War in the Garden of Eden

own 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 passe

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 frui

h 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 h

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 children 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 noma

ed 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 college. 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

, 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 communal tent or slept in the ten

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 concealed in a village two hundred and fifty yards away; the rest were behind some high irrigation 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 irr

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 almo

badly bogged

otamian

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 sev

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 having 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

be. 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 b

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 generall

hatever of discipline, and it was most difficult to keep them in hand and stop them from pillaging the natives indiscriminately. 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 recovered th