MESOPOTAMIA THE CURSED

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2901, 13 October 1916, Page 5

MESOPOTAMIA THE CURSED

A EAND OF MANT PLAGUES BUST, HEAT* AND FEES There is no respite or truce m. the plagues of Mesopotamia, and the only normal thing in the country on which one can count is that the plague, cycle is unbroken and continuous, and that the plagues overlap (says a writer who has been there).. The plagues of May -are dust, heat, and flies j_ and the greatest of these. is flies. The flies in the tents, dugouts, and trenches, unless seen, are unbelievable.. To describe them is to hazard one's reputation for truth.. You cannot eat.'without'swallowing flies.. You wave your spoon of porridge in the .air. to shake them off, you put your biscuit and "bully beef in your pocket and surreptitiously convey them in olosed fist to your you swallow flies, all the same. As I write, I cannot see the' end of my pen. I overtook a squadron of cavalry ,the other day, and in that .state of 'ssini-coma in whioh the heat .wraps one, I thought, they' were wearing dhain-farmour. .. I had walked my j horse beside them; some minutes before I discovered that whatT looked'"like mail .was the steely-blue metallic mesh of flies. At the beginning of the fly ' season, I saw .a' distant squadron_ of horse waving their ; ;handkerchiefs rhythmically in the air, as if they were, cheering." A hardly credible--demon-"" stration on tho part of the undemonstrative; trooper;, and: I'-took'it for a . trick of the mirage until I discovered that" they, were waving off flies.. The Mesopotamian. variety is indistinguishable, from the English L houfce" fly, except that many of them, one in twenty perhaps, canbit-e or sting. .These ap% parently are not s, different — only more impregnated with vice. At night the flies disappear and the mosquitoes and sandflies_ relieye them, completing the vicious circle. Mosquitoes are local. ,In many places you may be spared them altogether, but there ore districts where they are em-

ployed by the gods.which plaguo us as the ; chief scourge. -Intone camp I struck' a species which could bite through cord ridiug 'breeches. Sandflies are another and more insidious plague. A net with a-mesh fine enough to exclude them is suffocating, _ and they keep one awake at night with a-hose of thin acid, playing on, one's face. .;■... Torrid Comfort. In the fiist week of May an old campaigner consoled us with the remark that the flies would soon be dead. The heat kills them, .he explained,, "frizzles them up like wool in a flame." This by way of .consolation, when it' was; 105 in the shade, recalled the story .of that fabulous stream which, as the 1 nigger explained, was free,.of alligators, the alligators being "too plenty afraid of sharks." . Still, we looked forward to the heat which would kill the 'flies. "You'll see they will when it gets really hot," the old campaigner said, smiKngvunsympathetically at our air of'relief. ■' > ■ . "What do you call really hot? 1 asked. • "Oh, about 112 in. one's tent; of course,. it goes up to. anything.- The • flies won't bother you then." I thought.of the week in the Punjab, which is the climacteric in the hot weather,;" when the mosquitoes die, the crows gape, and the brain-fever bird' ceases to sing. But in India, heat is tempered by houses. One is armed • against it externally with" punkahs and cold baths, .thick walls and,roof, and doors and windows that shut ;it out, and internally by ice and cool.drinks. Spreading trees -are" planted'•"•.by. the' roadside. - But in Mesopotamia',.where we are fighting, there is.no shade —not bo much as a single scraggy date palm. The morning's work done, you lie in. your tent with tho flap open and the side-flies lifted up and gasp through the long day waiting for the sun to go ' down: Your only apparel is a sola topi or a wet towel round your head. But you are clothed in dust and sweat. The thermometer runs up to 130 in a tent, where tho temperature is, of courßß, muoh higher than, the Government standard reading. Outside ono Beldom wears a coat. Force "D" leads the simple life, and is brought up against elemental needs. The.Mesopotamian sun corrodes all pride. It is so Corrosive of vanity that the staff < officer will ride.abroad in his shirt-sleeves in-r .. DecentVof red tabs, But one wears h sunguard over one's helmet, and a spine-pad; for one can get sun-stroke hero through the small of one's.back. The. persistent-hot-wind is better than complete stillness, though it.bounoes off tho ground and buffets you, flinging the Band and dust in your face. You eat sand, breath© sand, lio in sand, have sand in-your ears and eyos.and clothes. Sandflies by night; flies by day, until they shrivel up; sand and suffocation by day and night. ■ ■ ■ —

There aro other kinds of discomfort, different kinds of heat, the moist and tropical heat of the swa,mps of tho Euphrates and the Shatt-el-Arab, the parched and, desert heat of the Tigris and the Karun: Bach variety has its attendant insects arid peculiar ailments, which often take the form of boils and eruptions. On the Kjirnn, you may he stricken with what'vs locally known ns r "dpg-rpt"—the legacy of some poisonous fly. . Tha Bagdad boil and tho lAloppo date. a're'plher';ills of the country of which one hears, though I have not encountered: them. . They leave a permanent impression of Mesopotamia burnt into you—a cicatrico for life. One homo journal'last year spoke of "Our picnic in Mesopotamia.". The author.of the phrasrTwoiild 'have had a thin time of it if he' had been run to earth'by our. troops. ... ■' " '