, over eighty in 
 number, and arranged for enough Arab pilots 
 to take care of half of them. On the remain- 
 der we put Indian sepoys. They made quite 
 a fleet when we finally got them all started 
 down-stream. Two were broken up in the 
 rapids near Daur, the rest reached Samarra in 
 safety on the second day. 
 
 We had a pleasant camp on the bluffs be- 
 low Tekrit — high enough above the plain to 
 be free of the ordinary dust-storms, and the 
 
60 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 prospect of returning to Samarra was scarcely 
 more pleasant to us than to the men. Five 
 days after we had taken the town, we turned 
 our backs on it and marched slowly back to 
 rail-head. 
 
Ill 
 
 Patrolling the Ruins of Babylon 
 
Ill 
 
 PATROLLING THE RUINS OF BABYLON 
 
 We returned to find Samarra buried in dust 
 and more desolate than ever. A few days 
 later came the first rain-storm. After a night's 
 downpour the air was radiantly clear, and it 
 was joy to ride off on the rounds, no longer 
 like Zeus, enveloped in a cloud. 
 
 It was a relief to see the heat-stroke camps 
 broken up. During the summer months our 
 ranks were fearfully thinned through the sun. 
 Although it was the British troops that suffered 
 most, the Indians were by no means immune. 
 Before the camps were properly organized the 
 percentage of mortality was exceedingly large, 
 for the only effective treatment necessitates 
 the use of much ice. The patient runs a tem- 
 perature which it was impossible to control 
 until the ice-making machines were installed. 
 The camps were situated in the coolest and 
 most comfortable places, but in spite of every- 
 thing, death was a frequent result, and recover- 
 ies were apt to be only partial. Men who had 
 
 63 
 
64 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 had a bad stroke were rarely of any further use 
 in the country. 
 
 Another sickness of the hot season which 
 now began to claim less victims was sand- 
 fly fever. This fever, which, as its name indi- 
 cates, was contracted from the bites of sand- 
 flies, varied widely in virulence. Sometimes 
 it was so severe that the victim had to be 
 evacuated to India; as a rule he went no 
 farther than a base hospital at Baghdad or 
 Amara. 
 
 One of the things about which the Tommy 
 felt most keenly in the Mesopotamian cam- 
 paign was that there was no such thing as a 
 *Xushy Bhghty." To take you to "Bhghty" 
 a wound must mean permanent disablement, 
 otherwise you either convalesced in the coun- 
 try or, at best, were sent to India. In the 
 same manner there were no short leaves, for 
 there was nowhere to go. At the most rapid 
 rate of travelling it took two weeks to get to 
 India, and once there, although the people 
 did everything possible in the way of entertain- 
 ing, the enlisted man found little to make him 
 less homesick than he had been in Mesopotamia. 
 Transportation was so difficult and the trip so 
 long that only under very exceptional circum- 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 65 
 
 stances was leave to England given. ^ One 
 spring it was announced that officers wishing 
 to get either married or divorced could apply 
 for leave with good hopes of success. Many 
 applied, but a number returned without having 
 fulfilled either condition, so that the following 
 year no leaves were given upon those grounds. 
 The army commander put all divorce cases 
 into the hands of an officer whose civil occupa- 
 tion had been the law, and who arranged them 
 without the necessity of granting home leave. 
 
 A week after our return to Samarra a rumor 
 started that General Maude was down with 
 cholera. For some time past there had been spo- 
 radic cases, though not enough to be counted 
 an epidemic. The sepoys had suffered chiefly, 
 but not exclusively, for the British ranks also 
 supplied a quota of victims. An officer on the 
 staff of the military governor of Baghdad had 
 recently died. We heard that the army com- 
 mander had the virulent form, and knew there 
 could be no chance of his recovery. The an- 
 nouncement of his death was a heavy blow to 
 all, and many were the gloomy forebodings. 
 The whole army had implicit confidence in their 
 leader, and deeply mourned his loss. The 
 usual rumors of foul play and poison went the 
 
66 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 rounds, but I soon after heard Colonel Wilcox — 
 in pre-war days an able and renowned prac- 
 titioner of Harley Street — say that it was an 
 undoubted case of cholera. The colonel had at- 
 tended General Maude throughout the illness. 
 The general had never taken the cholera pro- 
 phylactic, although Colonel Wilcox had on 
 many occasions urged him to do so, the last 
 time being only a few days before the disease 
 developed. 
 
 General Marshall, who had commanded 
 General Maude's old division, the Thirteenth, 
 took over. The Seventeenth lost General 
 Gillman, who thereupon became chief of staff. 
 This was a great loss to his division, for he was 
 the idol of the men, but the interest of the 
 Expeditionary Force was naturally and justly 
 given precedence. 
 
 In due course my transfer to the Motor 
 Machine-Gun Corps came through approved, 
 and I was assigned to the Fourteenth battery 
 of light-armored motor-cars, commanded by 
 Captain Nigel Somerset, whose grandfather, 
 Lord Raglan, had died, nursed by Florence 
 Nightingale, while in command of the British 
 forces in the Crimean War. Somerset himself 
 was in the infantry at the outbreak of the war 
 
Ti)\viiiii' ail armored car across a river 
 
 Reconnaissance 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 67 
 
 and had been twice wounded in France. He 
 was an excellent leader, possessing as he did 
 dash, judgment, and personal magnetism. A 
 battery was composed of eight armored cars, 
 subdivided into four sections. There was a 
 continually varying number of tenders and 
 workshop lorries. The fighting cars were Rolls- 
 Royces, the others Napiers and Fords. 
 
 At that time there were only four batteries 
 in the country. We were army troops — that 
 is to say, we were not attached to any individual 
 brigade, or division, or corps, but were tem- 
 porarily assigned first here and then there, as 
 the need arose. 
 
 In attacks we worked in co-operation with 
 the cavalry. Although on occasions they tried 
 to use us as tanks, it was not successful, for 
 our armor-plate was too light. We were also 
 employed in raiding, and in quelling Arab up- 
 risings. This latter use threw us into close 
 touch with the political officers. These were 
 a most interesting lot of men. They were re- 
 cruited in part from the army, but largely from 
 civil life. They took over the civil adminis- 
 tration, of the conquered territory and judici- 
 ously upheld native justice. Many remarkable 
 characters were numbered among them — men 
 
68 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 who had devoted a Hfetlme to the study of the 
 intricacies of Oriental diplomacy. They were 
 distinguished by the white tabs on the collars 
 of their regulation uniforms; but white was by 
 no means invariably the sign of peace, for many 
 of the political officers were killed, and more 
 than once in isolated towns in unsettled dis- 
 tricts they sustained sieges that lasted for 
 several days. We often took a political oflScer 
 out with us on a raid or reconnaissance, find- 
 ing his knowledge of the language and customs 
 of great assistance. Sir Percy Cox was at the 
 head, with the title "Chief Political Officer" 
 and the rank of general. His career in the 
 Persian Gulf has been as distinguished as it is 
 long, and his handling of the very delicate situa- 
 tions arising in Mesopotamia has called forth 
 the unstinted praise of soldier and civilian alike. 
 Ably assisting him, and head of the Arab 
 bureau, was Miss Gertrude Bell, the only 
 woman, other than the nursing sisters, officially 
 connected with the Mesopotamian Expedition- 
 ary Forces. Miss Bell speaks Arabic fluently 
 and correctly. She first became interested in 
 the East when visiting her uncle at Teheran, 
 where he was British minister. She has made 
 noteworthy expeditions in Syria and Mesopo- 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 69 
 
 tamia, and has written a number of admirable 
 books, among which are Armurath to Armurath 
 and The Desert and the Sown. The undeniable 
 position which she holds must appear doubly 
 remarkable when the Mohammedan official at- 
 titude toward women is borne in mind. Miss 
 Bell has worked steadily and without a leave 
 in this trying climate, and her tact and judg- 
 ment have contributed to the British success 
 to a degree that can scarcely be overestimated. 
 
 The headquarters of the various batteries 
 were in Baghdad. There we had our perma- 
 nent billets, and stores. We would often be 
 ordered out in sections to be away varying 
 lengths of time, though rarely more than a 
 couple of months. The workshops' officer 
 stayed in permanent charge and had the diffi- 
 cult task of keeping all the cars in repair. The 
 supply of spare parts was so uncertain that 
 much skill and ingenuity were called for, and 
 possessed to a full degree by Lieutenant Lin- 
 nell of the Fourteenth. 
 
 A few days after I joined I set off with Somer- 
 set and one of the battery officers. Lieutenant 
 Smith, formerly of the Black Watch. We were 
 ordered to do some patrolling near the ruins of 
 [Babylon. Kerbela and Nejef, in the quahty 
 
70 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 of great Shiah shrines, had never been particu- 
 larly friendly to the Turks, who were Sunnis — 
 but the desert tribes are almost invariably 
 Sunnis, and this coupled with their natural 
 instinct for raiding and plundering made them 
 eager to take advantage of any interregnum 
 of authority. We organized a sort of native 
 mounted police, but they were more picturesque 
 than effective. They were armed with weap- 
 ons of varying age and origin — not one was 
 more recent than the middle of the last century. 
 Now the Budus, the wild desert folk, were fre- 
 quently equipped with rifles they had stolen 
 from us, so in a contest the odds were anything 
 but even. 
 
 W^e took up our quarters at Museyib, a small 
 town on the banks of the Euphrates, six or 
 eight miles above the Hindiyah Barrage, a dam 
 finished a few years before, and designed to 
 irrigate a large tract of potentially rich coun- 
 try. We patrolled out to Mohamediyah, a 
 village on the caravan desert route to Baghdad, 
 and thence down to Hilleh, around which stand 
 the ruins of ancient Babylon. The rainy sea- 
 son was just beginning, and it was obvious that 
 the patrolling could not be continuous, for a 
 twelve-hour rain would make the country 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 71 
 
 impassable to our heavy cars for two or three 
 days. We were fortunate in having pleasant 
 company in the officers of a Punjabi infantry 
 battalion and an Indian cavalry regiment. 
 Having commandeered an ancient caravan- 
 serai for garage and billets, we set to work to 
 clean it out and make it as waterproof as cir- 
 cumstances would permit. An oil-drum with 
 a length of iron telegraph-pole stuck in its 
 top provided a serviceable stove, and when 
 it rained we played bridge or read. 
 
 I was ever ready to reduce my kit to any 
 extent in order to have space for some books, 
 and Voltaire's Charles XII was the first called 
 upon to carry me to another part of the world 
 from that in which I at the moment found 
 myself. I always kept a volume of some sort 
 in my pocket, and during halts I would read in 
 the shade cast by the turret of my car. The 
 two volumes of Layard's Early Adventures 
 proved a great success. The writer, the great 
 Assyriologist, is better known as the author of 
 Nineveh and Babylon. The book I was reading 
 had been written when he was in his early 
 twenties, but published for the first time forty 
 years later. Layard started life as a solicitor's 
 clerk in London, but upon being offered a post 
 
72 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 in India he had accepted and proceeded 
 thither overland. On reaching Baghdad he 
 made a side-trip into Kurdistan, and became so 
 enamored of the hfe of the tribesmen that he 
 Hved there with them on and off for two years 
 — ^years filled with adventure of the most thrill- 
 ing sort. 
 
 I had finished a translation of Xenophon 
 shortly before and found it a very different 
 book than when I was plodding drearily 
 through it in the original at school. Here it 
 was all vivid and real before my eyes, with the 
 scene of the great battle of Cunaxa only a few 
 miles from Museyib. Babylon was in sight of 
 the valiant Greeks, but all through the loss of a 
 leader it was never to be theirs. On the ground 
 itself one could appreciate how great a master- 
 piece the retreat really was, and the hardiness 
 of the soldiers which caused Xenophon to re- 
 gard as a "snow sickness" the starvation and 
 utter weariness which made the numbed men 
 lie down and die in the snow of the Anatolian 
 highlands. He remarks naively that if you 
 could build a fire and give them something hot 
 to eat, the sickness was dispelled ! 
 
 The rain continued to fall and the mud be- 
 came deeper and deeper. It was all the Arabs 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 73 
 
 could do to get their produce into market. The 
 bazaar was not large, but was always thronged. 
 I used to sit in one of the coffee-houses and 
 drink coffee or tea and smoke the long-stemmed 
 water-pipe, the narghile. My Arabic was now 
 sufficiently fluent for ordinary conversation, 
 and in these clubs of the Arab I could hear 
 all the gossip. Bazaar rumors always told of 
 our advances long before they were officially 
 given out. Once in Baghdad I heard of an 
 attack we had launched. On going around 
 to G. H. Q. I mentioned the rumor, and found 
 that it was not yet known there, but shortly 
 after was confirmed. I had already in Africa 
 met with the "native wireless," and it will be 
 remembered how in the Civil War the planta- 
 tion negroes were often the first to get news of 
 the battles. It is something that I have never 
 heard satisfactorily explained. 
 
 In the coffee-houses, besides smoking and 
 gossiping, we also played games, either chess 
 or backgammon or munkula. This last is an 
 exceedingly primitive and ancient game — it 
 must date almost as far back as jackstones or 
 knucklebones. I have seen the natives in 
 Central Africa and the Indians in the far 
 interior of Brazil playing it in almost identical 
 
74 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 form. In Mesopotamia the board was a log 
 of wood sliced in two and hinged together. 
 In either half five or six holes were scooped out, 
 and the game consisted in dropping cowrie 
 shells or pebbles into the holes. When the 
 number in a particular hollow came to a cer- 
 tain amount with the addition of the one 
 dropped in, you won the contents. 
 
 In most places the coffee was served in Arab 
 fashion, not Turkish. In the latter case it is 
 sweet and thick and the tiny cup is half full 
 of grounds; in the former the coffee is clear and 
 bitter and of unsurpassable flavor. The di- 
 minutive cup is filled several times, but each 
 time there is only a mouthful poured in. Tea 
 is served in small glasses, without milk, but with 
 lots of sugar. The spoons in the glasses are 
 pierced with holes like tea-strainers so that the 
 tea may be stirred without spilling it. 
 
 There was in particular one booth I could 
 never tire watching. The old man who owned 
 it was a vender of pickles. In rows before him 
 were bottles and jars and bowls containing 
 pickles of all colors — red, yellow, green, purple, 
 white, and even blue. Above his head were 
 festoons of gayly painted peppers. He had a 
 long gray beard, wore a green turban and a 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 75 
 
 flowing robe with a gold-braided waistcoat. 
 In the half-lights of the crowded, covered ba- 
 zaar his was a setting in which Dulac would 
 have revelled. 
 
 At Museyib we led a peaceful, uneventful 
 existence — completely shut in by the mud. 
 We had several bazaar rumors about proposed 
 attacks upon the engineers who were survey- 
 ing for a railroad that was to be built to Hilleh 
 for the purpose of transporting the grain-crop 
 to the capital. Nothing materialized, however. 
 The conditions were too poor to induce even 
 the easily encouraged Arabs to raid. One 
 morning when I was wandering around the 
 gardens on the outskirts of the town I came 
 across some jackals and shot one with my 
 Webley revolver. It was running and I fired 
 a number of times, and got back to town to 
 find that my shooting had started all sorts of 
 excitement and reports of uprisings. 
 
 Christmas came and the different officers* 
 messes organized celebrations. The mess we 
 had joined was largely Scotch, so we decided 
 we must make a haggis, that "chieftain of the 
 pudden race." The ingredients, save for the 
 whiskey, were scarcely orthodox, but if it was 
 not a success, at least no one admitted it. 
 
76 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 As soon as the weather cleared we made a 
 run to Kerbela — a lovely town, with miles of 
 gardens surrounding it and two great mosques. 
 The bazaar was particularly attractive — plenti- 
 fully supplied with everything. We got quan- 
 tities of the deliciously flavored pistachio-nuts 
 which were difficult to obtain elsewhere, as 
 well as all sorts of fruit and vegetables. There 
 were no troops stationed in the vicinity, so the 
 prices were lower than usual. The orders were 
 that we should go about in armed bands, but 
 I never saw any marked indication of hostility. 
 The British, true to the remarkable tact and 
 tolerance that contributes so largely to their 
 success in dealing with native races, posted Mo- 
 hammedan sepoys as guards on the mosques, 
 and no one but Moslems could even go into 
 the courtyards. If this had not been done, 
 there would have been many disturbances 
 and uprisings, for the Arabs and Persians 
 felt so strongly on the question that they re- 
 garded with marked hostility those who even 
 gazed into the mosque courtyards. Why it is 
 so different in Constantinople I do not know, 
 but there was certainly no hostility shown us 
 in Santa Sophia nor in the mosque of Omar in 
 Jerusalem. Be that as it may, forbidden fruit 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 77 
 
 IS always sweet, and the Tommies were inclined 
 to force an entrance. During a change of 
 guard a Tommy who had his curiosity and 
 initiative stimulated through recourse to arrick, 
 the fiery liquor distilled from dates, stole into 
 the most holy mosque in Kerbela. By a 
 miracle he was got out unharmed, but for a 
 few hours a general uprising with an attendant 
 massacre of unbelievers was feared. 
 
 The great mosque lost much of its dignity 
 through an atrocious clock-tower standing in 
 the courtyard in front of it. It had evidently 
 been found too expensive to cover this tower 
 with a golden scale to shine in the sun, so some 
 ingenious architect hit upon the plan of paper- 
 ing it with flattened kerosene-tins. It must 
 have glinted gloriously at first, but weather and 
 rain had rusted the cans and they presented but 
 a sorry spectacle. From the thousand and one 
 uses to which these oil-cans have been put by 
 the native, one is inclined to think that the 
 greatest benefit that has been conferred on the 
 natives by modern civilization is from the hands 
 of the Standard Oil Company. 
 
 There were a fair number of Indians living in 
 Kerbela before the war, for devout Shiahs are 
 anxious to be buried near the martyred sons of 
 
78 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 Ali, and when they are unable to move to Ker- 
 bela in their hfetime they frequently make 
 provisions that their remains may- be trans- 
 ported thither. The British found it a con- 
 venient abode for native rulers whom they 
 were forced to depose but still continued to 
 pension. 
 
 Hilleh, which stands near the ruins of ancient 
 Babylon, is a modern town very much like 
 Museyib. I never had a chance to study the 
 ruins at any length. Several times we went 
 over the part that had been excavated by the 
 Germans immediately before the war. I under- 
 stand that this is believed to be the great palace 
 where Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the 
 wall. It is built of bricks, each one of which 
 is stamped in cuneiform characters. There are 
 very fine bas-reliefs of animals, both mythical 
 and real. In the centre is the great stone lion, 
 massively impressive, standing over the pros- 
 trate form of a man. The lion has suffered 
 from fire and man; there have even been 
 chips made in it recently by Arab rifles, prob- 
 ably not wantonly, but in some skirmish. 
 Standing alone in its majesty in the midst of 
 ruin and desolation amid the black tents of 
 a people totally unable to construct or even 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 79 
 
 appreciate anything of a like nature, it gave 
 one much to think over and moraHze about. 
 The ruins of Babylon have been excavated 
 only in very small part; there are great iso- 
 lated mounds which have never been touched, 
 and you can still pick up in the sand bits of 
 statuary, and the cylinders that were used as 
 seal-rings. The great city of Seleucia on the 
 Tigris was built largely with bricks and ma- 
 sonry brought by barge from the ruins of Baby- 
 lon through the canal that joined the two rivers. 
 The prophecy of Isaiah has fallen true: 
 
 And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of 
 the Chaldees* excellency, shall be as when God over- 
 threw Sodom and Gomorrah. 
 
 It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt 
 in from generation to generation: neither shall the Ara- 
 bian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make 
 their fold there. 
 
 But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their 
 houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall 
 dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. 
 
 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their 
 desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: 
 and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be 
 prolonged. 
 
 A few days after Christmas we were ordered 
 to return to Baghdad. The going was still 
 
80 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 bad. We had a Ford tender in advance to 
 find and warn us of the softest spots. Once 
 it got into the middle of such a bottomless bog 
 that, after trying everything else, I hit upon the 
 idea of rolling it out. It was built all enclosed 
 like a bread-van, and we turned it over and 
 over until we had it clear of the mud. We 
 had hard work with the heavy cars — some- 
 times we could tow one out with another, 
 but frequently that only resulted in getting the 
 two stuck. Once when the cars were badly 
 bogged I went to a near-by Arab village to get 
 help. I told the head man that I wanted bun- 
 dles of brush to throw in front of the cars in 
 order to make some sort of a foundation to 
 pass them over. He at once started turning 
 out his people to aid us, but after he had got 
 a number of loads under way he caught sight of 
 one of his wives, who, instead of coming to 
 our assistance, was washing some clothes in a 
 copper caldron by the fire. There followed a 
 scene which demonstrated that even an Arab 
 is by no means always lord of his own house- 
 hold. The wife refused to budge; the Arab 
 railed and stormed, but she went calmly on 
 with her washing, paying no more attention to 
 his fury than if he were a fractious, unreasona- 
 
THE RUINS OF BABYLON 81 
 
 ble child. At length, driven to a white heat of 
 rage, the head man upset the caldron into the 
 fire with his foot. The woman, without a word, 
 got up and stalked into a near-by hut, from 
 which she refused to emerge. There was noth- 
 ing for her discomfited adversary to do but go 
 on with his rounds. 
 
 By manoeuvring and digging and towing we 
 managed to make seven -miles after fourteen 
 hours' work that first day. Night found us 
 close beside an Arab village, from which I got 
 a great bowl of buffalo milk to put into the 
 men's coffee. Early in the morning we were 
 off again. The going was so much better that 
 we were able to make Baghdad at ten o'clock 
 in the evening. 
 
IV 
 
 Skirmishes and Reconnaissances Along 
 the Kurdish Front 
 
IV 
 
 SKIRMISHES AND RECONNAISSANCES 
 ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 
 
 We spent a few days making repairs and 
 outfitting before starting off again. This time 
 our destination was Deli Abbas, the head- 
 quarters of the Thirteenth Division. The 
 town is situated in the plains below the foot- 
 hills of the Persian Mountains, on the banks 
 of the Khalis Canal, some seventy miles north- 
 east of Baghdad. At dawn we passed out of 
 the north gate, close to where General Maude 
 is buried, and whirled across the desert for 
 thirty miles to Bakuba, a prosperous city on 
 the banks of the Diyala. From the junction 
 of the greater Zab down to Kurna, where the 
 Euphrates joins, this stream is the most im- 
 portant affluent of the Tigris. It was one of 
 those bright, sparkling mornings on which 
 merely to be alive and breathe is a joy. We 
 passed a number of caravans, bringing carpets 
 and rugs from Persia, or fruit and vegetables 
 from the rich agricultural district around 
 
 85 
 
86 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 Bakuba. The silks manufactured here are of 
 a fine quality and well known throughout the 
 country. 
 
 After passing the big aerodrome near the 
 town, the going became very bad; we struggled 
 along through the village of Deltawa, in and 
 out of unfathomable ditches. The rivers were 
 in flood, and we ran into lakes and swamps 
 that we cautiously skirted. Dark overtook 
 us in the middle of a network of bogs, but we 
 came upon an outpost of Welsh Fusiliers and 
 spent the night with them. We had smashed 
 the bottom plate of one of the cars, so that all 
 the oil ran out of the crank-case, but with a 
 side of the ever-useful kerosene tin we patched 
 the car up temporarily and pushed off at early 
 dawn. Our route wound through groves of 
 palms surrounding the tumble-down tomb of 
 some holy man, occasional collections of squahd 
 little huts, and in the intervening "despoblado" 
 we would catch sight of a jackal crouching in 
 the hollow or slinking off through the scrub. 
 Deli Abbas proved a half-deserted straggling 
 town which gave evidence of having once seen 
 prosperous days. Some Turkish aeroplanes 
 heralded our arrival. 
 
 In front of us rose the Jebel Hamrin — Red 
 
ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 87 
 
 Hills — beyond them the snow-clad peaks of 
 the Kurdish Range. A few months previous 
 we had captured the passes over the Jebel, and 
 we were now busy repairing and improving 
 the roads — in particular that across the Abu 
 Hajjar, not for nothing named by the Arabs 
 the "Father of Stones." Whenever the going 
 permitted we w^ent out on reconnaissances — 
 rekkos, as we called them. They varied but 
 slightly; the one I went on the day after 
 reaching Deli Abbas might serve as model. 
 We started at daybreak and ran to a little 
 village called Ain Lailah, the Spring of Night, 
 a lovely name for the small clump of palm- 
 trees tucked away unexpectedly in a hollow 
 among barren foot-hills. There we picked up 
 a surveyor — an officer whose business it was to 
 make maps for the army. We passed through 
 great herds of camels, some with small chil- 
 dren perched on their backs, who joggled about 
 like sailors on a storm-tossed ship, as the 
 camels made away from the cars. There were 
 villages of the shapeless black tents of the 
 nomads huddled in among the desolate dunes. 
 We picked up a Turk deserter who was try- 
 ing to reach our lines. He said that his six 
 comrades had been killed by Arabs. Shortly 
 
88 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 afterward we ran into a cavalry patrol, but 
 the men escaped over some very broken ground 
 before we could satisfactorily come to terms 
 with them. It was lucky for the deserter that 
 we found him before they did, for his shrift 
 would have been short. We got back to camp 
 at half past eight, having covered ninety-two 
 miles in our windings — a good day's work. 
 
 Each section had two motorcycles attached to 
 it — jackals, as one of the generals called them, 
 in apt reference to the way in which jackals ac- 
 company a lion when hunting. The cyclists 
 rode ahead to spy out the country and the best 
 course to follow. When we got into action they 
 would drop behind, and we used them to send 
 messages back to camp. The best motor- 
 cyclist we had was a Swiss named Milson. He 
 was of part English descent, and came at once 
 from Switzerland at the outbreak of the war to 
 enlist. When he joined he spoke only broken 
 English but was an exceedingly intelligent 
 man and had been attending a technical col- 
 lege. I have never seen a more skilful rider; 
 he could get his cycle along through the mud 
 when we were forced to carry the others, and 
 no one was more cool and unconcerned under 
 fire. The personnel of the battery left nothing 
 
ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 89 
 
 to be desired. One was proud to serve among 
 such a fine set of men. Corporal Summers 
 drove the car in which I usually rode, and 
 I have never met with a better driver or one 
 who understood his car so thoroughly, and 
 possessed that intangible sympathy with it 
 which is the gift of a few, but can be never 
 attained. 
 
 We were still in the rainy season. We had 
 to travel as light as possible, and all we could 
 bring were forty-pounder tents, which corre- 
 spond to the American dog-tent. Very low, 
 they withstood in remarkable fashion the 
 periodical hurricanes of wind and rain. They 
 kept us fairly dry, too, for we were careful to 
 ditch them well. There was room for two men 
 to sleep in the turret of a Rolls, and they 
 could spread a tarpaulin over the top to keep 
 the rain from coming in through the various 
 openings. The balance of the men had a com- 
 munal tent or slept in the tenders. The 
 larger tents in the near-by camps blew down 
 frequently, but with us it happened only occa- 
 sionally. There are happier moments than 
 those spent in the inky blackness amid a tor- 
 rential deluge, when you try to extricate your- 
 self from the wet, clinging folds of falling canvas. 
 
90 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 Time hung heavily when the weather was 
 bad, and we were cooped up inside our tents 
 without even a hostile aeroplane to shoot at. 
 One day when the going was too poor to take 
 out the heavy cars, I set off in a tender to 
 visit another section of the battery that was 
 stationed thirty or forty miles away in the 
 direction of Persia, close by a town called Kizil 
 Robat. We had a rough trip, with several 
 difficult fords to cross. It was only through 
 working with the icy water above our waists 
 that we won through the worst, amid the 
 shouts of "Shabash, Sahib!" ("Well done!") 
 from the onlooking Indian troops. I reached 
 the camp to find the section absent on a recon- 
 naissance, for the country was better drained 
 than that over which we were working. A few 
 minutes later one of the cyclists came in with 
 the news that the cars were under heavy fire 
 about twenty -five miles away and one of them 
 was badly bogged. I immediately loaded all 
 the surplus men and eight Punjabis from a 
 near-by regiment into the tenders. We reached 
 the scene just after the disabled car had been 
 abandoned. Some of the Turks were con- 
 cealed in a village two hundred and fifty yards 
 away; the rest were behind some high irriga- 
 
ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 91 
 
 tion embankments. The free car had been 
 unable to circle around or flank them because 
 of the nature of the terrain. The men had not 
 known that the village was occupied and had 
 bogged down almost at the same time that the 
 Turks opened fire. By breaking down an irri- 
 gation ditch the enemy succeeded in further 
 flooding the locality where the automobile was 
 trapped. The Turks made it hot for the men 
 when they tried to dig out the car. The bullets 
 spattered about them. It was difficult to tell 
 how many Turks we accounted for. As dark 
 came on, the occupants of the disabled car 
 abandoned it and joined the other one, which 
 was standing off the enemy but had lost all four 
 tires and was running on its rims. We held a 
 consultation and decided to stay where we were 
 until dawn. We had scarcely made the deci- 
 sion when one of our cyclists arrived with orders 
 from the brigade commander to return imme- 
 diately. Although exceedingly loath to leave 
 the armored car, we had no other course than 
 to obey. 
 
 It was after midnight by the time we made 
 back to camp. We were told that a small 
 attack had been planned for the morning, and 
 that then we could go out with the troops and 
 
92 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 recover our car, using some artillery horses 
 to drag it free. The troops soon began filing 
 past, but we didn't pull out till three o'clock, 
 by which time we were reinforced by an armored 
 car from another battery. We were held back 
 behind the advanced cavalry until daylight, 
 and felt certain that the Turks would have 
 either destroyed or succeeded in removing our 
 car. Nor were we wrong, for just as we breasted 
 the hill that brought the scene of yesterday's 
 engagement into view, we saw the smoke of an 
 explosion and the men running back into the 
 village. We cleared the village with the help 
 of a squadron of the Twenty-First cavalry, 
 and found that the car had been almost freed 
 during the night. It was a bad wreck, but we 
 were able to tow it. I wished to have a reckon- 
 ing with the village head man, and walked to 
 an isolated group of houses a few hundred yards 
 to the left of the village. As I neared them a 
 lively fusillade opened and I had to take 
 refuge in a convenient irrigation ditch. The 
 country was so broken that it was impossible 
 for us to operate, so we towed the car back to 
 camp. 
 
 Our section from Deli Abbas was moved up 
 to take the place of the one that had been en- 
 
Hauling out a badly bogged fighting car 
 
 A Mesopotaniian garage 
 
ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 93 
 
 gaged, which now returned to Baghdad. We 
 were camped at Mirjana, a few miles north 
 of Kizil Robat, on the Diyala River. A pon- 
 toon bridge was thrown across and the cars 
 were taken over to the right bank, where we 
 bivouacked with a machine-gun company and a 
 battahon of native infantry. The bed of the 
 river was very wide, and although throughout 
 the greater part of the year the water flowed 
 only through the narrow main channel, in the 
 time of the spring floods the whole distance 
 was a riotous yellow torrent. We had no sooner 
 got the cars across than the river began to rise. 
 During the first night part of the bridge was 
 carried away, and the rest was withdrawn. 
 The rise continued; trees and brush were swept 
 racing past. We made several fruitless at- 
 tempts to get across in the clumsy pontoons, 
 but finally gave it up, resigning ourselves to 
 being marooned. We put ourselves on short 
 rations and waited for the river to fall. If 
 the Turks had used any intelligence they could 
 have gathered us in with the greatest ease, in 
 spite of our excellent line of trenches. On the 
 fourth day of our isolation the river subsided as 
 rapidly as it had risen. 
 
 We had good patrolling conditions, and each 
 
94 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 day we made long circuits. Sometimes we 
 would run into a body of enemy cavalry and 
 have a skirmish with them. Again we would 
 come upon an infantry outpost and manoeuvre 
 about in an effort to damage it. The enemy 
 set traps for us, digging big holes in the road 
 and covering them over with matting on which 
 they scattered dirt to make the surface appear 
 normal. The nearest town occupied by the 
 Turks was Kara Tepe, distant from Mir j ana 
 eight or ten miles as the crow flies. In the de- 
 batable land were a number of native villages, 
 and such inhabitants as remained in them led 
 an unpleasantly eventful existence. In the 
 morning they would be visited by a Turkish 
 patrol, which would be displaced by us in our 
 rounds. Perhaps in the evening a band of 
 wild mountainy Kurds would blow in and run 
 off some of their few remaining sheep. Then 
 the Turks would return and accuse them of hav- 
 ing given us information, and carry off some 
 hostages or possibly beat a couple of them for 
 having received us, although goodness knows 
 they had little enough choice in the matter. 
 There was one old sheik with whom I used 
 often to sit and gossip while an attendant was 
 roasting the berries for our coffee over the near- 
 
ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 95 
 
 by fire. He was ever asking why we couldn't 
 make an advance and put his village safely be- 
 hind our Hues, so that the children could grow 
 fat and the herds graze unharmed. In this 
 country Kurdish and Turkish were spoken as 
 frequently as Arabic, and many of the names of 
 places were Turkish — such as Kara Tepe, 
 which means Black Mountain, and Kizil Robat, 
 the Tomb of the Maidens. My spelling of 
 these names differs from that found on many 
 maps. It would be a great convenience if some 
 common method could be agreed upon. At 
 present the map-makers conform only in a 
 unanimous desire to each use a different trans- 
 literation. 
 
 Kizil Robat is an attractive town. I spent 
 some pleasant mornings wandering about it 
 with the mayor, Jameel Bey, a fine-looking 
 Kurdish chieftain of the Jaf tribe. He owned 
 a lovely garden with date-palms, oranges, 
 pomegranates, and figs. Tattered Kurds were 
 working on the irrigation ditches, and a heap of 
 rags lying below the wall in the sun changed 
 itself into a small boy, just as I was about to 
 step on it. Jameel's son was as white, with 
 as rosy cheeks, as any American baby. 
 
 Harry Bo wen, brother-in-law of General 
 
96 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 Cobbe, was the political oflScer in charge of 
 Ejzil Robat. He spoke excellent Arabic and 
 was much respected by the natives. His 
 house was an oasis in which I could always look 
 forward to a pleasant talk, an excellent native 
 dinner, and some interesting book to carry off. 
 Although the town was small, there were three 
 good Turkish baths. One of them belonged to 
 Jameel Bey, but, judging from the children 
 tending babies while squatting in the entrance 
 portico, was generally given over to the distaff 
 side and its friends. The one which we pat-j 
 ronized, while not so grand a building, had an 
 old Persian who understood the art of massage 
 thoroughly, and there was nothing more rest-! 
 ful after a number of days' hard work with 
 the cars. 
 
 In the end of February there passed through 
 Kizil Robat the last contingent of our former 
 Russian AUies. They were Cossacks — a fine- 
 looking lot as they rode along perched on their 
 small chunky saddles atop of their unkempt but 
 hardy ponies. WTien Russia went out of the 
 war they asked permission to keep on fighting 
 with us. They were a good deal of a problem, 
 for they had no idea whatever of discipline, 
 and it was most difficult to keep them in hand 
 
ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 97 
 
 and stop them from pillaging the natives in- 
 discriminately. They had been completely 
 cut off from Russia for a long time but were 
 now on their way back. A very intelligent 
 woman doctor and a number of nurses who had 
 been with them were sick with smallpox in one 
 of our hospitals in Baghdad. When they re- 
 covered they were sent to India, for it was not 
 feasible to repatriate them by way of Persia. 
 When the Russians first estabhshed connection 
 with us, some armored cars were sent to bring in 
 the Cossack general, whose name we were told 
 was Leslie. We were unprepared to find that 
 he spoke no English ! It turned out that his 
 ancestors had gone over from Scotland to the 
 court of Peter the Great. 
 
V 
 
 The Advance on the Euphrates 
 
THE ADVANCE ON THE EUPHRATES 
 
 Early in March we got orders to return to 
 Baghdad, where all the armored cars were to 
 be concentrated preparatory to an attack on 
 the Euphrates front. There was much specu- 
 lation as to our mission. Some said that we 
 were to break through and estabhsh connection 
 with General Allenby's forces in Palestine. 
 While I know nothing about it authoritatively, 
 it is certain that if the state of affairs in France 
 had not called for the withdrawal from the East 
 of all the troops that could be spared, the at- 
 tack that was launched in October would have 
 taken place in March. We could then have 
 advanced up the Euphrates, and it would have 
 been entirely practical to cross over the desert 
 in the cars by way of Tadmor. 
 
 When we got word to come in, the roads were 
 in fearful shape and the rain was f alhng in tor- 
 rents, but we were so afraid that we might miss 
 the attack that we salvaged everything not 
 essential and started to fight our way through 
 
 101 
 
102 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 the mud. It was a slow and wearisome proc- 
 ess, but we managed to get as far as Bakuba 
 by evening. The river was rising in one of its 
 periodical floods and we found that the pon- 
 toon bridge had been cut half an hour before our 
 arrival. No one could predict how long the 
 flood would last, but the river rarely went down 
 sufficiently to allow the bridge to be replaced 
 within a week. At that time the raihoad went 
 only as far as Bakuba, and crossed the river 
 on a wooden trestle, so I decided to try to load 
 the motors on a flat car and get across the 
 Diyala in that way. 
 
 After having made arrangements to do this 
 I wandered off into the bazaar to get some- 
 thing to eat. In native fashion I first bought 
 a big flap of bread from an old woman, and then 
 went to a pickle booth to get some beets, which 
 I wrapped in my bread. Next I proceeded to 
 a meat-shop and ordered some lamb kababs 
 roasted. The meat is cut in pellets, spitted 
 on rods six or eight inches long, and lain over 
 the glowing charcoal embers. In the shop 
 there are long tables with benches beside them. 
 The customer spreads his former purchases, 
 and when his kababs are ready he eats his 
 dinner. He next proceeds to a coffee-house, 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 103 
 
 where he has a couple of glasses of tea and 
 three or four diminutive cups of coffee to top 
 off, and the meal is finished. The Arab eats 
 sparingly as a rule, but when he gives or at- 
 tends a banquet he stuffs himself to his ut- 
 most capacity. 
 
 Next morning we loaded our cars successfully 
 and started off by rail for Baghdad, some thirty 
 miles away. The railroad wound across the 
 desert, with here and there a water-tank with 
 a company from a native regiment guarding 
 it. As we stopped at one particularly desolate 
 spot, a young officer came running up and asked 
 if we would have tea with him. He took us 
 to his tent, where everything was ready, for 
 he apparently always met the two trains that 
 passed through daily. Poor fellow, he was only 
 a little over twenty, and desperately lonely and 
 homesick. Many of the young officers who 
 were wounded in France were sent to India 
 with the idea that they could be training men 
 and getting on to the methods of the Indian 
 army while yet recuperating and unfit to go 
 back to the front. They were shipped out with 
 a new draft when they had fully recovered. 
 This boy had only been a month in the coun- 
 try, and ten days before had been sent off in 
 
104 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 charge of his Sikh company to do this weari- 
 some guard duty. 
 
 We spent a few days in Baghdad refitting. 
 The cars were to go out camouflaged to resem- 
 ble supply-trucks, for every precaution was 
 taken to prevent the Turks from realizing that 
 we were massing men for an attack. The 
 night before we were to start, word came in 
 that the political officer at Nejef had been 
 murdered, and the town was in revolt. We 
 were ordered to send a section there immedi- 
 ately, so Lieutenant Ballingal's was chosen, 
 while the rest of us left next morning with the 
 balance of the battery for Hit. The first part 
 of the route lay across the desert to Falujah, a 
 prosperous agricultural town on the Euphrates. 
 Rail-head lies just beyond at a place known as 
 Tel El Dhubban— the "Hill of the Fhes." 
 From there on supplies were brought forward 
 by motor transport, or in Arab barges, called 
 shakturs. We crossed the river on a bridge 
 of boats and continued up along the bank to 
 Ramadie. Here I stayed over, detailed to 
 escort the army commander on a tour of inspec- 
 tion. 
 
 The smaller towns along the Euphrates are 
 far more attractive than those on the Tigris. 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 105 
 
 The country seems more developed, and most 
 inviting gardens surround the villages. Hit, 
 which lies twenty miles up-stream of Ramadie, 
 is an exception. It is of ancient origin and 
 built upon a hill, with a lovely view of the river. 
 It has not a vestige of green on it, but stands 
 out bleak and harsh in contrast to the palm- 
 groves fringing the bank. The bitumen wells 
 near by have been worked for five thousand 
 years and are responsible for the town being a 
 centre of boat manufacture. With the bitu- 
 men, the gufas and mahelas are "pitched with- 
 out and within," in the identical manner in 
 which we are told that the ark was built. The 
 jars in which the women of the town draw wa- 
 ter from the river, instead of being of copper or 
 earthenware as elsewhere, are here made of 
 pitched wicker-work. The smell of the boiling 
 bitumen and the sulphur springs is trying to 
 a stranger, although the natives regard it as 
 salubrious, and maintain that through it the 
 town is saved from cholera epidemics. We 
 had captured Hit a few weeks previously, and 
 the aeroplanes flying low over the town had 
 reported the disagreeable smell, attributing it 
 to dirt and filth. "Eyewitness," the official 
 newspaper correspondent, mentioned this in 
 
106 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 despatches, and when I was passing through, a 
 proclamation of apology was being prepared 
 to soothe the outraged and slandered townsfolk. 
 After taking the army commander back to 
 rail-head, we retraced our steps with all speed 
 to Hit, and thence the eight miles up-stream 
 to Salahiyeh. The road beyond Hit was in 
 fearful shape, and the engineers were working 
 night and day to keep it open and in some way 
 passable. In the proposed attack we were 
 to jump off from Salahiyeh, and? it was here 
 that the armored cars were assembled. Our 
 camp was close to a Turkish hospital. There 
 were two great crescents and stars laid out for 
 a signal to warn our aeroplanes not] to drop 
 bombs. One of the crescents was made of turf 
 and the other of limestone. The batteries 
 took turns in making the reconnaissances, 
 in the course of which they would come in for 
 a good deal of shelling. The road was un- 
 pleasant, because the camels and transport 
 animals that had been killed during the 
 Turkish retreat from Hit were by now very 
 high. For some unknown reason there were 
 no jackals or vultures to form a sanitary sec- 
 tion. After reconnoitring the enemy positions 
 and noting the progress they were making in 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 107 
 
 constructing their defenses, we would make a 
 long circuit back to camp. 
 
 One unoccupied morning I went over to an 
 island on the river. Its cool, restful look had 
 attracted me on the day I arrived, and it quite 
 fulfilled its promise. Indeed, it was the only 
 place I came across in Mesopotamia that 
 might have been a surviving fragment of the 
 Garden of Eden. It was nearly a mile long, 
 and scattered about on it were seven or eight 
 thick-walled and well-fortified houses. The 
 entire island was one great palm-grove, with 
 pomegranates, apricots, figs, orange-trees, and 
 grape- vines growing beneath the palms. The 
 grass at the foot of the trees was dotted with 
 blue and pink flowers. Here and there were 
 fields of spring wheat. The water-ditches 
 which irrigated the island were filled by giant 
 water-wheels, thirty to fifty feet in diameter. 
 These "naurs" have been well described in the 
 Bible, and I doubt if they have since been modi- 
 fied in a single item. There are sometimes as 
 many as sixteen in a row. As they scoop the 
 water up in the gourd-shaped earthenware jars 
 bound to their rims, they shiiek and groan 
 on their giant wooden axles. 
 
 On the night of March 25 we got word 
 
108 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 that the long-expected attack would take 
 place next morning. We had the cars ready 
 to move out by three. Since midnight shad- 
 owy files had been passing on their way for- 
 ward to get into position. One of our bat- 
 teries went with the infantry to advance against 
 the main fortified position at Khan Baghdadi. 
 The rest of us went with the cavalry around the 
 flank to cut the Turks ojff if they tried to re- 
 treat up-stream. We were well on our way at 
 daybreak. The country was so broken up 
 with ravines and dry river-beds that we knew 
 we had a long, hard march ahead of us. Our 
 maps were poor. A German officer that we 
 captured had in some manner got hold of our 
 latest map, and noting that we had omitted 
 entirely a very large ravine, became convinced 
 that any enveloping movement we attempted 
 would prove a failure. As it happened, we 
 came close to making the blunder he had an- 
 ticipated, for we started to advance down to the 
 river along the bank of a nullah which would 
 have taken us to Khan Baghdadi instead of 
 eight or ten miles above it, as we wished. I 
 think it was our aeroplanes that set us straight. 
 I was in charge of the tenders with supplies 
 and spares, and spent most of the time in the 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 109 
 
 leading Napier lorry. Occasionally I slipped 
 into an armored car to go off somewhere on a 
 separate mission. The Turks had doubtless 
 anticipated a flanking movement and kept 
 shelling us to a certain extent, but we could hear 
 that they were occupying themselves chiefly 
 with the straight attacking force. By after- 
 noon we had turned in toward the river and 
 our cavalry was soon engaged. The country 
 was too broken for the cars to get in any really 
 effective work. By nightfall we hoped we 
 were approximately where we should be, and 
 after making our dispositions as well as the 
 circumstances would permit, we lay down 
 beside the cars and were soon sound asleep. 
 At midnight we were awakened by the bullets 
 chipping the rocks and stones among which we 
 were sleeping. A night attack was evidently 
 under way, and it is always an eerie sensation. 
 We correctly surmised that the Turks were in 
 retreat from Khan Baghdadi and had run into 
 our outposts. In a few minutes we were reply- 
 ing in volume, and the rat-tat-tats of the 
 machine-guns on either side were continuous. 
 The enemy must have greatly overestimated 
 our numbers, for in a short time small groups 
 started surrendering, and before things had 
 
110 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 quieted we had twelve hundred prisoners. 
 The cavalry formed a rough prison-camp and 
 we turned in again to wait for daylight. 
 
 At dawn we started to reconnoitre our posi- 
 tion to find out just how matters stood. We 
 came upon a body of two thousand of the 
 enemy which had been held up by us in the 
 night and had retreated a short distance to 
 wait till it became light before surrendering. 
 Among them were a number of German ofiicers. 
 They were all of them well equipped with 
 machine-guns and rifles. Their intrenching 
 tools and medical suppKes were of Austrian 
 manufacture, as were also the rolling kitchens. 
 These last were of an exceedingly practical 
 design. While we were taking stock of our 
 capture we got word that Khan Baghdadi had 
 been occupied and a good number of prisoners 
 taken. We were instructed to press on and 
 take Haditha, thirty miles above Klian Bagh- 
 dadi. It was hoped that we might recapture 
 Colonel Tennant, who was in command of the 
 Royal Flying Corps forces in Mesopotamia. 
 He had been shot down at Khan Baghdadi 
 the day before the attack. We learned from 
 prisoners that he had been sent up-stream 
 immediately, on his way to Aleppo, but it 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 111 
 
 was thought that he might have been held 
 over at Haditha or at Ana. 
 
 We found that a lot of the enemy had got 
 by between us and the river and had then 
 swung back into the road. We met with little 
 opposition, save from occasional bands of strag- 
 glers who concealed themselves behind rocks 
 and sniped at us. Numbers surrendered with- 
 out resistance as we caught up with them. We 
 disarmed them and ordered them to walk back 
 until they fell in with our cavalry, or the in- 
 fantry, which was being brought forward in 
 trucks. As we bowled along in pursuit the 
 scene reminded me of descriptions in the novels 
 of Sienkiewicz or Erckmann-Chatrian. The 
 road was littered with equipment of every 
 sort, disabled pack-animals, and dead or dying 
 Turks. It was hard to see the wounded wither- 
 ing in the increasing heat — the dead were better 
 off. We reached the heights overlooking Hadi- 
 tha to find that the garrison was in full retreat. 
 Most of it had left the night before. Those 
 remaining opened fire upon us, but in a half- 
 hearted way, that was not calculated to in- 
 flict much loss. Many of the inhabitants of 
 the town lived in burrows in the hillsides. 
 Some of these caves had been filled with am- 
 
112 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 munition. The enemy had fired all their 
 dumps, and rocks were flying about. We en- 
 deavored to save as much of the material as 
 was possible. We were particularly anxious to 
 get all papers dealing with the Arabs, to enable 
 us to check up w^hich were our friends and which 
 of the ones behind our lines were dealing treach- 
 erously with us. We recaptured a lot of med- 
 ical equipment and some ammunition that 
 had been taken from our forces during the 
 Gallipoli campaign. 
 
 Haditha is thirty-five miles from Khan Bagh- 
 dadi, and Ana is an equal distance beyond. 
 It was decided that we should push on to a 
 big bridge shown on the map as eight miles 
 this side of Ana. We were to endeavor to 
 secure this before the Turks could destroy it, 
 and cross over to bivouac on the far side. The 
 road was in fair shape. Many of the small 
 bridges were of recent construction. We soon 
 found that our map was exceedingly inaccurate. 
 Our aeroplanes were doing a lot of damage to 
 the fleeing Turks, and as we began to catch up 
 with larger groups we had some sharp engage- 
 ments. The desert Arabs hovered like vultures 
 in the distance waiting for nightfall to cover 
 them in their looting. 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 113 
 
 That night we camped near the bridge. At 
 dusk the Red Cross ambulances and some 
 cavalry caught up. The latter had had a long, 
 hard two days, with little to eat for the men 
 and less for the horses, but both were standing 
 up wonderfully. They were the Seventh Hus- 
 sars and just as they reached us we recaptured 
 one of their sergeants who had been made 
 prisoner on the previous night. He had cov- 
 ered forty miles on foot, but the Turks had 
 treated him decently and he had come through 
 in good shape. We always felt that the Turk 
 was a clean fighter. Our officers he treated 
 well as long as he had anything to give or share 
 with them. With the enlisted men he was not 
 so considerate, but I am inclined to think that 
 it was because he was not accustomed to bother 
 his head much about his own rank and file, so 
 it never occurred to him to consider ours. 
 The Turkish private would thrive on what was 
 starvation issue to our men. The attitude of 
 many of the Turkish officers was amusing, if ex- 
 asperating. They seemed to take it for granted 
 that they would be treated with every consid- 
 eration due an honored guest. They would 
 complain bitterly about not being supplied 
 with coffee, although at the time we might be 
 
114 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 totally without it ourselves and far from any 
 source of supply. The German prisoners were 
 apt to cringe at first, but as soon as they found 
 they were not to be oppressed became arrogant 
 and overbearing. At different times we re- 
 took men that had been captives for varying 
 lengths of time. I remember a Tommy, from 
 the Manchesters, if I am not mistaken, who 
 had been taken before Kut fell, but had soon 
 after made his escape and lived among the 
 Kurdish tribesmen for seven or eight months 
 before he found his way back to us. Quite a 
 number of Indians who had been set to work 
 on the construction of the Berlin-to-Baghdad 
 Railway between Nisibin and ^losul made 
 good their escape and struggled through to 
 our lines. 
 
 It was a great rehef when the Red Cross 
 lorries came in and we could turn over the 
 wounded to them. All night long they jour- 
 neyed back and forth transporting such as 
 could stand the trip to the main evacuation 
 camp at Haditha. 
 
 By daybreak we were once more under way. 
 Under cover of darkness the Arabs had pillaged 
 the abandoned supplies, in some cases killing 
 the wounded Turks. The transport animals 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 115 
 
 of the enemy and their cavalry horses were in 
 very bad shape. They had evidently ))een 
 hard put to it to bring through sufficient fodder 
 during the wet winter months when the roads 
 were so deep in mud as to be all but impassable. 
 Instead of being distant from Ana the eight 
 miles that we had measured on the map, we 
 found that we were seventeen, but we made it 
 without any serious hindrance. The town was 
 most attractive, embowered in gardens which 
 skirt the river's edge for a distance of four or 
 five miles. In addition to the usual pahns and 
 fruit-trees there were great gnarled ohves, the 
 first I had seen in Mesopotamia, as were also 
 the almond-trees. It must be of great antiq- 
 uity, for the prophet Isaiah speaks of it as 
 a place where kings had reigned, but from 
 which, even in his time, the grandeur had de- 
 parted. 
 
 The greater part of the enemy had already 
 abandoned the town, but we captured the Turk- 
 ish governor and a good number of the garrison, 
 and many that had escaped from Haditha. 
 The disaster at Khan Baghdadi had only been 
 reported the afternoon before, as we had of 
 course cut all the telegraph wires, and the 
 governor had not thought it possible we would 
 
116 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 continue the pursuit so far. He had spent 
 most of his hfe in Hungary and had been given 
 this post only a few months previous to our 
 advance. From the prisoners we had taken at 
 Haditha we had extracted conflicting estimates 
 as to the time when Colonel Tennant, the 
 commander of our air forces, had been sent on, 
 and from those we took at Ana we received 
 equally varying accounts. The cars had been 
 ordered to push on in search of the colonel as 
 long as sufficient gasolene remained to bring 
 them back. Captain Todd with the Eighth 
 Battery was in the lead when some thirty miles 
 north of Ana they caught sight of a group of 
 camels surrounded by horsemen. A couple of 
 belts from the machine-guns scattered the 
 escort, and Colonel Tennant and his compan- 
 ion, Major Hobart, were soon safe in the tur- 
 ret of one of the cars. 
 
 From some of our Turkish captives we 
 heard about a large gold convoy which had been 
 sent back from Ana; some said one day, and 
 others two, before our arrival. The supply of 
 fuel that we had brought in the tenders was 
 almost exhausted, so that it would be necessary 
 to procure more in order to continue the pur- 
 suit. Major Thompson, who was in command 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 117 
 
 of the armored-car detachment, instructed me 
 to take all the tenders and go back as far as 
 was necessary to find a petrol dump from which 
 I could draw a thousand gallons. I emptied 
 the trucks and loaded them with such of the 
 wounded as could stand the jolting they were 
 bound to receive because of the speed at which 
 I must travel. I also took a few of the more 
 important prisoners, among them the governor 
 of Ana. He was a cultivated middle-aged 
 man who spoke no Arabic but quite good 
 French. It was mid-afternoon when we started, 
 and I hadn't the most remote idea where I 
 would find a sufiicient quantity of petrol. Dur- 
 ing the run back we were sniped at occasionally 
 by Turks who were still hiding in the hills. A 
 small but determined force could have com- 
 pletely halted the cars in a number of different 
 places where the road wound through narrow 
 rock-crowned gorges, or along ledges cut in 
 the hillside and hemmed in by the river. In 
 such spots the advance of the armored cars 
 could either have been completely checked, or 
 at all events seriously hampered and delayed, 
 merely by rolling great boulders down on top 
 of us. 
 
 When we had retraced our steps for about 
 
118 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 sixty miles I was lucky enough to get wind of 
 an enemy petrol dump that our men had dis- 
 covered. It was a special aeroplane supply 
 and the colonel of the infantry regiment who 
 was guarding it had been instructed to allow 
 none of it to be used for automobiles. He 
 showed his desire to co-operate and his ability 
 to read the spirit rather than the letter of a 
 command by letting me load my tenders. The 
 L. A. M. batteries were well regarded and we 
 everywhere encountered a willingness to meet 
 us more than half-way and aid us in the thou- 
 sand and one points that make so much dif- 
 ference in obtaining results. 
 
 By the time that we had everything in readi- 
 ness for our return run it was long after dark 
 and the men were exhausted. I managed to 
 get some tea, but naturally no sugar or milk. 
 The strong steaming brew served to wash down 
 the scanty supply of cold bully beef. Fortu- 
 nately it was a brilliant starlit night, but even 
 so it was difficult to avoid ditches and washouts, 
 and the road seemed interminable. Not long 
 after we left w^e ran into a couple of armored 
 cars that had been detailed to bring the rescued 
 aviators back, after they had been reoutfitted 
 and supplied as far as our limited resources 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 119 
 
 would permit. During the halt I found that 
 my sergeant had produced from somewhere or 
 other an emergency rum ration which he was 
 issuing. An old-army, experienced sergeant 
 always managed to hold over a reserve from 
 former issues for just such occasions as this, 
 when it would be of inestimable value. I had 
 been driving all day and had the greatest dif- 
 ficulty in keeping awake. Twice I dozed off. 
 Once I awakened just as the car started over 
 the edge of an embankment; the other time 
 a large rock in the road brought me back to 
 the world. It was two o'clock in the morning 
 when we wearily crept into Ana. 
 
 The expedition to capture the gold convoy 
 was to start at four, so after two hours' sleep 
 I bundled into one of the Rolls-Royces and 
 the column swung out into the road. Through 
 the mist loomed the sinister, businesslike out- 
 lines of the armored car ahead of me. Captain 
 Carr of the Thirteenth L. A. M. B.'s* was in 
 command of the expedition. Unless we were 
 in action or in a locality where we momentarily 
 expected to be under fire from rifle or machine- 
 gun, the oflficer commanding the car and his 
 N. C. 0. stood in the well behind the turret, 
 
 * Light Armored Motor Battery. 
 
120 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 steadying themselves with leather loops riveted 
 to its sides. On long runs the tool-boxes on 
 either side of the well formed convenient seats. 
 Wlien the car became engaged the crew would 
 get inside, pulling the steel doors shut. The 
 slits through which the driver and the man 
 next him looked could be made still smaller 
 when the firing was heavy, and the peep-holes 
 at either side and in the rear had slides which 
 could be closed. The largest aperture was that 
 around the tube of the gun. Sphnters of lead 
 came in continuously, and sometimes chance 
 directed a bullet to an opening. One of our 
 drivers was shot straight through the head 
 near Ramadie. The bottom of the car was of 
 wood, and bullets would ricochet up through 
 it, but to have had it made of steel would have 
 added too much weight. The large gasolene- 
 tank behind was usually protected by plating, 
 but even so was fairly vulnerable. A reserve- 
 tank holding ten gallons was built inside the 
 turret. We almost invariably had trouble 
 with the feed-pipes leading from it. During 
 the great heat of the summer the inside of the 
 turret was a veritable fiery furnace, with the 
 pedals so hot that they scorched the feet. 
 
 Forty miles above Ana we came upon a large 
 khan. These road-houses are built at intervals 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 121 
 
 along the main caravan routes. Their plan is 
 simple: four walls with two tiers of rooms or 
 booths built into them, enclosing an open court 
 in which the camels and horses are tethered 
 during the night. The whole is strongly made 
 to resist the inroads of the desert tribesmen. 
 As we drove to the heavy gate, a wild clamor 
 met our ears from a confused jumble of Jewish 
 and Armenian merchants that had taken refuge 
 within. Some of them had left Ana on their 
 way to Aleppo before the news of the fall of 
 Khan Baghdadi had reached the town. Others 
 had been despatched by the Turks when the 
 news of our advance arrived. All had been to 
 a greater or lesser degree plundered by the 
 Arabs. Most of the baggage animals had been 
 run off, and the merchants were powerless to 
 move. The women were weeping and implor- 
 ing help, and the children tumbled about among 
 the confused heaps of merchandise. Some of 
 the Armenians had relations in Baghdad about 
 whom I was able to give them bits of informa- 
 tion. All begged permission to go back to 
 Ana and thence to the capital. We, of course, 
 had no means of supplying them with trans- 
 portation, and any attempt to recapture their 
 lost property was out of the question. 
 
 A few miles on we made out a troop of Arabs 
 
122 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 hurrying inland, a mile or so away from us, 
 across a couple of ravines. They had some of 
 the stolen camels and were laden down with 
 plunder. Two of our cars made a fruitless at- 
 tempt to come to terms with them, but only 
 succeeded in placing a few well-aimed bursts 
 from their machine-guns among them. 
 
 We now began to come up with bands of 
 Turks. We ran across a number of isolated 
 stragglers who had been stripped by the Arabs. 
 A few had been killed. They as a rule sur- 
 rendered without any hesitation. We disarmed 
 them and told them to walk back toward Ana. 
 Several times we had short engagements with 
 Turkish cavalry. As a general thing the ground 
 was so very broken up that it was impossible 
 to manoeuvre. I was riding a good deal of 
 the time in the Ford tender that we had brought 
 along with a few supplies, and when one of the 
 tires blew out I waited behind to replace it. 
 The armored cars had quite a start and we 
 raced along to catch them. In my hurry I 
 failed to notice that they had left the road in 
 pursuit of a troop of cavalry, so when we 
 sighted a large square building of the sort the 
 Turks use as barracks, I made sure that the 
 cars had been there before me. We drove up 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 123 
 
 to the door and I jumped out and shoved it 
 open. In the yard were some infantry and a 
 few cavalry. I had only my stick— my Webley 
 revolver was still in its holster. There was 
 nothing to do but put on a bold front, so I 
 shouted in Arabic to the man I took to be the 
 officer in command, telling him to surrender, 
 and trying to act as if our forces were just out- 
 side. I think he must have been more sur- 
 prised than I was, for he did so immediately, 
 turning over the post to me. Eldridge, the 
 Ford driver, had succeeded in disengaging the 
 rifle that he had strapped in beside him, and 
 we made the rounds under the escort of our 
 captive. 
 
 One wing of the post was used as a hospital, 
 under the charge of an intelligent little Arme- 
 nian. He seemed well informed about the war, 
 and asked the question that was the universal 
 wail of all the Armenians we encountered: 
 "When would Great Britain free their country, 
 and would she make it an independent state .^" 
 There was a definite limit to the number of 
 prisoners we could manage to carry back, but 
 I offered the doctor to include him. His an- 
 swer was to go to his trunk and produce a 
 picture of his wife and little daughter. They 
 
124 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 were, he told me, in Constantinople, and it was 
 now two years since he had had leave, so that 
 as his turn was due, he would wait on the 
 chance of seeing his family. 
 
 When the cars came up we set off again in 
 pursuit of the elusive gold convoy. We could 
 get no accurate information concerning it. 
 Some said it was behind, others ahead. We 
 never ran it down. It may well be that it 
 was concealed in a ravine near the road a 
 few yards from where we passed. Just short 
 of a town called Abu Kemal we caught three 
 Germans. They were in terror when we took 
 them, and afterward said that they had ex- 
 pected to be shot. Under decent treatment 
 they soon became so insolent that they had to 
 be brought up short. 
 
 During the run back to Ana we picked up 
 the more important of our prisoners and took 
 them with us. Twenty-two were all we could 
 manage. I was running one of the big cars. 
 It was always a surprise to see how easy they 
 were to handle in spite of the weight of the 
 armor-plate. We each took great pride in 
 the car in which we generally rode. All had 
 names. In the Fourteenth one section had 
 *' Silver Dart" and "Silver Ghost" and another 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 125 
 
 " Gray Terror" and " Gray Knight." The car 
 in which I rode a great deal of the time met its 
 fate only a few days before the armistice, 
 long after I had gone to France. Two direct 
 hits from an Austrian "eighty-eight" ended its 
 career. 
 
 It was after midnight when we got back to 
 our camp in a palm-garden in Ana. Although 
 we had not succeeded in capturing the gold con- 
 voy, we had brought in a number of valuable 
 prisoners, and among other things I had found 
 some papers belonging to a German political 
 agent whom we had captured. These con- 
 tained much information about the Arab situa- 
 tion, and through them it was all but proved 
 that the German was the direct instigator of 
 the murder of the political officer at Nejef. 
 An amusing sidelight was thrown in the letters 
 addressed by Arab sheiks through this agent 
 to the Kaiser thanking him for the iron crosses 
 they had been awarded. There must have 
 been an underlying grim humor in distributing 
 crosses to the Mohammedan Arabs in recogni- 
 tion of their efforts to withstand the advance 
 into the Holy Land of the Christian invaders. 
 
 On our arrival at Ana we were told that 
 orders had come through that the town be 
 
126 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 evacuated on the following morning. Prep- 
 arations were made to blow up the ammuni- 
 tion dump, which was fortunately concentrated 
 in a series of buildings that joined each other. 
 We warned the inhabitants and advised them 
 to hide in the caves along the hillsides. We 
 ourselves went back to the camp which we 
 had occupied near the bridge the night before 
 entering Ana. During the afternoon Major 
 Edye, a political officer, turned up, travelling 
 alone with an Arab attendant. He pitched his 
 camp, consisting of a saddle and blanket, close 
 beside us. He was an extraordinarily interest- 
 ing man, with a great gift for languages. In the 
 course of a year or so's wandering in Abyssinia 
 he had learned both ancient and modern Abys- 
 sinian. There was a famous German Orientalist 
 with whom he corresponded in the pre-war days. 
 He had mailed him a letter just at the out- 
 break, which, written in ancient Abyssinian, 
 must have been a good deal of a puzzle to the 
 censors. 
 
 The main explosion, taking place at the ap- 
 pointed time, was succeeded by smaller ones, 
 which continued at gradually lengthening inter- 
 vals throughout the night. General Cassels, 
 who had commanded the cavalry brigade so 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 127 
 
 ably throughout the advance, wished to return 
 to Ana on the following morning in order to 
 check up the thoroughness with which the 
 dump had been destroyed. He took an escort 
 of armored cars, and as I was the only one in 
 the batteries who could speak Arabic, my ser- 
 vices were requisitioned. As we approached 
 the town the rattle of the small-arms ammuni- 
 tion sounded like a Fourth of July celebration. 
 The general noticed that I had a kodak and 
 asked me to go out into the dump and take 
 some photographs. There was nothing to do 
 but put on a bold front, but I have spent hap- 
 pier moments than those in which I edged my 
 way gingerly over the smoking heaps to a 
 ruined wall from which I could get a good view 
 for my camera. As I came back a large shell 
 exploded and we hastily moved the cars farther 
 away. 
 
 I went to the mayor's house to find out how 
 the town had fared. He was a solemn old 
 Arab, and showed me the damage done by the 
 shells with an absolutely expressionless face. 
 The houses within a fair radius had been rid- 
 dled, but the natives had taken our warning 
 and no one had been killed. After a cup of 
 coffee in a lovely garden on the river-bank. 
 
128 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 I came back to the cars and we ran on through 
 to Haditha. Here we were to remain for a 
 week or ten days to permit the evacuation of 
 the captured supphes. 
 
 Thus far we had been having good luck with 
 the weather, but it now began to threaten rain. 
 We crawled beneath the cars with our blankets 
 and took such precautions as were possible, 
 but it availed us little when a veritable hurri- 
 cane blew up at midnight. I was washed out 
 from under my car, but before dark I had 
 marked down a deserted hut, and thither I 
 groped my way. Although it was abandoned 
 by the Arabs, living traces of their occupancy 
 remained. Still, even that was preferable to 
 the rain, and the roof proved unexpectedly 
 water-tight. 
 
 All next day the storm continued. The 
 Wadi Hauran, a large ravine reaching back 
 into the desert for a hundred and fifty miles, 
 became a boiling torrent. When we crossed 
 over, it was as dry as a bone. A heavy lorry 
 on which an anti-aircraft gun was mounted 
 had been swirled away and smashed to bits. 
 The ration question had been difficult all along, 
 but now any further supply was temporarily 
 out of the question. 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 129 
 
 Oddly enough, I was the only member of the 
 brigade occupying Haditha who could speak 
 enough Arabic to be of any use, so I was sent 
 to look up the local mayor to see whether there 
 was any food to be purchased. The town is 
 built on a long island equidistant from either 
 bank. We ferried across in barges. The na- 
 tive method was simpler. They inflated goat- 
 skins, removed their clothes, which they had 
 fastened in a bundle on top of their heads, and 
 with one hand on the goatskin they paddled 
 and drifted over. By starting from the head of 
 the island they could reach the shore opposite 
 the down-stream end. The bobbing heads of 
 the dignified old graybeards of the community 
 looked most ludicrous. On landing they would 
 solemnly don their clothes, deflate the skins, 
 and go their way. 
 
 The mayor proved both intelligent and agree- 
 able. The food situation was such that it was 
 obviously impossible for him to offer us any 
 serious help. We held a conclave in the guest- 
 house, sitting cross-legged among the cushions. 
 In the centre a servant roasted coffee-beans on 
 the large shovel-spoon that they use for that 
 purpose. The representative village worthies 
 impressed me greatly. The desert Arabs are 
 
130 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 always held to be vastly superior to their kins- 
 men of the town, and it is undoubtedly true as 
 a general rule ; nevertheless, the elders of Hadi- 
 tha were an unusually fine group of men. We 
 got a few eggs, which were a most desirable 
 luxury after a steady diet of black unsweetened 
 tea and canned beef. We happened to have a 
 sufficient supply of tea to permit us to make an 
 appreciated gift to the village. 
 
 My shoes had collapsed a few days before 
 and I borrowed a pair from a Turk who had no 
 further use for them. These were several sizes 
 too large and fashioned in an oblong shape of 
 mathematical exactness. Even in the motor 
 machine-gun service, there is little that exceeds 
 one's shoes in importance, and I was looking 
 forward with almost equal eagerness to a square 
 meal and a pair of my own shoes. The supply 
 of reading-matter had fallen very low. I had 
 only Disraeli's Tancred, about which I found 
 myself unable to share Lady Burton's feelings, 
 and a French account of a voyage from Bagh- 
 dad to Aleppo in 1808. The author, Louis 
 Jacques Rousseau, a cousin of the great Jean 
 Jacques, belonged to a family of noted Orien- 
 talists. Born in Persia, and married to the 
 daughter of the Dutch consul-general to that 
 
ON THE EUPHRATES 131 
 
 country, he was admirably equipped for the 
 distinguished diplomatic career that lay be- 
 fore him in the East and in northern Africa. 
 His treatises on the archaeological remains that 
 he met with on his many voyages are intel- 
 ligent and thorough. The river towns have 
 changed but little in the last hundred years, 
 and the sketch of Hit might have been made 
 only yesterday. 
 
 Within three days after the rise, the waters 
 of the Wadi Hauran subsided sufficiently for 
 us to cross, and I received orders to return to 
 Baghdad. The rain had brought about a 
 change in the desert since we passed through 
 on our way up. The lines of Paterson, the 
 Australian poet, kept running through my head: 
 
 " For the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes 
 
 in the street, 
 In the sullen line of buildings and the ceaseless tramp 
 
 of feet, 
 But the bush hath moods and changes, as the seasons 
 
 rise and fall. 
 And the men who know the bushland they are loyal 
 
 through it all." 
 
 The formerly arid floor of the desert was car- 
 peted with a soft green, with myriads of ht- 
 tle flowers, all small, but delicately fashioned. 
 
132 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 There were poppies, dwarf daisies, expanses of 
 buttercups, forget-me-nots, and diminutive red 
 flowers whose name I did not know. It started 
 raining again, and we only just succeeded in 
 winning our way through to Baghdad before 
 the road became impassable. 
 
VI 
 
 Baghdad Sketches 
 
VI 
 
 BAGHDAD SKETCHES 
 
 Although never in Baghdad for long at a 
 time, I generally had occasion to spend four 
 or five days there every other month. The 
 life in any city is complex and interesting, but 
 here it was especially so. We were among a 
 totally foreign people, but the ever-felt intangi- 
 ble barrier of color was not present. For many 
 of the opportunities to mingle with the natives 
 I was indebted to Oscar Heizer, the American 
 consul. Mr. Heizer has been twenty-five 
 years in the Levant, the greater part of which 
 time he has spent in the neighborhood of Con- 
 stantinople. The outbreak of the war found 
 him stationed at one of the principal ports of 
 the Black Sea. There he witnessed part of the 
 terrible Armenian massacres, when vast herds 
 of the wretched people were driven inland to 
 perish of starvation by the roadsides. Quiet 
 and unassuming, but ever ready to act with 
 speed and decision, he was a universal favorite 
 with native and foreigner alike. 
 
 135 
 
136 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 With him I used to ferry across the river for 
 tea with the Asadulla Khan, the Persian con- 
 sul. The house consisted of three wings built 
 around a garden. The fourth side was the 
 river-bank. The court was a jungle of flower- 
 ing fruit-trees, alive with birds of different 
 kinds, all singing garrulously without pause. 
 There we would sit sipping sherbet, and crack- 
 ing nuts, among which salted watermelon seeds 
 figured prominently. Coffee and sweets of 
 many and devious kinds were served, with 
 arrack and Scotch whiskey for those who had 
 no religious scruples. The Koran's injunction 
 against strong drink was not very conscien- 
 tiously observed by the majority, and even 
 those who did not drink in public, rarely ab- 
 stained in private. Only the very conservative 
 — and these were more often to be found in the 
 smaller towns — rigorously obeyed the prophet's 
 commands. It was pleasant to smoke in the 
 shade and watch the varied river-craft slipping 
 by. The public bellams plied to and fro, rowed 
 by the swart owners, while against them jostled 
 the gufas — ^built like the coracles of ancient 
 Britain — a round basket coated with pitch. 
 No Anglo-Saxon can see them without think- 
 ing of the nursery rhyme of the "wise men of 
 
BAGHDAD SKETCHES 137 
 
 Gotham who went to sea in a tub." These 
 gufas were some of them twenty-five feet in 
 diameter, and carried surprising loads — some- 
 times sheep and cattle alone — sometimes men 
 and women — often both indiscriminately min- 
 gled. Propelling a gufa was an art in itself, for 
 in the hands of the uninitiated it merely spun 
 around without advancing a foot in the de- 
 sired direction. The natives used long round- 
 bladed paddles, and made good time across 
 the river. Crossing over in one was a demo- 
 cratic affair, especially when the women were 
 returning from market with knots of struggling 
 chickens slung over their shoulders. 
 
 AsaduUa Khan's profile always reminded me 
 of an Inca idol that I once got in Peru. Among 
 his scribes were several men of culture who 
 discoursed most sagely on Persian literature; 
 on Sadi and Hafiz, both of whom they held to 
 be superior to Omar Khayyam. I tried through 
 many channels to secure a manuscript of the 
 "Rubaiyat," but all I succeeded in obtaining 
 was a lithograph copy with no place or date of 
 publication; merely the remark that it had 
 been printed during the cold months. I was 
 told that the writings of Omar Khayyam were 
 regarded as immoral and for that reason were 
 
138 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 not to be found in religious households. My 
 Persian friends would quote at length from 
 Sadi's Gulistan or Rose Garden, and go into 
 raptures over its beauty. 
 
 Below the consulate was a landing-place, and 
 when we were ready to leave we would go down 
 to the river-bank preceded by our servants 
 carrying lanterns. They would call "Abu 
 bellam" until a boat appeared. The term 
 "abu" always amused me. Its literal meaning 
 is "father." In the bazaars a shop-owner was 
 always hailed as "father" of whatever wares 
 he had for sale. I remember one fat old man 
 who sold porous earthenware jars — customers 
 invariably addressed him as "Abu hub" — 
 "Father of water-coolers." 
 
 My best friend among the natives was a 
 Kurdish chief named Hamdi Bey Baban. His 
 father had been captured and taken to Con- 
 stantinople. After living there a number of 
 years in semicaptivity he died — ^by poison it 
 was said. Hamdi was not allowed to return to 
 Kurdistan until after he was a grown man and 
 had almost forgotten his native language. He 
 spoke and read both French and English. 
 Eventually permission was granted him to live 
 
BAGHDAD SKETCHES 139 
 
 in Baghdad as long as he kept out of the Kur- 
 dish hills, so he set off by motor accompanied 
 only by a French chauffeur. Gasolene was sent 
 ahead by camel caravan to be left for him at 
 selected points. The journey was not without 
 incident, for the villagers had never before seen 
 an automobile and regarded it as a devil; 
 often stones were thrown at them, and on one 
 occasion they were mobbed and Hamdi only 
 escaped by driving full speed through the 
 crowd. 
 
 His existence in Baghdad had been subject 
 to sudden upheavals. Once he was arrested 
 and convoyed back to Constantinople; and 
 just before the advance of the British his life 
 was in great danger. Naturally enough he 
 had little love for the Turk and staked every- 
 thing on the final victory of the Alhes. 
 
 He intended writing a book on the history of 
 his family, in which he was much interested. 
 For material he was constantly purchasing 
 books and manuscripts. In the East many 
 well-known histories still exist only in manu- 
 script form, and when a man wishes to build 
 up a library he engages scribes and sends them 
 to the place where a famous manuscript is kept 
 with an order to make a copy. In the same 
 
140 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 way Hamdi Bey had men busied transcribing 
 rare chronicles deaHng with the career of his 
 family — extant in but one or two examples in 
 mosques. He once presented me with a large 
 manuscript in Persian in which his family is 
 mentioned, the mention taking the form of a 
 statement to the effect that seventeen of them 
 had had their heads removed ! 
 
 Next to various small tradesmen with whom 
 I used to gossip, drink coffee, and play dom- 
 inoes, my best Arab friend was Abdul Kader 
 Pasha, a striking old man who had been a 
 faithful ally to the British through thick and 
 thin. The dinners at his house on the river- 
 bank were feasts such as one reads of in an- 
 cient history. Course succeeded course with- 
 out any definite plan; any one of them would 
 have made a large and delicious meal in itself. 
 True to Arab custom, the son of the house 
 never sat down at table with his father, al- 
 though before and after dinner he talked and 
 smoked with us. 
 
 I had a number of good friends among the 
 Armenians. There was not one of them but 
 had some near relation, frequently a parent 
 or a brother or sister, still among the Turks. 
 Sometimes they knew them to be dead, more 
 
A jeweller's hootli in the Imzaar 
 
BAGHDAD SKETCHES 141 
 
 frequently they could only hope that such was 
 the case and there was no further suffering to 
 be endured. Many of these Armenians be- 
 longed to prominent families, numbering among 
 their members men who had held the most 
 important government posts in Constanti- 
 nople. The secretary of the treasury was 
 almost invariably an Armenian, for the race 
 outstrips the Jews in its money touch. 
 
 With one family I dined quite often — the 
 usual interminable Oriental feast varying only 
 from the Arab or Turkish dinners in a few spe- 
 cial national dishes. All, excepting the aged 
 grandmother, spoke French, and the daughters 
 had a thorough grounding in the literature. 
 Such English books as they knew they had 
 read in French translations. The house was 
 attractively furnished, with really beautiful 
 rugs and old silverware. The younger genera- 
 tion played bridge, and the girls were always 
 well dressed in European fashion. WTience the 
 clothes came was a mystery, for nothing could 
 have been brought in since the war, and even 
 in ante-bellum days foreign clothes of that 
 grade could never have been stocked but must 
 have been imported in individual orders. The 
 evenings were thoroughly enjoyable, for everj^- 
 
142 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 thing was in such marked contrast to our 
 every-day life. It must be remembered that 
 these few Armenians were the only women with 
 whom we could talk and laugh in Occidental 
 fashion. 
 
 By far the best-informed and cleverest Arab 
 was Pere Anastase. He was a Catholic, and 
 under the supervision of the Political De- 
 partment edited the local Arab paper. All his 
 life he had worked building up a library — 
 gathering rare books throughout Syria and 
 Mesopotamia. He was himself an author of 
 no small reputation. Just before the British 
 took Baghdad the Germans pillaged his col- 
 lection, sending the more valuable books to 
 Constantinople and Berlin, and turning the 
 rest over to the populace. The soldiers made 
 great bonfires of many — others found their 
 way to the bazaars, where he was later able to 
 repurchase some of them. When talking of the 
 sacking of his house, Pere Anastase would work 
 himself into a white heat of fury and his eyes 
 would flash as he bitterly cursed the vandals 
 who had destroyed his treasures. 
 
 It was in Baghdad that I first ran into Major 
 E. B. Soane, whose Through Mesopotamia and 
 Kurdistan in Disguise is a classic. Soane was 
 
BAGHDAD SKETCHES 143 
 
 born in southern France, his mother French 
 and his father EngHsh. The latter walked 
 across the United States from ocean to ocean 
 in the early forties, so Soane came by his rov- 
 ing, adventurous spirit naturally. When still 
 but little more than a boy he went out to work 
 in the Anglo-Persian Bank, and immediately 
 interested himself in the language and litera- 
 ture of the country. Some of his holidays he 
 spent in the British Museum translating and 
 cataloguing Persian manuscripts. Becoming 
 interested in the Kurds, he spent a number of 
 years among them, learning their languages 
 and customs and joining in their raids. 
 
 As soon as we got a foothold in the Kurdish 
 Hills, Soane was sent up to administer the cap- 
 tured territory. His headquarters were at 
 Khanikin, twenty-five miles from Kizil Robat 
 and but a short distance from the Persian fron- 
 tier. One morning during the time that I was 
 stationed in that district I motored over to see 
 him. It was a glorious day. The cloud effects 
 were most beautiful, towering in billows of 
 white above the snow peaks, against a back- 
 ground of deepest blue. The road wound in 
 and out among the barren foot-hills until sud- 
 denly as I topped a rise I saw right below a 
 
144 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 great clump of palm-trees, with houses showing 
 through here and there — ^the whole divided by 
 a lovely river bestridden by an old seven-arch 
 bridge. I picked my way through the narrow 
 streets, scattering ragged Kurds right and left; 
 past part of the covered bazaar, until I came 
 to a house with a large courtyard, thronged 
 with a motley array of Kurdish Irregulars, 
 armed with every sort of weapon. It was there 
 that Soane administered his stern but prac- 
 tical justice, for he thoroughly understood how 
 to handle these men. 
 
 The district had suffered fearfully, for It had 
 been occupied In turn by Turk and Russian, 
 and then Turk again, before we took It over, 
 and the unfortunate natives had been pillaged 
 and robbed mercilessly. Thousands starved to 
 death. Wlien I was at Deli Abbas ghastly 
 bands of ragged skeletons would come through 
 to us begging food and work. Soane turned a 
 large khan on the outskirts of the town Into a 
 poorhouse, and here he lodged the starving 
 women and children that drifted In from all 
 over Kurdistan. It was a fearful assemblage 
 of scarecrows. As they got better he selected 
 women from among them to whom he turned 
 over the administration of the khan. They 
 
BAGHDAD SKETCHES 145 
 
 divided the unfortunates in gangs, and super- 
 vised the issue of dates on which they were fed. 
 Such as were physically able were employed 
 in cleaning the town. The Kurds are a fine, 
 self-respecting race and it was easy to under- 
 stand Soane's enthusiasm for them. 
 
 In Baghdad you lived either in the cellars 
 or on the housetops. The former were called 
 serdabs. A large chimney, cowled to face the 
 prevailing wind, served for ventilation, and on 
 the hottest days one was cool and comfortable. 
 We slept on the roofs, and often dined there, 
 too. Since the town was the General Head- 
 quarters of the Expeditionary Force, one was 
 always sure to meet many friends. A com- 
 fortable and well-run ofiicers' club was in- 
 stalled, as well as warrant officers' and en- 
 listed men's clubs. 
 
 Occasionally race meetings were planned and 
 the various divisions would send representa- 
 tives. Frank Wooton, the well-known jockey, 
 was a despatch-rider, and usually succeeded in 
 getting leave enough to allow him to ride some 
 general's horses. An Arab race formed part of 
 the programme. Once a wild tribesman who 
 had secured a handsome lead almost lost the 
 
146 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 race by taking off his cloak and waving it 
 round Lis head as he gave ear-piercing shouts 
 of triumph. The Arab riding second was less 
 emotional and attended better to the business 
 in hand, but his horse was not quite good 
 enough to make the difference. 
 
 The scene at the race-course was a gay one. 
 The color was chiefly contributed by the Jew- 
 esses who wore their hooded silk cloaks of 
 lively hue — green or pink or yellow. The only 
 crowd that I saw to vie with it was one which 
 watched the prisoners taken at Ramadie march 
 through the town. Turkish propaganda, cir- 
 culated in the bazaars, gave out that instead 
 of taking the prisoners we claimed, we had in 
 reality suffered a defeat, and it was decided 
 that the sight of the captive Turks would have 
 a salutary effect upon the townsmen. Looking 
 down from a housetop the red fezzes and the 
 gay-colored abas made the crowd look like a 
 vast field of poppies. 
 
 When I was at Samarra an amusing incident 
 took place in connection with a number of 
 officers' wives who were captured at Ramadie. 
 The army commander didn't wish to ship them 
 off to India and Burma with their husbands, 
 so he sent them up to Samarra with instruc- 
 
BAGHDAD SKETCHES 147 
 
 tions that they be returned across the Hnes to 
 the Turks. After many aeroplane messages 
 were exchanged it was agreed that we should 
 leave them at a designated hill and that the 
 Turks would later come for them. Meanwhile 
 we had arranged quarters for them, trying to 
 do everything in a manner that would be in 
 harmony with the Turkish convenances. When 
 the wives were escorted forth to be turned 
 back to their countrymen, they were all weep- 
 ing bitterly. Wliether it was that the Turk 
 in his casual manner decided that one day 
 was as good as another, or whether he felt 
 that he had no particular use for these par- 
 ticular women, we never knew, but at all 
 events twenty-four hours later one of our pa- 
 trols came upon the prisoners still forlornly 
 waiting. We shipped them back to Baghdad. 
 Occasionally I would go to one of the Arab 
 theatres. The plays were generally burlesques, 
 for the Arab has a keen sense of humor and 
 greatly appreciates a joke. Most of the puns 
 were too involved for me to follow, but there 
 was always a certain amount of slap-stick 
 comedy that could be readily understood. 
 Then there was dancing — as a whole monoto- 
 nous and mediocre; but there was one old man 
 
148 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 who was a remarkable performer, and would 
 have been appreciated on any stage in the 
 world. The topical songs invariably amused 
 me — ^they were so universal in spirit. The 
 chorus of one which was a great hit ran: 
 "Haido, haido, rahweni passak!" "I say, I 
 say, show me your pass." There had been 
 much trouble with spies and every one was 
 required to provide himself with a certificate 
 of good conduct and to show it on demand. 
 It was to this that the song referred. 
 
 Captain C. G. Lloyd was my companion on 
 many rambles among the natives. He had 
 been stationed in Burma and India for many 
 years, and was a good Persian scholar. Like 
 every one who has knocked about to any extent 
 among native peoples, his career had not been 
 lacking in incident. I remember on one oc- 
 casion asking him why it was that he never 
 joined me in a cup of coffee when we stopped 
 at a coffee-house. He replied that he had al- 
 ways been wary of coffee since a man with 
 him was poisoned by a cup which was intended 
 for him. 
 
 I always looked forward to a trip to Bagh- 
 dad, for it gave me a chance to mingle in a 
 totally different life from that which daily 
 
BAGHDAD SKETCHES 149 
 
 surrounded me, and temporarily, at least, for- 
 get about the war in which the world was 
 plunged. Still, the morning set to leave in- 
 variably found me equally glad to shove off 
 once more into the great expanses of the 
 desert. 
 
VII 
 
 The Attack on the Persian Front 
 
VII 
 
 THE ATTACK ON THE PERSIAN 
 FRONT 
 
 When I reached headquarters after the at- 
 tack on the Euphrates front, I was expecting 
 to hear that my transfer to France had gone 
 through and receive orders to proceed thither 
 immediately. It had always been my inten- 
 tion to try to join the American army once it 
 began to take a real part in the war, and for 
 some time past I had been casting about in 
 my mind for the best method to carry out my 
 plans. TOien affairs looked so very black for 
 the Allied forces in March and April, 1918, I 
 decided that France was the place where every 
 one, who could by any possibihty manage it, 
 should be. General Gillman, the chief of 
 staff, had on more than one occasion shown 
 himself a good friend, and I determined to 
 once more task his kindness. He said that he 
 thought he could arrange for my transfer to 
 France, and that once there I could work out 
 
 153 
 
154 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 the best way of getting into the American 
 army. 
 
 Everything went well, and I was daily ex- 
 pecting my orders, when Major Thompson, 
 who commanded the brigade of armored cars, 
 sent for me and told me that an advance was 
 being planned on the Kurdish front. Only 
 two batteries were to be taken — the Eighth 
 and the Thirteenth — but he said that he would 
 like to have me go along in command of 
 the supply-train. Of course I jumped at the 
 chance, as the attack promised to be most in- 
 teresting. 
 
 We were told to be ready to move on an 
 hour's notice. For several days the weather 
 held us back. The rain, helped out by the 
 melting snow from the mountains, caused the 
 rivers to rise in flood. The Tigris rose sixteen 
 feet in a night. The lower bridge was broken 
 and washed away. Everything possible was 
 done to reinforce the upper bridge, but it was 
 hourly expected to give way under the strain 
 of the whirling yellow waters. The old Arab 
 rivermen said that they could tell by the color 
 just which of the tributaries were in spate. 
 When they saw or thought they saw a new ad- 
 mixture, they would shake their heads and 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 155 
 
 say: "Such and such a river is now also in 
 flood — ^the Tigris will rise still further." 
 
 On the night of April 24 we at length got 
 our orders and at six o'clock the following 
 morning we set out, prepared to run through 
 to Ain Leilah. The country was indeed 
 changed since I passed through six weeks 
 before. The desert had blossomed. We ran 
 through miles and miles of clover; the sweet 
 smell seemed so "wholesomely American, re- 
 calling home and family, and the meadows of 
 Long Island. The brilliant red poppies were 
 more in keeping with the country; and we 
 passed by Indian cavalry reinforcements with 
 the scarlet flowers stuck in their black hair 
 and twined in the head-stalls of the horses. 
 
 As we approached the hills they looked less 
 bleak — sl soft green clothed the hollows, and 
 the little oasis of Ain Leilah no longer stood out 
 in the same marked contrast as when last I 
 visited it. The roads were in good shape, and 
 we reached camp at four in the afternoon. I 
 took one of the tenders and set off to look up 
 some old friends in the regiments near by. As 
 I passed a group of Arabs that had just fin- 
 ished work on the roads, I noticed that they 
 were playing a game that was new to me. A 
 
156 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 stake was driven into the ground, with a 
 horsehair rope ten or twelve feet in length at- 
 tached to it. An old man had hold of the end 
 of the rope. About the stake were piled some 
 clothes, and the Arabs were standing around 
 in a circle just out of reach of the man with the 
 rope. The object was to dart in and snatch 
 up something from the heap without the old 
 man who was on guard catching you. They 
 were enjoying themselves hugely — the oldest 
 graybeards behaving as if they were children — 
 a very pleasant side of the Arab. 
 
 Our instructions were to be ready to pull 
 out before daybreak. The mission was, as 
 usual, a flanking one. The direct attack was to 
 be delivered on Kara Tepe, and, if that were 
 successful, upon Kifri. We were to intercept 
 the arrival of reinforcements, or cut off the 
 retreat of the garrisons, as the case might be. 
 
 In the early morning hours the country was 
 lovely — rolling grass land "with a hint of hills 
 behind" — smiles of daisies with clusters of 
 blood-red poppies scattered through them — 
 and occasional hollows carpeted with a bril- 
 liant blue flower. In the river courses there 
 were numbers of brilliantly hued birds — the 
 gayest colors I saw in Mesopotamia with the 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 157 
 
 exception of the vivid arsenic-green birds 
 around Ana on the Euphrates. In one place I 
 thought that the ground was covered with red 
 flowers, but a close inspection proved it to be 
 myriads of tiny red insects swarming on the 
 grass stems. 
 
 Column marching is slow and wearisome, and 
 after the sun rose the heat became intense. 
 The dust smothered us; there was not a breath 
 of air to rid us of it for even a moment. The 
 miles seemed interminable. At noon we halted 
 beside a narrow stream laio\\Ti as Oil River — a 
 common name in this part of the country where 
 oil abounds and the water is heavily impreg- 
 nated with it. For drinking it was abomina- 
 ble — and almost spoiled the tea upon which 
 we relied for a staple. A few miles beyond, the 
 engineers found a suitable location to^ throw a 
 bridge across the creek. The main body was 
 halted at a place known as Umr Maidan and 
 we were sent over the bridge to form across 
 the main road leading from Kara Tepe back 
 into the Turkish territory. 
 
 It was nightfall before we had effected a 
 crossing, and we groped our way along until 
 we came upon the road. It was impossible to 
 do very much in the way of selecting a posi- 
 
158 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 tion, but we arranged the cars as best we could. 
 When you were off at large in the desert you 
 were what the army called "Out in the blue," 
 and that was certainly our situation on the 
 night of April 26. We all expected that we 
 would intercept traffic going one way or the 
 other, but the night passed without incident 
 or excitement. 
 
 By four in the morning we were once more 
 feeling our way along through the darkness. 
 As it lightened we came under observation by 
 the Turks, who started in to shell us. We 
 learned from our aeroplanes that Kifri had 
 been evacuated; the garrison was falling back 
 along a road running parallel to the one on 
 which we were, separated by eight or ten miles 
 of broken country. By this time our cavalry 
 had caught up with us. They pushed off across 
 country to intercept the Turks. We attempted 
 to do likewise but it was more difficult, and 
 what with dodging in and out to avoid a ravine 
 here or a hill there, we made little headway. 
 At length we struck a road that led in approxi- 
 mately the direction whither we wished to go. 
 It was already early afternoon before, upon 
 topping a rise, we caught sight of a good-sized 
 body of Turks marching on a road which ran 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 159 
 
 along the base of a range of steep, stony hills. 
 We put on as much speed as was possible, and 
 headed north to try to intercept them. The 
 cavalry were coming from the south, and while 
 we were circling around they charged in upon 
 the Turks. It was a stirring scene. The pow- 
 erful Indians sat their horses with the utmost 
 grace. Their drawn sabres flashed in the sun. 
 As they came to close quarters the turbaned 
 heads bent forward and we could hear the 
 shouts and high-pitched cries of triumph as 
 the riders slashed at the foe. The wounded 
 and dead testified to their skill as swordsmen. 
 The whole sight reminded me more of the bat- 
 tle books I read as a boy than anything I saw 
 in the war. About six hundred prisoners were 
 taken, but many of the Turks escaped to the 
 mountains and lay among the rocks, whence 
 they could snipe at us with impunity. They 
 were a tenacious lot, for all next day when we 
 were using the road below the hills they con- 
 tinued to shoot at us from the places whence 
 it was impossible to dislodge them. 
 
 While the prisoners were being brought in 
 we caught sight of one of our aeroplanes crash- 
 ing. Making our way over to it we found that 
 neither the pilot nor the observer was seri- 
 
160 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 ously hurt. Flying in Mesopotamia was made 
 unusually difficult by the climatic conditions. 
 The planes were designed for work in France 
 and during the summer months the heat and 
 dryness warped the propeller blades and in- 
 deed all the wooden parts. Then, too, the fine 
 dust would get into the machinery when the 
 aviator was taxiing for a start. Many pilots 
 coming out from France with brilliant records 
 met an early and untimely end because they 
 could not realize how very different the con- 
 ditions were. I remember one poor young 
 fellow who set off on a reconnaissance without 
 the food and water he was required by regu- 
 lations to carry. He got lost and ran out of 
 gasolene — ^being forced to land out in the 
 desert. The armored cars went off in search 
 of him, and on the second morning after he 
 had come down they found his body near their 
 bivouac. He had evidently got that far during 
 the night and died of exhaustion and exposure 
 practically within hearing. He was stripped 
 of his clothes; whether this had been done by 
 himself or by the tribesmen was never de- 
 termined. A death of this sort always seems 
 so much sadder than being legitimately killed in 
 combat. The L. A. M. batteries were in close 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 161 
 
 touch with the Royal Flying Corps, for when 
 news came in that a plane was down in the 
 desert or some part of the debatable land, we 
 would be detailed to go out in search of the 
 occupants. A notice printed in Arabic, Per- 
 sian, Turkish, and Kurdish was fastened into 
 each aeroplane informing the reader of the re- 
 ward that would be paid him if the pilot were 
 brought in safety to the British lines. This 
 was done in case a plane got lost and was 
 driven down out of its course among the 
 tribesmen. 
 
 The night of the 27th we bivouacked once 
 more "out in the blue." Dawn found me 
 on my way back to Umr Maidan to lay in 
 a new supply of gasolene. I made a rapid 
 trip and caught up with the armored cars 
 in action in a large swampy plain. The grass 
 was very high and the ground so soft that 
 it was difficult to accomplish anything. Two 
 or three small hills offered vantage-points, but 
 they were not neglected by the Turk, and 
 among those that fell was the colonel of the 
 Twenty-First cavalry — the regiment that had 
 acquitted itself so well in the charge of the day 
 before. 
 
 We were ten miles from Tuz Khurmartli, 
 
162 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 the next important town held by the enemy 
 now that Kifri had been taken. It was thither 
 that the Turks had been retreating when we 
 cut them off. Finding that we were unable to 
 operate effectively where we were, it was de- 
 cided that we should make our way across to 
 the Kifri-Kirkuk road and advance along it to 
 make a frontal attack upon Tuz. Our orders 
 were to proceed to a deserted village known as 
 Kulawand, and wait there for the conunand to 
 advance. When we got to the road we found 
 the hills still occupied by camel-guns and 
 machine-guns. We replied ineffectively, for 
 we had no means of dislodging them, nor did 
 the cavalry when they came up. Kulawand 
 we found to be a fair-sized native village un- 
 occupied save for a single hut full of old women 
 and children. Here we waited until nightfall 
 for the orders that never came. I sat under a 
 ruined wall reading alternatively Camoens* 
 Lusiad and David Harum until darkness fell. 
 During the night some infantry came up, 
 both native and British. They had had stiff 
 marching during the last few days, and were 
 done up, but very cheerful at the prospect of 
 an attack on the morrow. They had some hard 
 fighting ahead of them. The King's Own in 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 163 
 
 particular distinguished itself in taking a 
 stubbornly contested and strongly held hill. 
 
 At dawn we were under way. We had heard 
 reports during the night that the Turks had 
 evacuated Tuz — ^but it was not long before we 
 found that such was not the case. They were 
 still there and showed every evidence of stay- 
 ing. A small village five or six miles to the 
 southwest was also bitterly contested. Our 
 cavalry did some excellent work, capturing 
 small hills held with machine-guns. 
 
 We advanced down the road beside the hills. 
 A mile before reaching Tuz we ran into the 
 Aq Su, a large stream flowing through a nar- 
 row cleft in the hills. Fortunately the river 
 was very low, and there were several places 
 where it was spread out over such a wide bed 
 that it seemed as if it might be possible to get 
 the cars across. I emptied a Ford van and 
 set out to do some prospecting. First I went 
 up-stream, which was toward the mountains, 
 but I could not go far, for there was an ancient 
 fort situated at the mouth of the gorge, and it 
 had not been evacuated. Finding a likely look- 
 ing place a little below, I made a cast and just 
 succeeded in getting through. It was easy to 
 see that it would not be possible for the low- 
 
164 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 swung Rolls to cross under their own power, 
 for the fly-wheel would throw the water up 
 mto the motor. There was nothing to do but 
 send back for artillery horses to pull the ar- 
 mored cars across. 
 
 Meanwhile, as our artillery had practically 
 ceased firing on the town and the Turks 
 seemed to have entirely evacuated it, I thought 
 that I would go up and take over and see 
 whether there had not been some valuable 
 documents left behind. I drove along past 
 some abandoned artillery into the main street. 
 A number of Turkish soldiers came up to sur- 
 render and I told them to have the Reis Bele- 
 dia — the town mayor — report to me. When 
 he came I directed him to take me to the quar- 
 ters of the Turkish commanding general. As 
 we drove through the covered bazaar every- 
 thing was closed. Scarcely anybody was in 
 the streets — but I could see the inhabitants 
 peeping out from behind lattices. It was a 
 good thing to have the old mayor along, for 
 he served as an excellent hostage, and I kept 
 close watch upon him. He brought me to a 
 prosperous, neat-looking house with heavy 
 wooden doors. In response to his summons 
 an old woman came and ushered us into a 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 165 
 
 large, cool room, well furnished and with beau- 
 tiful Kurdish rugs. There we found four young 
 girls, who, it was explained to me, formed the 
 Turkish general's "field harem." He had 
 left in too much of a hurry to take them with 
 him. They were Kurds and Circassians, or 
 Georgians — and the general had shown no lack 
 of taste in his selection ! True to the tradi- 
 tion of the Garden of Eden, this harem proved 
 disastrous to a brother officer who, having 
 heard of my capture, sent me "priority" over 
 the field service lines a ribald message as to 
 its disposition. "Priority" wires are sent only 
 on affairs of the greatest importance, and when 
 I left the country my friend was slated to ex- 
 plain matters before a court martial. There 
 were no papers of any great value to be found, 
 and I told the mayor to take me to the more 
 important ammunition and supply dumps. 
 By the time I had located these some cavalry 
 had come in, and I went back to the river to 
 help get the fighting cars across. 
 
 Once we had these safely over we set out in 
 pursuit of the Turks. The next town of im- 
 portance was a ramshackle mud-walled affair 
 called Tauq, twenty miles bej^ond, on the far 
 side of a river known as the Tauq Chai. The 
 
166 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 leading cars pursued to within sight of the 
 town and came in for a good deal of shelling. 
 
 The Turks we captured were in far poorer 
 shape than those we had recently taken on the 
 Euphrates front. Their shoes were worn out, 
 they were very ragged, and, what was of greater 
 significance, they were badly nourished. The 
 length of their line of communications had 
 evidently severely strained them. Supplies had 
 to come overland all the way from Nisibin, 
 which is more than a hundred miles beyond Mo- 
 sul. The broken country made the transporta- 
 tion a difficult problem to solve. It was a mir- 
 acle that they had the morale to fight as they 
 did under such disadvantageous conditions. 
 
 Here, as throughout the campaign, it was a 
 continual source of pride to see the way in 
 which our soldiers behaved to the natives. I 
 never heard of a case in which man, woman, or 
 child was wrongfully treated. Minor offenses 
 were sometimes committed, but these were 
 quickly righted. No doubt there were isolated 
 instances of wrong-doing, for in such a large 
 army there are bound to be degenerate in- 
 dividuals from whose conduct it is unfair to 
 judge the whole. 
 
 That night we encamped in the outskirts of 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 167 
 
 Tuz, not far from the Turkish aerodrome. 
 Next morning one of the batteries was ordered 
 to reconnoitre as far as the town — pursuing a 
 different route than that taken on the previous 
 day. The commanding officer asked me to go 
 along because of my knowledge of Arabic. 
 The road followed the telegraph-lines, and part 
 of the time that was the only way in which 
 we could distinguish it from the surrounding 
 country. Of course, the map was hopelessly 
 incorrect. The villages were not even rightly 
 named. A great deal of reconnoitring was 
 called for, and in one village we had to knock 
 the corner off a mud house to enable us to make 
 a sharp right-angle turn. The natives were in 
 pitiful condition. The Turks had not only 
 taken all their crops, but even the grain that 
 should be reserved to sow for the following 
 year. The sheep had been killed in the lamb- 
 ing season, so the flocks were sadly depleted. 
 Such standing grain as there was left looked 
 flourishing. The wheat waved above the cars. 
 As we came out of a deep, broad ravine that 
 had caused us much delay and difficulty, we 
 caught sight of an attractive town situated on 
 a steep, flat-topped hill. Upon drawing near, 
 a fine-looking, white-bearded Arab rode up on 
 
168 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 a small gray mare. He said that he was the 
 head man of the town ; that he hated the Turks, 
 and would like to be of any assistance possible 
 to us. I asked him if the enemy had evacuated 
 Tauq. He replied that they had. I then asked 
 him if he were positive about it. He offered 
 to accompany us to prove it. The trail was 
 so bad that we could not go fast, and he rode 
 along beside us at a hand-gallop. 
 
 When we came to the river in front of the 
 town we found that it was impossible to get 
 the armored cars across. The Turks had evi- 
 dently fallen back, but not far, for they were 
 dropping in shells with regularity. Our Arab 
 friend told us that there was a bridge six 
 miles up-stream, but it was too late for us to 
 attempt it, and we turned back to Tuz after 
 arranging with Sheikh Muttar to meet us in 
 the morning. 
 
 Next day we found him waiting for us as 
 he had promised. With him were two hand- 
 some Kurds. One of them had his wife perched 
 behind him on the horse's crupper. Together 
 they undertook to guide us up to the bridge. 
 It was invariably difficult to find out from 
 natives whether or not a road was passable 
 for motor-cars. They were accustomed to 
 
The Kurd and his wife 
 
 Sheik Muttar and the two Kurds 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 169 
 
 think only in terms of horses or men, and could 
 not realize that a bad washout might be im- 
 passable for automobiles. Curiously enough, 
 even those natives whom we had taken along 
 with us on several reconnaissances as guides 
 could not be trusted to give an opinion as to 
 the feasibility of a proposed route. We ex- 
 perienced no little trouble in following our 
 guides to the bridge, although we afterward 
 discovered a good road that cut off from the 
 main trail about half-way between Tuz and 
 Tauq. 
 
 WTien we reached the bridge we found it to 
 be a solid, well-built affair of recent construc- 
 tion. The retreating Turks had tried to blow 
 it up, but the most vital charges had failed to 
 go off, so the damage done would not be suffi- 
 ciently serious to stop our passage, after six 
 or seven hours' preliminary work. We im- 
 mediately sent back for the engineers, and put 
 in the time while waiting by taking a mucli- 
 needed bath in the rapids beneath one of the 
 side arches. Every one who has wandered 
 about in the waste places of the world can re- 
 call certain swims that will always stand out 
 in his memory. Perhaps they have been after 
 a long and arduous hunt — ^perhaps at the end 
 
170 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 of a weary march. Our plunge in the Tauq 
 Chai took its place among these. 
 
 In the late afternoon we drove back to Tuz. 
 Our camp there was anything but cheerful, 
 for swarms of starving townsfolk hovered on 
 the outskirts ready to pounce on any refuse 
 that the men threw away. Discarded tin cans 
 were cleaned out until the insides shone like 
 mirrors. The men gave away everything they 
 could possibly spare from their rations. As 
 the news spread, the starving mountain Kurds 
 began straggling in; and the gruesome band 
 made one glad to leave camp early and return 
 after dark. Our line of communication was so 
 extended that it was impossible to attempt any 
 relief work. 
 
 The following morning we crossed over the 
 bridge with little trouble, but ran into a lot of 
 difficulty when we tried to make our way dowTi 
 to the town. A couple of miles above the main 
 town there is a small settlement grouped on a 
 hill around the mosque of Zain El Abidin. 
 The "mutabelli," or keeper of the shrine, is 
 an important personage in the community, so 
 when he appeared riding a richly caparisoned 
 stallion and offered to accompany us to the 
 town, we welcomed the opportunity of going 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 171 
 
 in under such good auspices. We decided to 
 take Seyid Mustapha, for that was his name, in 
 one of the Ford vans with us. It was compara- 
 tively easy to get the Hght car up over the pre- 
 cipitous, rocky trail; and eventually one of the 
 fighting cars succeeded in following. I was 
 driving, with Mustapha beside me. In front 
 of us on a white horse galloped the Seyid's 
 attendant singing and shouting and proclaim- 
 ing our arrival. We stopped at Mustapha' s 
 house for a cup of coffee and a discussion of 
 events. The information which we secured 
 from him afterward proved unusually correct. 
 I took him on with us to the town so that he 
 could identify the head man and see that we 
 got hold of the right people. Our reception 
 was by no means cordial, although after we 
 had talked a little and explained what we were 
 after, the mayor became cheerful and expan- 
 sive. He had a jovial, rotund face, covered 
 in large part by a bushy beard, and would 
 have done excellently as a model for Silenus. 
 In the town were a handful of Turkish strag- 
 glers — among them a stalwart Greek who 
 spoke a little English. He said that he had 
 been impressed into service by the Turks and 
 was most anxious to join our forces. 
 
172 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 We found large stores of ammunition and 
 other supplies, among them a wireless set. 
 Wliat interested us most, I am afraid, was the 
 quantity of chickens that we saw strutting 
 about. A few of them and a good supply of 
 eggs found their way to the automobiles in 
 short order. We were always very particular 
 about paying for whatever we took, and seeing 
 that the men did likewise; our reputation 
 went before us, and the native, as a rule, took 
 it for granted that we would pay. It was up 
 to the officers to see that the prices were not 
 exorbitant. We always used Indian currency 
 — ^the rupee and the anna. In normal times 
 a rupee is about a third of a dollar. Through- 
 out the occupied area Turkish currency also 
 circulated, but the native invariably preferred 
 to be paid in Indian. Curiously enough, even 
 on entering towns like Tauq, we found the 
 inhabitants eager for pajrment in rupees. I 
 was told that in the money market in Bagh- 
 dad a British advance would be heralded by a 
 slump in Turkish exchange. Paper rupees 
 were almost everywhere as readily accepted 
 as silver, but paper liras and piasters were 
 soon of so little value that they were no longer 
 in circulation. 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 173 
 
 When we got back to camp I found a wire 
 informing me that I had been transferred to 
 the American army, and ordering me to re- 
 port at once to Baghdad to be sent to France. 
 Major Thompson asked me if I would delay 
 my return until the end of the advance. It 
 was rumored that we would continue to push 
 on and would attack Kirkuk. Many felt that 
 the difficulty that was already being experi- 
 enced in rationing us would preclude our 
 thrusting farther. Still, I made up my mind 
 that as long as the major wished it and would 
 wire for permission I would stay a few days 
 longer on the chance of the attack continuing. 
 
 On the morning of the 3d we moved camp 
 to the far side of the Tauq Chai bridge. When 
 the tenders were unloaded I started back to 
 bring up a supply of gasolene, with the purpose 
 of making a dump in case we were called upon 
 for a further advance. I was told that the 
 nearest supply from which I could draw was 
 at Umr Maidan; and the prospect of run- 
 ning back, a distance of seventy miles, was not 
 cheerful. VHien I got as far as Tuz I found 
 a friend in charge of the dump there, and he 
 let me draw what I wanted, so I turned back 
 to try to get to the bridge by dark. One car 
 
174 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 after another got in trouble; first it was a 
 puncture, then it was a tricky carburetor that 
 refused to be put to rights; towing-ropes were 
 called into requisition, but the best had been 
 left behind, and those we had were rotted, 
 and broke on every hill. Lastly a broken axle 
 put one of the tenders definitely out of com- 
 mission, and, of course, I had to wait behind 
 with it. To add to everything, a veritable 
 hurricane set in, with thunder and lightning 
 and torrents of rain. The wind blew so hard 
 that I thought the car would be toppled over. 
 What made us more gloomy than anything else 
 was the thought of all the dry river courses 
 that would be roaring floods by morning, and 
 probably hold up the ration supply indef- 
 initely. 
 
 Two days later the orders for which we had 
 been waiting came through. We were to 
 march upon a town called Taza Khurmatli, 
 lying fifteen miles beyond Tauq and ten short 
 of Kirkuk. If we met with no opposition there 
 we were to push straight on. From all we 
 could hear Taza was occupied only by cavalry, 
 which would probably fall back without con- 
 testing our advance. The cars had been out 
 on reconnaissance near the town for the last 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 175 
 
 two days, and had come in for artillery and 
 machine-gun fire; but it was believed that the 
 Turks had everything ready to withdraw their 
 guns on our approach. 
 
 In the gray light that preceded dawTi we 
 saw shadowy columns of infantry and artillery 
 and cavalry passing by our camp. The cos- 
 tumes of the different regiments made a break 
 in the drab monotony. The Mesopotamian 
 Expeditionary Force was composed of varied 
 components. Steel helmets could be worn only 
 in winter. In many of the native regiments 
 the British officers wore tasselled pugrees, 
 and long tunics that were really shirts, and an 
 adaption of the native custom of wearing the 
 shirt-tails outside the trousers. The Gurkhas 
 were supplied with pith helmets. It was gen- 
 erally claimed that this was unnecessary, but 
 the authorities felt that coming from a cold, 
 high climate they would be as much affected 
 by the Mesopotamian sun as were Europeans. 
 The presence of the Indian troops brought 
 about unusual additions to the dry "General 
 Routine Orders" issued by general head- 
 quarters. One of them, referring to a religious 
 festival of the Sikhs, ran: 
 
 *'The following cable message received from 
 
176 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 Sunder Signh Hagetha, Amritsar, addressed to 
 Sikhs in Mesopotamian force: 
 
 "To our most Dear Brothers now serving 
 the Benign King-Emperor oversea, the chief 
 Khalsa Dewan tenders hearty and sincere 
 greetings on the auspicious Gurpurb of First 
 Guru. You are upholding the name and fame 
 of Gurupurb. Our hearts are with you and 
 our prayers are that Satguru and Akalpurkh 
 may ever be with you and lead you to victory 
 and return home safe, after vanquishing the 
 King-Emperor's foes, with honor and flying 
 colors." 
 
 The British Empire was well and loyally 
 served by her Indian subjects, and by none 
 more faithfully than the Sikhs. 
 
 We let the column get well started before we 
 shoved off in our cars. The trail was wide 
 enough to pass without interfering; and long 
 before we were in sight of Taza we had taken 
 our place ahead. As was foreseen, the enemy 
 evacuated the town with scarce a show of re- 
 sistance. I set off to interview the local head 
 man. In the spring all the upper Mesopotamian 
 towns are inundated by flocks of storks, but 
 I have never seen them in greater force than 
 in Taza. On almost every housetop were a 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 177 
 
 couple, throwing their heads back and clatter- 
 ing their beaks in the odd way that gives 
 them their onomatopoetic Arabic name of 
 Lak-Lak. It sounded like the rattle of ma- 
 chine-guns; so much so that on entering the 
 village, for the first second I thought that the 
 Turks were opening up on us. No native will 
 molest a stork; to do so is considered to the 
 last degree inauspicious. 
 
 There was but little w^ater in the river run- 
 ning by Taza, and we managed to get the cars 
 through under their own power. A few miles 
 farther on lay a broad watercourse, dry in the 
 main, but with the centre channel too deep to 
 negotiate, so there was nothing to be done 
 without the help of the artillery horses. The 
 Turks were shelling the vicinity of the cross- 
 ing, so we drew back a short distance and sent 
 word that we were held ud waiting for assis- 
 tance to get us over. 
 
 Once we had reached the far side we set out 
 to pick our way round Kirkuk to get astride 
 the road leading thence to Altun Kupri. This 
 is the main route from Baghdad to Mosul, the 
 chief city on the upper Tigris, across the river 
 from the ruins of Nineveh. It was a difiicult 
 task finding a way practicable for the cars, as 
 
178 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 the ground was still soft from the recent rains. 
 It was impossible to keep defiladed from Turk- 
 ish observation, but we did not supply them 
 with much in the way of a target. At length 
 we got round to the road, and started to ad- 
 vance down it to Kirkuk. The town, in com- 
 mon with so many others in that part of the 
 country, is built on a hill. The Hamawand 
 Kurds are inveterate raiders, and good forti- 
 fications are needed to withstand them. As we 
 came out upon the road we caught sight of our 
 cavalry preparing to attack. The Turks were 
 putting up a stout resistance, with darkness 
 fast coming to their aid. After approaching 
 close to the town, we were ordered to return to 
 a deserted village for the night, prepared to go 
 through in the early morning. 
 
 The co-ordinates of the village were given, 
 and we easily found it on the map; but it was 
 quite another proposition to locate it physically. 
 To add to our diflficulties, the sky clouded 
 over and pitchy blackness settled down. It 
 soon started to rain, so we felt that the best we 
 could do was select as likely a spot as came to 
 hand and wait for morning. I made up my 
 mind that the front seat of a van, uncomfort- 
 able and cramped as it was, would prove the 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 179 
 
 best bed for the night. My estimate was 
 correct, for at midnight the hght drizzle, that 
 was scarcely more than a Scotch mist, turned 
 into a wild, torrential downpour that all but 
 washed away my companions. The water- 
 proof flap that I had rigged withstood the on- 
 slaughts of wind and rain in a fashion that 
 was as gratifying as it was unexpected. The 
 vivid flashes of lightning showed the little dry 
 ravine beside us converted into a roaring, 
 swirling torrent. The water was rushing past 
 beneath the cars, half-way up to their hubs. 
 A large field hospital had been set up close 
 to the banks of the stream at Taza. We after- 
 ward heard that the river had risen so rapidly 
 that many of the tents and a few ambulances 
 were washed away. 
 
 By morning it had settled down into a 
 steady, businesslike downpour. We found 
 that we w^ere inextricably caught in among 
 some low hills. There was not the slightest 
 chance of moving the fighting cars; they were 
 bogged down to the axle. There was no al- 
 ternative other than to wait until the rain 
 stopped and the mud dried. Fortunately our 
 emergency rations were still untouched. 
 
 Our infantry went over at dawn, and won 
 
180 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 through into the town. If it had not been for 
 the rain we would have made some important 
 captures. As it was, the Turks destroyed the 
 bridge across the Hasa Su and retreated to 
 Altun Kupri by the road on the farther bank. 
 From a hill near by we watched everything, 
 powerless to help in any way. 
 
 At noon the sky unexpectedly cleared and 
 the sun came out. We unloaded a Ford van, 
 and with much pushing and no little spade 
 work managed to get it down to a road running 
 in the direction of Kirkuk. We found the 
 surface equal to the light car, and slowly made 
 our way to the outskirts of the town, with oc- 
 casional halts where digging and shoving were 
 required. We satisfied ourselves that, given a 
 little sun, we could bring the armored cars out 
 of their bog and through to the town. 
 
 Next morning, in spite of the fact that more 
 rain had fallen during the night, I set to work 
 on my tenders, and at length succeeded in 
 putting them all in Kirkuk. We were billeted 
 in the citadel, a finely built, substantial affair, 
 with a courtyard that we could turn into a 
 good garage. The Turks had left in great haste, 
 and, although they had attempted a whole- 
 sale destruction of everything that they could 
 

ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 181 
 
 not take, they had been only partially success- 
 ful. In my room I found a quantity of pam- 
 phlets describing the American army — ^with dia- 
 grams of insignia, and pictures of fully equipped 
 soldiers of the different branches of the service. 
 There was also a map of the United States 
 showing the population by States. The text 
 was, of course, in Turkish and the printing 
 excellently done. WTiat the purpose might be 
 I could not make out. 
 
 The wherefore of another booklet was more 
 obvious. It was an illustrated account of al- 
 leged British atrocities. Most of the pictures 
 purported to have been taken in the Sudan, 
 and showed decapitated negroes. Some I am 
 convinced were pictures of the Armenian 
 massacres that the Turks had themselves taken 
 and in a thrifty moment put to this useful pur- 
 pose. This pamphlet was printed at the press 
 in Kirkuk. 
 
 There were a number of excellent buildings 
 —mainly workshops and armories, but the best 
 was the hospital. The long corridors and deep 
 windows of the wards looked very cool. An 
 up-to-date impression was given by the in- 
 dividual patient charts, with the headings for 
 the different diagnoses printed in Turkish and 
 
182 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 French. The doctors were mainly Armenians. 
 The occupants were all suffering from mal- 
 nutrition, and there was a great deal of starva- 
 tion in the town. 
 
 I did not wish to return to Baghdad until I 
 could be certain that we were not going to ad- 
 vance upon Altun Kupri. The engineers 
 patched up the bridge, and we took the cars 
 over to the other side and went off on a recon- 
 naissance to ascertain how strongly the town 
 was being held. The long bridge from which 
 it gets its name could easily be destroyed, and 
 crossing over the river would be no light mat- 
 ter. The surrounding mountains limited the 
 avenue of attack. Altogether it would not be 
 an easy nut to crack, and the Turks had evi- 
 dently determined on a stand. What decided 
 the army commander not to make any further 
 attempt to advance was most probably the 
 great length of the line of communications, 
 and the recent floods had made worse con- 
 ditions which were bad enough at the best. 
 The ration supply had fallen very low, and it 
 seemed impossible to hold even Kirkuk unless 
 the rail-head could be advanced materially. 
 
 I put in all my odd moments wandering about 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 183 
 
 the bazaars. The day after the fall the mer- 
 chants opened their booths and transacted 
 business as usual. The population was com- 
 posed of many races, chiefly Turcoman, Kurd, 
 and Arab. There were also Armenians, Chal- 
 deans, Syrians, and Jews. The latter were ex- 
 ceedingly prosperous. Arabic and Kurdish 
 and Turkish were all three spoken. Kirkuk 
 is of very ancient origin — ^but of its early his- 
 tory little is known. The natives point out a 
 mound which they claim to be Daniel's tomb. 
 Two others are showTi as belonging to Shad- 
 rach and Meshech; that of the third of the 
 famous trio has been lost. There are many 
 artificial hills in the neighborhood, and doubt- 
 less in course of time it will prove a fruitful 
 hunting-ground for archaeologists. As far as 
 I could learn no serious excavating has hitherto 
 been undertaken in the vicinity. 
 
 The bazaars were well filled with goods of 
 every sort. I picked up one or two excellent 
 rugs for very little, and a few odds and ends, 
 dating from Seleucid times, that had been un- 
 earthed by Arab laborers in their gardens or 
 brick-kilns. There were some truck-gardens 
 in the outskirts, and we traded fresh vegetables 
 for some of our issue rations. There are few 
 
184 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 greater luxuries when one has been Hving on 
 canned foods for a long time. I saw several 
 ibex heads nailed up over the doors of houses. 
 The owners told me that they were to be found 
 in the near-by mountains, but were not plentiful. 
 There is little large game left in Mesopotamia, 
 and that mainly in the mountains. I once 
 saw a striped hyena. It is a nocturnal animal, 
 and they may be common, although I never 
 came across but the one, which I caught sight 
 of slinking among the ruins of Istabulat, south 
 of Samarra, one evening when I was riding back 
 to camp. Gazelle were fairly numerous, and 
 we occasionally shot one for venison. It was 
 on the plains between Kizil Robat and Kara 
 Tepe that I saw the largest bands. Judging 
 from ancient bas-reliefs lions must at one time 
 have been very plentiful. In the forties of the 
 last century Sir Henry Layard speaks of com- 
 ing across them frequently in the hill country; 
 and later still, in the early eighties, a fellow 
 countryman, Mr. Fogg, in his Land of the 
 Arabian Nights, mentions that the English 
 captain of a river steamer had recently killed 
 four lions, shooting from the deck of his boat. 
 Rousseau speaks of meeting, near Hit, a man 
 who had been badly mauled by a lion, and 
 
ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 185 
 
 was going to town to have his wounds cared 
 for. Leopards and bears are to be met with 
 in the higher mountain regions, and wild boars 
 are common in many districts. They inhabit 
 the thickets along the river-banks, in country 
 that would permit of much sound sport in 
 the shape of pig-sticking. 
 
 Game-birds are found in abundance; both 
 greater and lesser bustard; black and gray 
 partridges, quail, geese, duck, and snipe. A 
 week's leave could be made provide good 
 shooting and a welcome addition to the usual 
 fare when the wanderer returned. Every sort 
 of shotgun was requisitioned, from antiquated 
 muzzle-loaders bought in the bazaar to the 
 most modern creations of Purdy sent out from 
 India by parcel-post. 
 
 After waiting a few days further, to be cer- 
 tain that an attack would not be unexpectedly 
 ordered, I set out on my return trip to Bagh- 
 dad. The river at Taza was still up, but I bor- 
 rowed six mules from an accommodating gal- 
 loping ambulance, and pulled the car across. 
 We went by way of Kifri, a clean, stone-built 
 town that we found all but empty. The food 
 situation had become so critical that the in- 
 habitants had drifted ofiF, some to our lines, 
 
186 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 others to Persia, and still others to Kirkuk and 
 Mosul. Near Kifri are some coal-mines about 
 which we had heard much. It is the only place 
 in the country where coal is worked, and we 
 were hoping that we might put it to good use. 
 Our experts, however, reported that it was 
 of very poor quality and worth practically 
 nothing. 
 
VIII 
 
 Back Through Palestine 
 
VIII 
 
 BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 
 
 Several days later I embarked at Baghdad 
 on one of the river boats. I took Yusuf with 
 me to Busra to put me aboard the transport 
 for Egypt. It was the first time he had ever 
 been that far down-stream, and he showed a 
 fine contempt for everything he saw, compar- 
 ing it in most disparaging terms to his own 
 desolate native town of Samarra. The cheap- 
 ness, variety, and plenty of the food in the 
 bazaars of Busra were the only things that he 
 allow^ed in any way to impress him. 
 
 I w^as fortunate enough to run into some 
 old friends, and through one of them met 
 General Sutton, who most kindly and oppor- 
 tunely rescued me from the dreary "Rest- 
 Camp" and took me to his house. Wliile I 
 was waiting for a chance to get a place on a 
 transport, he one morning asked me to go with 
 him to Zobeir, where he was to dedicate a hos- 
 pital. Zobeir is a desert town of ten thousand 
 or so inhabitants, situated fifteen miles inland 
 
 189 
 
190 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 from Busra. The climate is supposed to be 
 more healthful, and many of the rich and im- 
 portant residents of the river town have houses 
 there to which they retire during the summer 
 months. To an outsider any comparison 
 would seem only a refinement of degrees of 
 suffocation. The heat of all the coastal towns 
 of the Persian Gulf is terrific. 
 
 Zobeir is a desert town, with its ideals and 
 feelings true to the inheritance of the tribes- 
 men. It is a market for the caravans of central 
 Arabia. A good idea of the Turkish feeling to- 
 ward it may be gathered from the fact that 
 the inhabitants were exempt from military ser- 
 vice. This was a clear admission on the part 
 of the Turk that he could not cope with the 
 situation, and thought it wisest not to attempt 
 something which he had no hope of putting 
 through. It was, therefore, a great triumph 
 for the British and a sure wedge into the con- 
 fidence of the desert folk when the hospital 
 was opened, for any people that can intro- 
 duce so marked an innovation among the hide- 
 bound desert communities must have won 
 their confidence and respect in a remarkable de- 
 gree. Ibrahim, the hereditary Sheikh of Zobeir, 
 himself contributed largely to the fund for 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 191 
 
 the endowment. It was arranged that Doctor 
 Borrie, who among his other duties ran the 
 civil hospital at Busra, should periodically in- 
 clude Zobeir in his rounds. The Sheikh showed 
 us over the building. It was cool, comfort- 
 able, and very sanitary. The Indian who was 
 to be resident physician had every appear- 
 ance of intelligence and proficiency. Old 
 Ibrahim gave us a large banquet of the or- 
 thodox type. There was a sheep roasted whole, 
 and dishes of every sort of meat and vegetable 
 marshalled upon the table, which fairly groaned 
 beneath their weight. We had innumerable 
 speeches. General Sutton made an excellent 
 address, which an interpreter translated into 
 Arabic. Our Arabian hosts were long-winded, 
 and the recognized local orator was so classical 
 in his phrases and forms and tenses that it was 
 impossible to do more than get the general 
 drift of what he said. Luckily I had in my 
 pocket a copy of the Lusiads, which I surrep- 
 titiously read when the speeches became hope- 
 lessly long drawn out. 
 
 I was allotted space on a British India/boat, 
 the Torrilla, that was to take to Egypt afield 
 artillery regiment of the Third Division. As 
 we dropped down-stream and I watched a 
 
192 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 disconsolate Yusuf standing on the dock, I 
 felt that another chapter had closed — ^an in- 
 teresting one at that. I was not left long to 
 muse on what the next would bring forth be- 
 fore there was a cry of "fire"; and from where 
 I was standing in the smoking-room I could 
 see, through the open hatchways, the soldiers 
 hurrying about below decks. As the ship was 
 well ballasted with ammunition, anything that 
 happened would take place quickly, and only 
 those on the spot could hope to control events, 
 so I stayed where I was. A few minutes later 
 the fire was reported out. 
 
 The long two weeks' trip through the Per- 
 sian Gulf and round to the Red Sea was monot- 
 onously peaceful. Being "unattached," I had 
 no regular duties. Occasionally I attended 
 "stables," and wandered around the horse 
 lines. The great heat below decks had far less 
 effect upon the horses than would be supposed. 
 Of course, they were well cared for, and many 
 were seasoned veterans that had taken more 
 than one long sea voyage. If I am not mis- 
 taken, only one was lost on the trip. 
 
 Most of the time I lay back in my rhoorkhee 
 chair and read whatever I could find in the 
 ship's library. The wireless broke down a few 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 193 
 
 days after we left Busra, so we got no news 
 whatever of the outer world, and soon ceased 
 to speculate on what might be happening in 
 France. 
 
 At length, on the morning of June 4, we 
 dropped anchor in Suez harbor. We had 
 hoped that the Torrilla would run through the 
 canal to Port Said, but the disembarkation 
 officer told us that we were all to be unloaded 
 at Suez and proceed by rail. When I reached 
 Alexandria I learned that a convoy had just 
 sailed and there would not be another for two 
 weeks at earliest. Sir Reginald Wingate, who 
 had long been a family friend, was the British 
 High Commissioner. Lady Wingate and he 
 with the utmost hospitality insisted on my 
 moving out to the residency to w^ait for my 
 sailing. 
 
 When I left for Mesopotamia Lord Derby 
 had given me a letter to General Allenby 
 w^hich I had never had an opportunity to pre- 
 sent. Sir Reginald suggested that I could not 
 do better than make use of this enforced delay 
 by going up to Palestine. The railway was 
 already running to Jerusalem and you could 
 go straight through from Cairo with but one 
 change. At Kantara you crossed the canal 
 
194 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 and entered the military zone. Leaving there 
 at half past eleven in the evening the train 
 reached Ludd, which was general headquar- 
 ters, at seven the following morning. 
 
 Every one that I had ever met who knew 
 General Allenby was wildly enthusiastic about 
 him, and you had only to be with him a few 
 minutes to realize how thoroughly justified 
 their enthusiasm was. He represented the 
 very highest type of the British soldier, and 
 more need not be said. On the morning on 
 which I arrived an attack was in progress and 
 we could hear the drumming of the guns. 
 The commander-in-chief placed a car at my 
 disposal and I went around visiting old friends 
 that I had made in Mesopotamia or still 
 earlier in England, before the war. Among the 
 latter was Colonel Ronald Storrs, the military 
 governor of Jerusalem. With him I spent sev- 
 eral days. Life in the Holy City seemed but 
 little changed by the war. There was an in- 
 teresting innovation in the Church of the Na- 
 tivity at Bethlehem. The different Christian 
 religious sects, in particular the Greek and 
 Latin Catholics, were prone to come to blows 
 in the church, and bloodshed and death had 
 more than once been the result. To obviate 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 195 
 
 this it had been the custom to have a regular 
 reHef of Turkish soldiers stationed in the 
 church. Their place was now taken by British 
 and French and Italians. Each nationality in 
 rotation furnished the guard for a day. At 
 the festival of the distribution of the Sacred 
 Fire from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 
 Jerusalem ,there were usually a number of 
 accidents caused by the anxiety to reach the 
 portal whence the fire was given out. The 
 commander-in-chief particularly complimented 
 Colonel Storrs upon the orderly way in which 
 this ceremony was conducted under his regime. 
 The population of Jerusalem is exceedingly 
 mixed — and the percentage of fanatics is of 
 course disproportionately large. There are 
 many groups that have been gathered together 
 and brought out to the Holy Land with dis- 
 tinctly unusual purposes. One such always 
 had an empty seat at their table and con- 
 fidently expected that Christ would some day 
 appear to occupy it. The long-haired Russian 
 and Polish Jews with their felt hats and shabby 
 frock coats were to be met with everywhere. 
 In the street where the Jews meet to lament 
 the departed glory of Jerusalem an incongru- 
 ous and ludicrous element was added by a few 
 
196 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 Jews, their bowed heads covered with ancient 
 derby hats, wailing with undefeated zeal. 
 
 It is a mournful fact that the one really fine 
 building in Jerusalem should be the Mosque 
 of Omar — the famous "Dome of the Rock." 
 This is built on the legendary site of the temple 
 of Solomon, and the mosaics lining the inside 
 of the dome are the most beautiful I have ever 
 seen. The simplicity is what is really most 
 felt, doubly so because the Christian holy 
 places are garish and tawdry, with tin-foil 
 and flowers and ornate carving. It is to be 
 hoped that the Christians will some day unite 
 and clean out all the dreary offerings and 
 knickknacks that clutter the Church of the 
 Holy Sepulchre. Moslems hold the Mosque 
 of Omar second in sanctity only to the great 
 mosque in the holy city of Mecca. It is curi- 
 ous, therefore, that they should not object to 
 Christians entering it. Mohammedans enter 
 barefoot, but we fastened large yellow slippers 
 over our shoes, and that was regarded as filling 
 all requirements. Storrs pointed out to me 
 that it was quite unnecessary to remove our 
 hats, for that is not a sign of respect with 
 Moslems, and they keep on their red fezzes. 
 The mosque was built by the Caliph Abd el 
 
A street in Jerusalem 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 197 
 
 Melek, about fifty years after Omar had cap- 
 tured Jerusalem in 636 A. D. Many of the 
 stones used in building it came from the tem- 
 ple of Jupiter. In the centre lies the famous 
 rock, some sixty feet in diameter, and rising 
 six or seven feet above the floor of the mosque. 
 To Mohammedans it is more sacred than any- 
 thing else in the world save the Black Stone 
 at Mecca. Tradition says that it was here 
 that Abraham and Melchizedek sacrificed to 
 Jehovah, and Abraham brought Isaac as an 
 offering. Scientists find grounds for the belief 
 that it was the altar of the temple in the 
 traces of a channel for carrying off the blood 
 of the victims. The Crusaders believed the 
 mosque to be the original temple of Solomon, 
 and, according to their own reports, rededi- 
 cated it with the massacre of more than ten 
 thousand Moslems who had fled thither for 
 refuge. The wrought-iron screen that they 
 placed around the rock still remains. The 
 cavern below is the traditional place of wor- 
 ship of many of the great characters of the 
 Old Testament, such as David and Solomon 
 and Elijah. From it Mohammed made his 
 night journey to heaven, borne on his steed 
 El Burak. In the floor of the cavern is an 
 
198 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 opening covered with a slab of stone, and said 
 to go down to the centre of the world and be 
 a medium for communicating with the souls 
 of the departed. 
 
 The military governor has been at work to 
 better the sanitary conditions in Jerusalem. 
 Hitherto the only water used by the townsfolk 
 had been the rain-water which they gathered in 
 tanks. Some years ago it was proposed to 
 bring water to the city in pipes, some of which 
 were already laid before the inhabitants decided 
 that such an innovation could not be tolerated. 
 The British have put in a pipe-line, and oddly 
 enough it runs to the same reservoir whence 
 Pontius Pilate started to bring water by means 
 of an aqueduct. They have also built some 
 excellent roads through the surrounding hills. 
 Here, as in Mesopotamia, one was struck by 
 the permanent nature of the improvements 
 that are being made. Even to people absorbed 
 in their own jealousies and rivalries the advan- 
 tages that they were deriving from their 
 liberation from Turkish rule must have been 
 exceedingly apparent. 
 
 The situation in Palestine differed in many 
 ways from that in Mesopotamia, but in none 
 more markedly than in the benefits derived 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 199 
 
 from the propinquity of Egypt. Occasional 
 leaves were granted to Cairo and Alexandria 
 and they afforded the relaxation of a complete 
 change of surroundings. I have never seen 
 Cairo gayer. Shepherd's Hotel was open and 
 crowded — ^and the dances as pleasant as any 
 that could be given in London. The beaches 
 at Ramleh, near Alexandria, were bright with 
 crowds of bathers, and the change afforded the 
 "men from up the line" must have proved of 
 inestimable value in keeping the army con- 
 tented. There were beaches especially re- 
 served for non-commissioned officers and others 
 for the privates — ^while in Cairo sightseeing 
 tours were made to the pyramids and what the 
 guide-books describe as "other points of in- 
 terest." 
 
 When I left Mesopotamia I made up my 
 mind that there was one man in Palestine whom 
 I would use every effort to see if I were held 
 over waiting for a sailing. This man was 
 Major A. B. Paterson, known to every Aus- 
 tralian as "Banjo" Paterson. His two most 
 widely read books are The Man from Snowy 
 River and Rio Grande's Last Race; both had 
 been for years companions of the entire fam- 
 ily at home and sources for daily quotations, 
 
200 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 so I had always hoped to some day meet their 
 author. I knew that he had fought in the 
 South African War, and I heard that he was 
 with the AustraHan forces in Palestine. As 
 soon as I landed I asked every Australian 
 oflBcer that I met where Major Paterson was, 
 for locating an individual member of an ex- 
 peditionary force, no matter how well known he 
 may be, is not always easy. Every one knew 
 him. I remember well when I inquired at the 
 Australian headquarters in Cairo how the man 
 I asked turned to a comrade and said: "Say, 
 where's 'Banjo' now.^ He's at Moascar, isn't 
 he.^" Whether they had ever met him per- 
 sonally or not he was "Banjo" to one and all. 
 
 On my return to Alexandria I stopped at 
 Moascar, which was the main depot of the 
 Australian Remount Service, and there I found 
 him. He is a man of about sixty, with long 
 mustaches and strong aquiline features — 
 very like the type of American plainsman that 
 Frederic Remington so well portrayed. He 
 has lived everything that he has written. At 
 different periods of his life he has dived for 
 pearls in the islands, herded sheep, broken 
 broncos, and known every chance and change 
 of Australian station life. The Australians told 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 201 
 
 me that when he was at his prime he was re- 
 garded as the best rider in AustraHa. A recent 
 feat about which I heard much mention was 
 when he drove three hundred mules straight 
 through Cairo without losing a single ani- 
 mal, conclusively proving his argument against 
 those who had contested that such a thing 
 could not be done. Although he has often been 
 in England, Major Paterson has never come 
 to the United States. He told me that among 
 American writers he cared most for the works 
 of Joel Chandler Harris and 0. Henry — ^an 
 odd combination ! 
 
 While in Egypt I met a man about whom I 
 had heard much, a man whose career was un- 
 surpassed in interest and in the amount ac- 
 complished by the individual. Before the war 
 Colonel Lawrence was engaged in archaeological 
 research under Professor Hogarth of Oxford 
 University. Their most important work was 
 in connection with the excavation of a buried 
 city in Palestine. At the outbreak of hostil- 
 ities Professor Hogarth joined the Naval In- 
 telligence and rendered invaluable services to 
 the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces. Lawrence 
 had an excellent grounding in Arabic and de- 
 cided to try to organize the desert tribes into 
 
202 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 bands that would raid the Turkish outposts 
 and smash their Hues of communication. He 
 estabhshed a body-guard of reckless semiout- 
 laws, men that in the old days in our West 
 would have been known as "bad men." They 
 became devoted to him and he felt that he 
 could count upon their remaining faithful 
 should any of the tribes with which he was 
 raiding meditate treache^^^ He dressed in 
 Arab costume, but as a whole made no effort 
 to conceal his nationality. His method con- 
 sisted in leading a tribe off on a wild foray to 
 break the railway, blow up bridges, and carry 
 off the Turkish supplies. Swooping down from 
 out the open desert like hawks, they would 
 strike once and be off before the Turks could 
 collect themselves. Lawrence explained that 
 he had to succeed, for if he failed to carry off 
 any booty, his reputation among the tribes- 
 men was dead — and no one would follow him 
 thereafter. \Miat he found hardest on these 
 raids was killing the wounded — ^but the dread 
 of falling into the hands of the Turks was so 
 great that before starting it was necessary to 
 make a compact to kill all that were too badly 
 injured to be carried away on the camels. 
 The Turks offered for Colonel Lawrence's cap- 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 203 
 
 ture a reward of ten thousand pounds if dead 
 and twenty thousand pounds if ahve. His 
 added value in the latter condition was due 
 to the benefit that the enemy expected to de- 
 rive from his public execution. No one who 
 has not tried it can realize what a long ride on 
 a camel means, and although Lawrence was 
 eager to take with him an Englishman who 
 would know the best methods of blowing up 
 bridges and buildings, he could never find any 
 one who was able to stand the strain of a long 
 journey on camel back. 
 
 Lawrence told me that he couldn't last 
 much longer, things had broken altogether too 
 well for him, and they could not continue to 
 do so. Scarcely more than thirty years of age, 
 with a clean-shaven, boyish face, short and slen- 
 der in build, if one met him casually among a lot 
 of other officers it would not have been easy to 
 single him out as the great power among the 
 Arabs that he on every occasion proved him- 
 self to be. Lawrence always greatly admired 
 the Arabs — ^appreciating their many-sidedness 
 — ^their virility — ^their ferocity — their intellect 
 and their sensitiveness. I remember well one 
 of the stories which he told me. It was, I 
 believe, when he was on a long raid in the 
 
204 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 course of which he went right Into the out- 
 skirts of Damascus — then miles behind the 
 Turkish Hues. They halted at a ruined palace 
 in the desert. The Arabs led him through the 
 various rooms, explaining that each was scented 
 with a different perfume. Although Lawrence 
 could smell nothing, they claimed that one room 
 had the odor of ambergris — another of roses — 
 and a third of jasmine; — ^at length they came to 
 a large and particularly ruinous room. "This," 
 they said, "has the finest scent of all — ^the smell 
 of the wind and the sun." I last saw Colonel 
 Lawrence in Paris, whither he had brought the 
 son of the King of the Hedjaz to attend the 
 Peace Conference. 
 
 When I got back to Alexandria I found that 
 the sailing of the convoy had been still fur- 
 ther delayed. Three vessels out of the last 
 one to leave had been sunk, involving a con- 
 siderable loss of life. The channel leading 
 from the harbor out to sea is narrow and must 
 be followed well beyond the entrance, so that 
 the submarines had an excellent chance to lay 
 in wait for outgoing boats. The greatest 
 secrecy was observed with regard to the date 
 of leaving and destination — and of course 
 troops were embarked and held in the harbor 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 205 
 
 for several days so as to avoid as far as pos- 
 sible any notice being given to the lurking 
 enemy by spies on shore. 
 
 The transports were filled with units that 
 were being hurried off to stem the German tide 
 in France, so casual officers were placed on the 
 accompanying destroyers and cruisers. I was 
 allotted to a little Japanese destroyer, the Umi. 
 She was of only about six hundred and fifty 
 tons burden, for this class of boat in the Japa- 
 nese navy is far smaller than in ours. She was 
 as neat as a pin, as were also the crew. The 
 officers were most friendly and did everything 
 possible to make things comfortable for a 
 landsman in their limited quarters. The first 
 meal on board we all used knives and forks, but 
 thereafter they were only supplied to me, while 
 the Japanese fell back upon their chop-sticks. 
 It was a never-failing source of interest to 
 watch their skill in eating under the most 
 difficult circumstances. One morning when the 
 boat was dancing about even more than usual, 
 I came into breakfast to find the steward 
 bringing in some rather underdone fried eggs, 
 and thought that at last I would see the ship's 
 officers stumped in the use of their chop-sticks. 
 Not a bit of it; they had disposed of the eggs 
 
206 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 in the most unsurpassed manner and were off 
 to their duties before I myself had finished 
 eating. 
 
 We left Alexandria with an escort of aero- 
 planes to see us safely started, while an obser- 
 vation balloon made fast to a cruiser accom- 
 panied us on the first part of our journey. The 
 precautions were not in vain, for two subma- 
 rines were sighted a short time after we cleared 
 the harbor. The traditional Japanese efficiency 
 was well borne out by the speed with which 
 our crew prepared for action. Every member 
 was in his appointed place and the guns were 
 stripped for action in an incredibly short time 
 after the warning signal. It was when we were 
 nearing the shores of Italy that I had best op- 
 portunity to see the destroyers at work. We 
 sighted a submarine which let fly at one of the 
 troopers — ^the torpedo passing its bow and 
 barely missing the boat beyond it. Quick as a 
 flash the Japanese were after it — swerving in 
 and out like terriers chasing a rat, and let- 
 ting drive as long as it was visible. We cast 
 around for the better part of an hour, drop- 
 ping overboard depth charges which shook the 
 little craft as the explosion sent great fun- 
 nels of water aloft. The familiar harbor of 
 
BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 207 
 
 Taranto was a welcome sight when we at 
 length herded our charges in through the nar- 
 row entrance and swung alongside the wharf 
 where the destroyers were to take in a supply 
 of fuel preparatory to starting out again on 
 their interminable and arduous task. 
 
IX 
 
 With the First Division in France 
 and Germany 
 
IX 
 
 WITH THE FIRST DIVISION IN 
 FRANCE AND GERIVIANY 
 
 My transfer to the American army appointed 
 me as captain of field artillery instead of 
 infantry, as I had wished. Just how the mis- 
 take occurred I never determined, but once 
 in the field artillery I found that to shift back 
 would take an uncertain length of time, and 
 that even after it was effected I would be 
 obliged to take a course at some school before 
 going up to the line. It therefore seemed ad- 
 visable to go immediately, as instructed, to the 
 artillery school at Saumur. The management 
 was half French and half American. Colonel 
 MacDonald and Colonel Cross were the Amer- 
 icans in charge, and the high reputation of the 
 school bore testimony to their efficiency. It 
 was the intention of headquarters gradually 
 to replace all the French instructors with Amer- 
 icans, but when I was there the former pre- 
 
 211 
 
212 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 dominated. It was of course necessary to 
 wait until our officers had learned by actual 
 experience the use of the French guns with 
 which our army was supplied. When men are 
 being taught what to do in combat conditions 
 they apply themselves more attentively and 
 absorb far more when they feel that the 
 officer teaching them has had to test, under 
 enemy fire, the theories he is expounding. 
 The school was for both officers and candi- 
 dates. The latter were generally chosen from 
 among the non-commissioned officers serving 
 at the front; I afterward sent men down from 
 my battery. The first part of the course was 
 difficult for those who had either never had 
 much mathematical training or had had it so 
 long ago that they were hopelessly out of prac- 
 tice. A number of excellent sergeants and 
 corporals did not have the necessary grounding 
 to enable them to pass the examinations. They 
 should never have been sent, for it merely put 
 them in an awkward and humiliating position 
 — although no stigma could possibly be at- 
 tached to them for having failed. 
 
 The French officer commanding the field 
 work was Major de Caraman. His long and 
 distinguished service in the front lines, com- 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 213 
 
 bined with his initiative and ever-ready tact, 
 made him an invaluable agent in welding the 
 ideas and methods of France and America. 
 His house was always filled with Americans, 
 and how much his hospitality meant to those 
 whose ties were across the ocean must have 
 been experienced to be appreciated. The 
 homes of France were ever thrown open to us, 
 and the sincere and simple good-will with which 
 we were received has put us under a lasting 
 debt which we should be only too glad to 
 cherish and acknowledge. 
 
 Saumur is a delightful old town in the heart 
 of the chateau country. The river Loire runs 
 through it, and along the banks are the caves 
 in some of which have been found the paint- 
 ings made by prehistoric man picturing the 
 beasts with which he struggled for supremacy 
 in the dim dark ages. The same caves are 
 many of them inhabited, and their owners may 
 well look with scorn upon the chateaux and 
 baronial castles of whose antiquity it is custom- 
 ary to boast. There is an impressive castle 
 built on a hill dominating the town, and in one 
 of the churches is hung an array of tapestries 
 of unsurpassed color and design. The country 
 round about invited rambling, and the excel- 
 
214 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 lent roads made it easy; particularly delight- 
 ful were the strolls along the river-banks, where 
 patient fisherfolk of every sex and age sat un- 
 perturbed by the fact that they never seemed 
 to catch anything. One old lady with a sun- 
 bonnet was always to be seen seated on a 
 three-legged stool in the same corner amid the 
 rocks. She had a rusty black umbrella which 
 she would open when the rays of the sun be- 
 came too searching. 
 
 The buildings which were provided for the 
 artillery course had formerly been used by the 
 cavalry school, probably the best known in 
 the world. Before the war army officers of 
 every important nation in the Occident and 
 Orient were sent by their governments to fol- 
 low the course and learn the method of in- 
 struction. My old friend Fitzhugh Lee was 
 one of those sent by the United States, and I 
 found his record as a horseman still alive and 
 fresh in the memory of many of the townspeo- 
 ple. 
 
 Soon after the termination of my period of 
 instruction I was in command of C Battery 
 of the Seventh Field Artillery in the Argonne 
 fighting. I was standing one morning in the 
 desolate, shell-ridden town of Landres et St. 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 215 
 
 George watching a column of *' dough-boys" 
 coming up the road; at their head Hmped a 
 battered Dodge car, and as it neared me I 
 recognized my elder brother Ted, sitting on the 
 back seat in deep discussion with his adjutant. 
 I had beheved him to be safely at the staff school 
 in Langres recuperating from a wound, but he 
 had been offered the chance to come up in 
 command of his old regiment, the Twenty- 
 Sixth, and although registered as only *'good 
 for light duty in the service of supply," he had 
 made his way back to the division. While we 
 were talking another car came up and out from 
 it jumped my brother-in-law, Colonel Richard 
 Derby — ^at that time division surgeon of the 
 Second Division. We were the only three 
 members of the family left in active service 
 since my brother Quentin, the aviator, was 
 brought down over the enemy lines, and 
 Archie, severely wounded in leg and arm, had 
 been evacuated to the United States. I well 
 remember how once when Colonel Derby in- 
 troduced me to General Lejeune, who was 
 commanding his division, the general, instead 
 of making some remark about my father, said : 
 *'I shall always be glad to meet a relative of a 
 man with Colonel Derby's record." 
 
216 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 On the 11th of November we had just 
 returned to our original sector after attacking 
 Sedan. None of us placed much confidence in 
 an armistice being signed. We felt that the 
 German would never accept the terms, but 
 were confident that by late spring or early sum- 
 mer we would be able to bring about an un- 
 conditional surrender. "VMien the firing ceased 
 and the news came through that the enemy had 
 capitulated, there was no great show of ex- 
 citement. We were all too weary to be much 
 stirred by anything that could occur. For the 
 past two weeks we had been switched hither 
 and yon, with little sleep and less food, and a 
 constant decrease in our personnel and horses 
 that was never entirely made good but grew 
 steadily more serious. The only bursts of 
 enthusiasm that I heard were occasioned by 
 the automobile trucks and staff cars passing 
 by after dark with their headlights blazing. 
 The joyous shouts of "Lights out!" testi- 
 fied that the reign of darkness was over. Soon 
 the men began building fires and gathering 
 about them, calling "Lights out!" as each 
 new blaze started — a joke which seemed a 
 never-failing source of amusement. 
 
 We heard that we were to march into Ger- 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 217 
 
 many in the wake of the evacuating army and 
 occupy one of the bridge-heads. All this came 
 through in vague and unconfirmed form, but 
 in a few days we were hauled back out of the 
 line to a desolate mass of ruins which had once 
 been the village of Bantheville. We were told 
 that we would have five days here, during 
 which we would be reoutfitted in every par- 
 ticular. Our horses were in fearful shape — 
 constant work in the rain and mud with very 
 meagre allowance of fodder had worn down the 
 toughest old campaigners among them. Dur- 
 ing the weary, endless night march on Sedan I 
 often saw two horses leaning against each other 
 in utter exhaustion — as if it were by that means 
 alone that they kept on their feet. We were 
 told to indent for everything that we needed 
 to make our batteries complete as prescribed 
 in the organization charts, but we followed in- 
 structions without any very blind faith in re- 
 sults — ^nor did our lack of trust prove unwar- 
 ranted, for we got practically nothing for which 
 we had applied. 
 
 There were some colored troops near by en- 
 gaged in repairing the roads, and a number of 
 us determined to get up a quartet to sing for 
 the men. We went to where the negroes had 
 
218 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 built themselves shelters from corrugated-iron 
 sheets and miscellaneous bits of wreckage from 
 the town. We collected three quarters of our 
 quartet and were directed to the mess-shack 
 for the fourth. As we approached I could hear 
 sounds of altercation and a voice that we 
 placed immediately as that of our quarry arose 
 in indignant warning: "If yo' doan' leggo that 
 mess-kit I'll lay a barrage down on yo' !" A 
 platform was improvised near a blazing fire of 
 pine boards and we had some excellent clog- 
 ging and singing. The big basso had evidently 
 a strong feeling for his steel helmet, and it un- 
 doubtedly added to his picturesqueness — set- 
 ting off his features with his teeth and eyes 
 gleaming in the firelight. 
 
 On the evening of the second day orders 
 came fo move off on the following morning. 
 We were obliged to discard much material, for 
 although the two days' rest and food had dis- 
 tinctly helped out the horse situation, we had 
 many animals that could barely drag them- 
 selves along, much less a loaded caisson, and 
 our instructions were to on no account salvage 
 ammunition. We could spare but one horse 
 for riding — ^my little mare — and she was no 
 use for pulling. She was a wise little animal 
 with excellent gaits and great endurance. We 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 219 
 
 were forced to leave behind another mare that 
 I had ridden a good deal on reconnaissances, 
 and that used to amuse me by her unalterable 
 determination to stick to cover. It was al- 
 most impossible to get her to cut across a 
 field; she preferred to skirt the woods and had 
 no intention of exposing herself on any sky-line. 
 In spite of her caution it was on account of 
 wounds that she had eventually to be aban- 
 doned. I trust that the salvage parties found 
 her and that she is now reaping the reward of 
 her foresight. 
 
 We were a sorry -looking outfit as we marched 
 away from Bantheville. My lieutenants had 
 lost their bedding-rolls and extra clothes long 
 since — ^as every one did, for it was impossible 
 to keep your belongings with you — ^and al- 
 though authorized dumps were provided and 
 we were told that anything left behind would 
 be cared for, we would be moved to another 
 sector without a chance to collect our excess 
 and practically everything would have disap- 
 peared by the time the opportunity came to 
 visit the cache. But although the horses and 
 accoutrements were in bad shape, the men were 
 fit for any task, and more than ready to take on 
 whatever situation might arise. 
 
 Our destination was Malancourt, no great 
 
WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 distance away, but the roads were so jammed 
 with traffic that it was long after dark before 
 we reached the bleak, wind-swept hillside that 
 had been allotted to us. It was bitterly cold 
 and we groped about among the shattered 
 barbed-wire entanglements searching for wood 
 to light a fire. There was no difficulty in find- 
 ing shell-craters in which to sleep — ^the ground 
 was so pockmarked with them that it seemed 
 impossible that it could have been done by 
 human agency. 
 
 This country had been an "active" area 
 during practically all the war, and the towns 
 had been battered and beaten down first by 
 the Boche and then by the French, and lately 
 we ourselves had taken a hand in the further 
 demolition of the ruins. Many a village was 
 recognizable from the encompassing waste 
 only by the sign-board stuck in a mound an- 
 nouncing its name. The next day's march took 
 us through Esne, Montzeville, and Bethain- 
 ville, and on down to the Verdun-Paris high- 
 way. We passed by historic "Dead Man*s 
 Hill," and not far from there we saw the mute 
 reminders of an attack that brought the whole 
 scene vividly back. There were nine or ten 
 tanks, of types varying from the little Renault 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 221 
 
 to the powerful battleship sort. All had been 
 halted by direct hits, some while still far from 
 their objective, others after they had reached 
 the wire entanglements, and there was one 
 that was already astride of the first-line 
 trench. The continual sight of ruined towns 
 and desolated countryside becomes very op- 
 pressive, and it was a relief when we began to 
 pass through villages in which many of the 
 houses were still left standing; it seemed like 
 coming into a new world. 
 
 At ten in the evening I got the battery into 
 Balaicourt. A strong wind was blowing and 
 the cold was intense, so I set off to try to find 
 billets for the men where they could be at 
 least partly sheltered. The town was all but 
 deserted by its inhabitants, and we managed 
 to provide every one with some degree of 
 cover. Getting back into billets is particularly 
 welcome in very cold or rainy weather, and we 
 all were glad to be held over a day on the 
 wholly mythical plea of refitting. Although the 
 time would not be sufficient to make any ap- 
 preciable effort in the way of cleaning harness 
 or materiel, the men could at any rate heat 
 water to wash their clothes and themselves. 
 
 The next day's march we regarded as our 
 
222 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 first in the advance into Germany to which 
 we had so long looked forward. We found 
 the great Verdun highway which had played 
 such an important part in the defense that 
 broke the back of the Hun to be in excellent 
 shape and a pleasant change from the shell- 
 pitted roads to which we had become accus- 
 tomed. It was not without a thrill that I rode, 
 at the head of my battery, through the massive 
 south gate of Verdun, and followed the winding 
 streets of the old city through to the opposite 
 portal. Before we had gone many miles the 
 road crossed a portion of the far-famed Hin- 
 denburg line which had here remained intact 
 until evacuated by the Boche a few days pre- 
 viously under the terms of the armistice. 
 
 We made a short halt where a negro en- 
 gineer regiment was at work making the road 
 passable. A most hospitable officer strolled 
 up and asked if I wanted anything to eat, which 
 when you are in the army may be classified 
 with Goldberg's "foolish questions." A sturdy 
 coal-black cook brought me soup and roast beef 
 and coffee, and never have I appreciated the 
 culinary arts of the finest French chef as I did 
 that meal, for the food had been cooked, not 
 merely thrown into one of the tureens of a 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 223 
 
 rolling kitchen, which was as much as we had 
 recently been able to hope for. 
 
 The negro cook looked as if he would have 
 been able to emulate his French confrere of 
 whom Major de Caraman told me. The 
 Frenchman was on his way to an outpost with 
 a steaming caldron of soup. He must have 
 lost the way, for he unexpectedly found him- 
 self confronted by a German who ordered him 
 to surrender. For reply the cook slammed 
 the soup-dish over his adversary's head and 
 marched him back a prisoner. His prowess 
 was rewarded with a Croix de Guerre. 
 
 It was interesting to see the German system 
 of defense when it was still intact and had not 
 been shattered by our artillery preparation as 
 it was when taken in an attack. The wire 
 entanglements were miles in depth, and the 
 great trees by the roadside were mined. This 
 was done by cutting a groove three or four 
 inches broad and of an equal depth and filling 
 it with packages of explosive. I suppose the 
 purpose was to block the road in case of re- 
 treat. Only a few of the mines had been set 
 off. 
 
 Passing through several towns that no longer 
 existed we came to Etain, where many build- 
 
224 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 ings were still standing though completely 
 gutted. The cellars had been converted into 
 dugouts with passages and ramifications added. 
 We were billeted in some German huts on the 
 outskirts. They were well dug in and com- 
 fortably fitted out, so we were ready to stay 
 over a few days, as we had been told we should, 
 but at midnight orders were sent round to be 
 prepared to march out early. 
 
 The country was lovely and gave little sign 
 of the Boche occupation except that it was 
 totally deserted and when we passed through 
 villages all the signs were in German. There 
 was but little originality displayed in naming 
 the streets — ^you could be sure that you would 
 find a Hindenburg Strasse and a Kronprinz 
 Strasse, and there was usually one called after 
 the Kaiser. The mile-posts at the crossroads 
 had been mostly replaced, but occasionally we 
 found battered metal plaques of the Automo- 
 bile Touring Club of France. Ever since we 
 left Verdun we had been meeting bands of re- 
 leased prisoners, Italians and Russians chiefly, 
 with a few French and English mingled. They 
 were worn and underfed — their clothes were in 
 rags. A few had combined and were pulling 
 their scanty belongings on little cars, such as 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 225 
 
 children make out of soap-boxes. The motor- 
 trucks returning to our base after bringing up 
 the rations would take back as many as they 
 could carry. 
 
 We came across scarcely any civilians until 
 we reached Bouligny, a once busy and pros- 
 perous manufacturing town. A few of the in- 
 habitants had been allowed to remain through- 
 out the enemy occupation and small groups of 
 those that had been removed were by now 
 trickling in. The invader had destroyed prop- 
 erty in the most ruthless manner, and the 
 buildings were gutted. The domestic habits 
 of the Hun were always to me inexplicable — ^he 
 evidently preferred to live in the midst of his 
 own filth, and many times have I seen recently 
 captured chateaux that had been converted 
 into veritable pigsties. 
 
 The inhabitants went wild at our entry — in 
 the little villages they came out carrying 
 wreaths and threw confetti and flowers as they 
 shouted the "Marseillaise." The infantry, 
 marching in advance, bore the brunt of the 
 celebrations. WTiat interested me most were 
 the bands of small children, many of them cer- 
 tainly not over five, dancing along the streets 
 singing their national anthem. It must have 
 
226 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 been taught them in secret. In the midst of a 
 band were often an American soldier or two, 
 in full swing, thoroughly enjoying themselves. 
 The enthusiasm was all of it natural and un- 
 inspired by alcohol, for the Germans had taken 
 with them everything to drink that they had 
 been unable to finish. 
 
 Bouligny is not an attractive place — ^few 
 manufacturing towns are — ^but we got the men 
 well billeted under water-tight roofs, and we 
 were able to heat water for washing. My 
 striker found a large caldron and I luxuriated 
 in a steaming bath, the first in over a month, 
 and, what was more, I had some clean clothes 
 to pull on when I got out. 
 
 One evening, when returning from a near-by 
 village, I met a frock-coated civilian who in- 
 quired of me in German the way to Etain. I 
 asked him who he was and what he wanted. 
 He answered that he was a German but was 
 tired of his country and wished to go almost 
 anywhere else. He seemed altogether too ap- 
 parent to be a spy, and even if he were I could 
 not make out any object that he could gain, 
 I have often wondered what became of him. 
 
 The Boches had evidently not expected to 
 give up their conquests, for they had built an 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 227 
 
 enormous stone-and-brick fountain in the cen- 
 tre of the town, and chiselled its name, "Hin- 
 denburg Brunnen." Above the German can- 
 teen or commissary shop was a great wooden 
 board with "Gott strafe England" — a curi- 
 ous proof of how bitterly the Huns hated Great 
 Britain, for there were no British troops in the 
 sectors in front of this part of the invaded 
 territory. 
 
 We worked hard "policing up" ourselves 
 and our equipment during the few days we 
 stayed at Bouligny. One morning all the 
 townsfolk turned out in their best clothes, 
 which had been buried in the cellars or hidden 
 behind the rafters in the attics, to greet the 
 President and Madame Poincare, who were 
 visiting the most important of the liberated 
 towns. It was good to hear the cheering and 
 watch the beaming faces. 
 
 On November 21 we resumed our march. 
 Close to the border we came upon a large Ger- 
 man cemetery, artistically laid out, with a 
 group of massive statuary in the centre. There 
 were some heroic-size granite statues of Boche 
 soldiers in full kit with helmet and all, that were 
 particularly fine. As we passed the stones 
 marking the boundary-line between France 
 
228 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 and Lorraine there was a tangible feeUng of 
 making history, and it was not without a 
 thrill that we entered Aumetz and heard the 
 old people greet us in French while the chil- 
 dren could speak only German. The town was 
 gay with the colors of France — ^produced from 
 goodness knows where. Children were bal- 
 ancing themselves on the barrels of aban- 
 doned German cannon and climbing about 
 the huge camouflaged trucks. We were now 
 where France, Luxemburg, and Lorraine meet, 
 and all day we skirted the borders of first one 
 and then the other, halting for the night at the 
 French town of Villerupt. The people went 
 wild when we rode in — ^we were the first sol- 
 diers of the Allies they had seen, for the Ger- 
 mans entered immediately after the declara- 
 tion of war, and the only poilus the townsfolk 
 saw were those that were brought in as pris- 
 oners. We were welcomed in the town hall — 
 the German champagne was abominable but the 
 reception was whole-hearted and the speeches 
 were sincere in their jubilation. 
 
 I was billeted with the mayor. Monsieur 
 Georges. After dinner he produced two grimy 
 bottles of Pol Roger — ^he said that he had been 
 forced to change their hiding-place four times. 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 229 
 
 and had just dug them up in his cellar. They 
 were destined for the night of liberation. 
 Monsieur Georges was thin and worn; he had 
 spent two years in prison in solitary confine- 
 ment for having given a French prisoner some 
 bread. His eighteen-year-old daughter was 
 imprisoned for a year because she had not in- 
 formed the authorities as to what her father 
 had done. No one in the family would learn a 
 single word of German. They said that all 
 French civilians were forced to salute the 
 Germans, and each Sunday every one was com- 
 pelled to appear in the market-place for gen- 
 eral muster. The description of the departure 
 of their hated oppressors was vivid — ^the men 
 behind the lines knew the full portent of events 
 and were sullen and crestfallen, but the sol- 
 diers fresh from the front believed that Ger- 
 many had won and was dictating her own terms; 
 they came through with wreaths hung on their 
 bayonets singing songs of victory. 
 
 I had often wondered how justly the food 
 supplies sent by America for the inhabitants 
 of the invaded districts were distributed. 
 Monsieur Georges assured me that the Ger- 
 mans were scrupulously careful in this matter, 
 because they feared that if they were not, the 
 
230 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 supplies would no longer be sent, and this 
 would of course encroach upon their own re- 
 sources, for even the Hun could not utterly 
 starve to death the captured French civilians. 
 The mayor told me of the joy the shipments 
 brought and how when the people went to 
 draw their rations they called it "going to 
 America." We sat talking until far into the 
 night before I retired to the luxury of a real 
 bed with clean linen sheets. There was no 
 trouble whatever in billeting the men — ^the 
 townsmen were quarrelling as to who should 
 have them. 
 
 Next morning, with great regret at so soon 
 leaving our willing hosts, we marched off into 
 the Httle Duchy of Luxemburg. We passed 
 through the thriving city of Esch with its 
 great iron-mines. The streets were gay with 
 flags, there w^ere almost as many Italian as 
 French, for there is a large Italian colony, the 
 members of which are employed in mining and 
 smelting. Brass bands paraded in our honor, 
 and we were later met by them in many of the 
 smaller towns. The shops seemed well filled, 
 but the prices were very high. The Germans 
 seemed to have left the Luxemburgers very 
 much to themselves, and I have little doubt 
 but that they would have been at least as 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 231 
 
 pleased to welcome victorious Bodies had af- 
 fairs taken a different turn. Still they were 
 glad to see us, for it meant the end of the isola- 
 tion in which they had been living and the 
 eventual advent of foodstuffs. 
 
 As we rode along, the countryside was lovely 
 and the smiling fields and hillsides made "ex- 
 cursions and alarums" seem remote indeed. It 
 felt unnatural to pass through a village with 
 unscarred church spires and houses all intact — ■ 
 such a change from battered, glorious France. 
 
 We were immediately in the wake of the 
 German army, and taken by and large they 
 [must have been retiring in good order, for they 
 left little behind. Our first night we spent at 
 the village of Syren, eight kilometres from the 
 capital of the Duchy. Billeting was not so 
 easy now, for we were ordered to treat the in- 
 habitants as neutrals, and when they objected 
 we couldn't handle the situation as we did 
 later on in Germany. No one likes to have 
 soldiers or civilians quartered on him, and the 
 Luxemburgers were friendly to us only as a 
 matter of policy. Fortunately, the chalk marks 
 of the Boche billeting officers had not been 
 washed off the doors, and these told us how 
 many men had been lodged in a given house. 
 
 In my lodging I was accorded a most friendly 
 
232 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 reception, for my hostess was French. Her 
 nephew had come up from Paris to visit her a 
 few months before the outbreak of the war, 
 and had been unable to get back to France. 
 To avoid the dreaded internment camp he had 
 successfully passed as a Luxemburger. In the 
 regiment there were a number of men whose 
 parents came from the Duchy; these and a 
 few more who spoke German acquired a sud- 
 den popularity among their comrades. They 
 would make friends with some of the villagers 
 and arrange to turn over their rations so that 
 they would be cooked by the housewife and 
 eaten with the luxurious accompaniment of 
 chair and table. The diplomat would invite 
 a few friends to enjoy with him the welcome 
 change from the "slum" ladled out of the cal- 
 drons of the battery rolling kitchen. I had al- 
 ways supposed that I had in my battery a large 
 number of men who could speak German — 
 a glance over the pay-roll would certainly leave 
 that impression — ^but when I came to test it 
 out, I found that I had but four men who spoke 
 sufficiently well to be of any use as interpreters. 
 Next morning we made a winding, round- 
 about march to Trintange. Here we were in- 
 structed to settle down for a week or ten days* 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 233 
 
 halt, and many worse places might have been 
 chosen. The country was very broken, with 
 hills and ravines. Little patches of woodland 
 and streams dashing down rocky channels on 
 their way to join the Moselle reminded one of 
 Rock Creek Park in Washington. The weather 
 couldn't be bettered; sharp and cold in the 
 early morning with a heavy hoarfrost spread- 
 ing its white mantle over everything, then out 
 would come the sun, and the hills would be 
 shrouded in mist. 
 
 My billeting officer had arranged matters 
 well, so we were comfortably installed and in 
 good shape to "police up" for the final leg of 
 the march to Coblenz. I had now my full 
 allowance of officers — ^Lieutenants Furness, 
 Brown, Middleditch, and Pearce. In active 
 warfare discipline while stricter in some ways 
 is more lax in others, and there were many 
 small points that required furbishing. Close 
 order drill on foot is always a great help in 
 stiffening up the men, and such essentials as 
 instruction in driving and in fitting harness 
 required much attention. In the American 
 army much less responsibility is given to the 
 sergeants and corporals than in the British, 
 but even so the spirit and efficiency of an or- 
 
234 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 ganization must depend largely on its non- 
 commissioned oflBcers. We were fortunate in 
 having an unusually fine lot — Sergeant Gush- 
 ing was a veteran of the Spanish War. He had 
 been a sailor for many years, and after he left 
 the sea he became chief game warden of Massa- 
 chusetts. In time of stress he was a tower of 
 strength and could be counted upon to set his 
 men an example of cool and judicious daring. 
 The first sergeant, Armstrong, was an old 
 regular army man, and his knowledge of drill 
 and routine was invaluable to us. He thor- 
 oughly understood his profession, and was re- 
 markably successful in training raw men. 
 Sergeants Grumbling, Kubelis, and Bauer were 
 all of them excellent men, and could be relied 
 upon to perform their duty with conscien- 
 tious thoroughness under the most trying con- 
 ditions. 
 
 One afternoon I went in to Luxemburg with 
 Colonel Collins, the battalion commander. 
 The town looks thoroughly mediseval as you 
 approach. It might well have been over its 
 castle wall that Kingsley's knight spurred his 
 horse on his last leap; as a matter of fact the 
 village of Altenahr, where the poet laid the 
 scene, is not so many miles away. The town 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 235 
 
 is built along the ragged cliffs lining a deep, 
 rocky canyon spanned by old stone bridges. 
 The massive entrance-gates open upon pas- 
 sages tunnelled through the hills, and although 
 the modern part of the town boasts broad 
 streets and squares, there are many narrow 
 passageways winding around the ancient 
 quarter. 
 
 I went into a large bookstore to replenish 
 my library, and was struck by the supply of 
 post-cards of Marshal Foch and Kitchener and 
 the King and Queen of Belgium. All had been 
 printed in Leipzig, and when I asked the book- 
 seller how that could be, he replied that he got 
 them from the German commercial travellers. 
 He said that he had himself been surprised at 
 the samples shown him, but the salesman had 
 remarked that he thought such post-cards 
 would have a good sale in Luxemburg, and if 
 such were the case "business was business," 
 and he was prepared to supply them. There 
 was even one of King Albert standing with 
 drawn sword, saying: "You shall not violate 
 the sacred soil of my country." A publication 
 that also interested me was a weekly paper 
 brought out in Hamburg and written in Eng- 
 lish. It was filled with jokes, beneath which 
 
236 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 were German notes explaining any difficult or 
 idiomatic words and phrases. With all their 
 hatred of England the Huns still continued to 
 learn English. 
 
 Thanksgiving Day came along, and we set 
 to work to provide some sort of a special feast 
 for the men. It was most difficult to do so, for 
 the exchange had not as yet been regulated 
 and the lowest rate at which we could get marks 
 was at a franc, and usually it was a franc 
 and a quarter. Some one opportunely arrived 
 from Paris with a few hundred marks that he 
 had bought at sixty centimes. For the officers 
 we got a suckling pig, which Mess Sergeant 
 Braun roasted in the priest's oven. He even 
 put the traditional baked apple in its mouth, 
 a necessary adjunct, the purpose of which I 
 have never discovered, and such stuffing as he 
 made has never been equalled. We washed it 
 down with excellent Moselle wine, for we were 
 but a couple of miles from the vineyards along 
 the river. In the afternoon I borrowed a 
 bicycle from the burgomaster and trailed over 
 to Elmen, where I found my brother just about 
 to sit down to his Thanksgiving dinner served 
 up by two faithful Chinamen, who had come 
 to his regiment in a draft from the West Coast. 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 237 
 
 After doing full justice to his fare I wended my 
 way back to Trintange in the rain and dark. 
 
 The next day we paid the men. For some it 
 was the first time in ten months. To draw 
 pay it was necessary to sign the pay-roll at the 
 end of one month and be on hand at the end 
 of the following month to receive the money. 
 No one could sign unless his service record 
 was at hand, and as this was forwarded to 
 the hospital "through military channels" when 
 a man was evacuated sick or wounded, it 
 rarely reached his unit until several months 
 after he returned. It may easily be seen why 
 it was that an enlisted man often went for 
 months without being able to draw his pay. 
 This meant not only a hardship to him while 
 he was without money, but it also followed 
 that when he got it he had a greater amount 
 than he could possibly need, and was more 
 than apt to gamble or drink away his sudden 
 accession of wealth. We always tried to make 
 a man who had drawn a lot of back pay de- 
 posit it or send it home. Mr. Harlow, the 
 Y. M. C. A. secretary attached to the regi- 
 ment, helped us a great deal in getting the 
 money transferred to the United States. The 
 men, unless they could spend their earnings 
 
238 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 immediately, would start a game of craps and 
 in a few days all the available cash would have 
 found its way into the pocket of the luckiest 
 man. They would throw for appaUingly 
 high stakes. On this particular pay-day we 
 knew that the supply of wine and beer in the 
 village was not sufficient to cause any serious 
 trouble, and orders were given that no cognac 
 or hard liquor should be sold. A few always 
 managed to get it — all precautions to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding. 
 
 II 
 
 On the 1st of December we once more re- 
 sumed our march and at Wormeldange crossed 
 over the Moselle River into Hunland. The 
 streets of the first town through which we 
 passed were lined with civilians, many of them 
 only just out of uniform, and they scowled at 
 us as we rode by, muttering below their breath. 
 A short way out and we began to meet men 
 still in the field-gray uniform; they smiled and 
 tried to make advances but our men paid no 
 attention. When we reached Onsdorf, which 
 was our destination, the billeting officer re- 
 ported that he had met with no difficulty. 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 239 
 
 The inhabitants were most effusive and anxious 
 to please in every way. Of course they were 
 not Prussians, and no doubt were heartily 
 tired and sick of war, but here, as throughout, 
 their attitude was most distasteful to us — ^it 
 was so totally lacking in dignity. We could 
 not tell how much they were acting on their 
 own initiative and to what extent they were fol- 
 lowing instructions. Probably there was some- 
 thing of both back of their conduct. Warn- 
 ings had been issued that the Germans were 
 reported to be planning a wholesale poison- 
 ing of American officers, but I never saw any- 
 thing to substantiate the belief. 
 
 Next morning we struck across to the Saar 
 River and followed it down to its junction with 
 the Moselle. The woods and ravines were 
 lovely, but from the practical standpoint the 
 going was very hard upon the horses. We 
 marched down through Treves, the oldest town 
 in Germany, with a population of about thirty 
 thousand. In the fourth century of our era 
 Ausonius referred to it as *'Rome beyond the 
 Alps," and the extent and variety of the Roman 
 remains would seem to justify the epithet. 
 We were halted for some time beside the most 
 remarkable of these, the Porta Nigra, a huge 
 
240 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 fortified gateway, dating from the first cen- 
 tury A. D. The cathedral is an impressive 
 conglomeration of the architecture of many dif- 
 ferent centuries — the oldest portion being a 
 part of a Roman basilica of the fourth century, 
 while the latest additions of any magnitude 
 were made in the thirteenth. Most famous 
 among its treasures is the "holy coat of 
 Treves," believed by the devout to be the 
 seamless garment worn by Christ at the cruci- 
 fixion. The predominant religion of the neigh- 
 borhood is the Roman Catholic, and on the 
 occasions when the coat is exhibited the town 
 is thronged by countless pilgrims. 
 
 Leaving Treves we continued dowTi along 
 the river-bank to Rawen Kaulin, where we 
 turned inland for a few miles and I was as- 
 signed to a village known as Eitelsbach. The 
 inhabitants were badly frightened when we 
 rode in — ^most of the men hid and the women 
 stood on the door-steps weeping. I suppose 
 they expected to be treated in the manner 
 that they had behaved to the French and 
 Belgians, and as they would have done by us 
 had the situation been reversed. When they 
 found they were not to be oppressed they be- 
 came servile and fawning. I had my officers' 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 241 
 
 mess in the schoolmaster's house. He had 
 been a non-connnissioned officer of infant^^ 
 and yet he wanted to send his daughters m o 
 play the piano for us after dinner We would 
 have despised the German less if he had been 
 able to "hate" a little more after he was beaten 
 and not so bitterly while he felt he was wmnmg. 
 The country through which we mai-ched dur- 
 ing the next few days was most beautiful. We 
 followed the winding course of the "ver mak- 
 ing many a double "S" turn. The steep hills 
 came right to the bank; frequently the road 
 waTcut into their sides. A village was tucked 
 Tn wherever a bit of level plam betjeen^he 
 foot of the hill and the river permitted ^en 
 the slopes gave a southern exposure they ^^•ere 
 covered with grape-vmes, planted with the 
 utmost precision and regularity. Every corner 
 and cranny among the rocks was utd.zed. 
 The original planting must have been difficu t, 
 for the soil was covered with slabs of shale 
 The cultivator should develop excellent ungs 
 in scaling those hillsides. The leaves had fallen 
 Tnd the bare vines varied in hue from sepia 
 brown to wine color, with occasional patches 
 of Tvergreen to set off the whole. Once or 
 twice the road left the river to cut across over 
 
242 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDfeN 
 
 the mountains, and it cost our horses much 
 exertion to drag the hmbers up the steep, 
 sHppery trail. It was curious to notice the 
 difference between those who dwelt along the 
 bank and the inhabitants of the upland pla- 
 teau. The latter appeared distinctly more 
 *' outlandish" and less sleek and prosperous. 
 The highlands we found veiled in mist, and as 
 I looked back at the dim outlines of horse and 
 man and caisson, it seemed as if I were leading 
 a ghost battery. 
 
 We were in the heart of the wine country, and 
 to any one who had enjoyed a good bottle of 
 Moselle such names as Berncastel and Piesport 
 had long been familiar. In the former town I 
 was amused on passing by a large millinery 
 store to see the proprietor's name was Jacob 
 Astor. The little villages inevitably recalled 
 the fairy-tales of Hans Andersen and the 
 Grimm brothers. The raftered houses had 
 timbered balconies that all but met across the 
 crooked, winding streets through which we 
 clattered over the cobblestones. Capping 
 many of the beams were gargoyles, demons, and 
 dwarfs, and a galaxy of strange creatures were 
 carved on the ends of the gables that jutted 
 out every which way. The houses often had 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 243 
 
 the date they were built and the initials of the 
 couple that built them over the front door, 
 frequently with some device. I saw no dates 
 that went further back than the late sixteen 
 hundreds, though many of the houses doubt- 
 less were built before then. The doors in some 
 cases were beautifully carved and weathered. 
 The old pumps and wells, the stone bridges, 
 and the little wayside shrines took one back 
 through the centuries. To judge by the rec- 
 ords carved on wall and house, high floods are 
 no very uncommon occurrence — the highest I 
 noticed was in 1685, while the last one of im- 
 portance was credited to 1892. 
 
 We were much surprised at the well-fed ap- 
 pearance of the population, both old and young, 
 for we had heard so much of food shortages, 
 and the Germans when they surrendered had 
 laid such stress upon it. As far as we could 
 judge, food was more plentiful than in France. 
 Rubber and leather were very scarce, many of 
 the women wore army boots, and the shoes 
 displayed in shop-windows appeared made of 
 some composition resembling pasteboard. The 
 coffee was evidently ground from the berry of 
 some native bush, and its taste in no way re- 
 sembled the real. Cigars were camouflaged 
 
244 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 cabbage-leaves, with little or no flavor, and 
 the beer sadly fallen off from its pre-war glory. 
 Still, in all the essentials of life the inhabitants 
 appeared to be making out far better than we 
 had been given to believe. 
 
 We met with very little trouble. There were 
 a few instances where people tried to stand out 
 against having men billeted in their houses, 
 but we of course paid no attention except 
 that we saw to it that they got more men than 
 they would have under ordinary circumstances. 
 Every now and then we would have amusing 
 side-lights upon the war news on which the 
 more ignorant Boches had been fed. A man 
 upon whom several of my sergeants were quar- 
 tered asked them if the Zeppelins had done 
 much damage to New York ; and whether Bos- 
 ton and Philadelphia had yet been evacuated 
 by the Germans — ^he had heard that both cities 
 had been taken and that Washington was 
 threatened and its fall imminent. 
 
 Our men behaved exceedingly well. Of 
 course there were individual cases of drunken- 
 ness, but very few considering that we were 
 in a country where the wine was cheap and 
 schnapps plentiful. There were the inevitable 
 A. W. O. L.'s and a number of minor offenses, 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY U5 
 
 'but I found that by making the prisoner's life 
 very unattractive — seeing to it that they per- 
 formed distasteful "fatigues," giving them 
 heavy packs to carry when we marched, and 
 allowing them nothing that could be construed 
 as a delicacy — I soon reformed the few men 
 that were chronically shiftless or untidy or late. 
 "When not in cantonments the trouble with 
 putting men under arrest is that too often it 
 only means that they lead an easier life than 
 their comrades, and it takes some ingenuity 
 to correct this situation. WTienever it was in 
 any way possible an offender was dealt with 
 in the battery and I never let it go further, for 
 I found it made for much better spirit in a unit. 
 The men were a fine lot, and such thorough- 
 going Americans, no matter from what country 
 their parents had come. One of my buglers 
 had landed in the United States only in 1913; 
 he had been born and brought up on the con- 
 fines of Germany and Austria, and yet when a 
 large German of whom he was asking the way 
 said, "You speak the language well^your 
 parents must be German," the unhesitating 
 reply was: "Well, my mother was of German 
 descent !" The battery call read like a League 
 of Nations, but no one could have found any 
 
246 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 cause of complaint in lack of loyalty to the 
 United States. 
 
 The twelfth day after we had crossed over 
 the river from Luxemburg found us marching 
 into Coblenz. We were quartered in large 
 brick barracks in the outskirts of the city. 
 The departing Germans had left them in very 
 bad shape, and Hercules would have felt that 
 cleaning the Augean stables was a light task in 
 comparison. However, we set to work with- 
 out delay and soon had both men and horses 
 well housed. Life in the town was foUow^ing 
 its normal course; the stores were well stocked 
 and seemed to be doing a thriving trade. We 
 went into a cafe where a good orchestra was 
 playing and had some very mediocre war beer, 
 and then I set off in search of the Turkish bath 
 of which I was much in need. The one I found 
 was in charge of an ex-submarine sailor, and 
 when I was shut in the steam-room I won- 
 dered if he were going to try any "f rightful- 
 ness," for I was the only person in the bath. 
 My last one had been in a wine- vat a full week 
 before, and I was ready to risk anything for 
 the luxury of a good soak. 
 
 Orders to march usually reached us at mid- 
 night — ^why, I do not know; but we would turn 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 247 
 
 in with the belief that we would not move on 
 the following day, and the next we knew an 
 orderly from regimental headquarters would 
 wake us with marching instructions, and m no 
 happy frame of mind we would grumblmgly 
 tumble out to issue the necessaiy commands 
 Coblenz proved no exception to this rule. As 
 we got under way, a fine ram was falhng 
 that was not long in permeating eyerythmg. 
 Through the misty dripping town the cais- 
 sons went rolling along," and out across the 
 Ptaffendorf bridge, with the dim outhnes of 
 the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein towering above 
 us The men were drowsy and cold. 1 heard a 
 tew disparaging comments on the size of 
 the Rhine. They had heard so much talk 
 about it that they had expected to find it at 
 kast as large as the Mississippi. We found 
 the slippery stones of the street ascending 
 from the river most difficult to negotiate, but 
 at length everything was safely up, and we 
 struck off toward the bridge-head position 
 which we were to occupy for we knew not how 
 Ion" The Huns had torn down the sign-posts 
 at the crossroads; with what intent I cannot 
 imagine, for the roads were not complicated 
 and were clearly indicated on the maps, and 
 
248 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 the only purpose that the sign-posts could 
 serve was to satisfy a curiosity too idle to 
 cause us to calculate by map how far we had 
 come or what distance lay still before us. A 
 number of great stone slabs attracted our at- 
 tention ; they had been put up toward the close 
 of the eighteenth century and indicated the 
 distance in hours. I remember one that pro- 
 claimed it was three hours to Coblenz and 
 eighteen to Frankfort. I have never seen else- 
 where these records of an age when time did 
 not mean money. 
 
 The march was in the nature of an anti- 
 climax, for we had thought always of Coblenz 
 as our goal, and the good fortune in which we 
 had played as regarded weather during our 
 march down the valley of the Moselle had made 
 us supercritical concerning such details as a long, 
 wearisome slogging through the mud in clumsy, 
 water-logged clothes. At length we reached the 
 little village of Niederelbert and found that 
 Lieutenant Brown, whose turn it was as bil- 
 leting officer, had settled us so satisfactorily 
 that in a short time we were all comfortably 
 steaming before stoves, thawing out our 
 cramped joints. 
 
 With the exception of Lieutenant Furness 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 249 
 
 my officers belonged to the Reserve Corps, and 
 we none of us looked forward to a long tour 
 of garrison duty on the Rhine or anywhere else. 
 Furness, who had particularly distinguished 
 himself in liaison work with the infantry, held 
 a temporary commission in the regular army, 
 but he was eager to go back to civil life at 
 the earliest opportunity. In Germany the 
 prospect was doubly gloomy, for there would 
 be no intercourse with the natives such as in 
 France had lightened many a weary moment. 
 Several days later regimental headquarters 
 coveted our village and we were moved a few 
 miles off across the hills to Holler. We set 
 to work to make ourselves as snug and com- 
 fortable as possible. I had as striker a little 
 fellow of Finnish extraction name Jahoola, an 
 excellent man in every way, who took the best 
 of care of my horse and always managed to fix 
 up my billet far better than the circumstances 
 would seem to permit. 
 
 The days that followed presented little 
 variety once the novelty of the occupation had 
 worn off. The men continued to behave in 
 exemplary fashion, and the Boche gave little 
 trouble. As soon as we took up our quarters 
 we made the villagers clean up the streets and 
 
250 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 yards until they possessed a model town, and 
 thereafter we "policed up" every untidiness of 
 which we might be the cause, and kept the in- 
 habitants up to the mark in what concerned 
 them. The head of the house in which I was 
 lodged in Niederelbert told me that his son 
 had been a captain in the army but had de- 
 serted a fortnight before the armistice and 
 reached home in civilian clothes three weeks 
 in advance of the retreating army. Of course 
 he was not an officer before the war — not of 
 the old military school, but the fact that he 
 and his family were proud of it spoke of a 
 weakening discipline and morale. 
 
 Now that we had settled down to a routine 
 existence I was doubly glad of such books as I 
 had been able to bring along. Of these, O. 
 Henry was the most popular. The little shil- 
 ling editions were read until they fell to pieces, 
 and in this he held the same position as in the 
 British army. I had been puzzled at this 
 popularity among the English, for much of 
 his slang must have been worse than Greek to 
 them. I also had Charles 0' Motley and Harry 
 Lorrequer, Dumas' Dame de Monsereau and 
 Monte Crista, Flaubert's Education. Senti- 
 mentale, Gibbon's Rise and Fall, and Sorrow's 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 251 
 
 Zincali. These with the Oxford Books of 
 French and Enghsh verse and a few Portu- 
 guese and Spanish novels comprised my H- 
 brary, a large one considering the circum- 
 stances. It was always possible to get books 
 through the mail, although they were generally 
 many months en route. 
 
 Soon after we reached the bridge-head, officers 
 of the regular army began turning up from the 
 various schools whither they had been sent as 
 instructors. We all hoped to be released in 
 this manner, for we felt that the garrison duty 
 should be undertaken by the regulars, whose 
 life business it is, in order to allow the men who 
 had left their trades and professions to return 
 to their normal and necessary work. In the 
 meantime we set out to familiarize ourselves 
 with the country and keep our units in such 
 shape that should any unforeseen event arise 
 we would be in a position to meet it. The 
 horses required particular attention, but one 
 felt rewarded on seeing their improvement. 
 There were many cases of mange which we had 
 been hitherto unable to properly isolate, and 
 good fodder in adequate quantity was an inno- 
 vation. 
 
 For the men we had mounted and un- 
 
252 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 
 
 mounted drill, and spent much time in getting 
 the accoutrements into condition for inspec- 
 tion. During part of the march up rations 
 had been short, and for a number of days were 
 very problematical. Sufficient boots and cloth- 
 ing were also lacking and we had had to get 
 along as best we could without. Now that we 
 were stationary our wants were supplied, and 
 the worst hardship for the men was the lack 
 of recreation. A reading-room was opened 
 and a piano was procured, but there was really 
 no place to send them on short passes; nothing 
 for them to do on an afternoon off. When I 
 left, trips down the Rhine were being planned, 
 and I am sure they proved beneficial in solv- 
 ing the problem of legitimate relaxation and 
 amusement. 
 
 My father had sent my brother and myself 
 some money to use in trying to make Christ- 
 mas a feast-day for the men. It was difficult 
 to get anything, but the Y. M. C. A. very kindly 
 helped me out in procuring chocolates and 
 cigarettes, and I managed to buy a couple of 
 calves and a few semi-delicacies in the local 
 market. While not an Arabian Night feast, we 
 had the most essential adjunct in the good spir- 
 its of the men, who had been schooled by their 
 
IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 253 
 
 varied and eventful existence of the past 
 eighteen months to make the most of things. 
 
 In the middle of January my brother and 
 I left for Paris. I was very sorry to leave 
 the battery, for we had been through much 
 together, but in common with most reserve 
 oJBScers I felt that, now that the fighting was 
 over, there was only one thing to be desired and 
 that was to get back to my wife and children. 
 The train made light of the distance over 
 which it had taken us so long to march, and 
 the familiar sight of the friendly French towns 
 was never more welcome. After several months 
 on duty in France and Italy, I sailed on a 
 transport from Brest, but not for the wonderful 
 home-coming to which I had so long looked 
 forward. 
 
 The End 
 
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