IN MESOPOTAMIA

Hokitika Guardian, 15 May 1917, Page 3

IN MESOPOTAMIA

A Graphic Narrative

Lieut-Col Wall 0.M.G., a brother of Professor Wall of Canterbury College who has been serving with the main force in Mesopotamia, in the course of a very interesting account of his experiences says:—

“ I had a three days’ outing lately, and you will be interested to hear something of my experiences. We travel out carrying a day’s rations and also an emergency ration, which we may not eat except under the general's orders—if we are in a hole and starving. This ration is a tin of bully beef, four cubes of Oxo and five dry biscuits—very hard. My expensive ‘ 6tore * teeth are useless, and the biscuits are really so hard that even soaking them in tea does not soften them. We take nothing but what we can harg on our chargers, and thß poor beasts are animated Christmas trees.

We bivouao, and just now this is very trying for a man of my years. This time it rained bard all one right and we bad heavy showers another night. One gets to camp usually after dark, camp being merely au expression, for of course there are no camps laid out. We try and find a piece of high ground and just doss down. We live on what we carry moatly, sometimes entirely—-bread till this is done, obeese, biscuits and chcoolato. Each man lays iu a stock of comforts, which we buy in the canteen. One chews one or other when we call a halt. ,

“ We are up generally long before dawD, ead are lined up to be ready to march when the first glimmers cf light are evident In the east. With the temperature going down to 40 deg at right you may imagine it is * perky,’ Then we travel all day, till one is so stiff and saddle-Bore that one can hardly move. After the first day onr small supplies of water are done, and we never know when we shall get more. A muddy river revives the home, biit as oeaily all the is

very brackish even a cup of tea (if one is lucky enough to get the chance of it) is almost undtinkablc. Each man carries a piece of firewood. in case we have a chance of cooking a meal, otherwise no c joking is possible. The country is bare—not a tree have I sain for three days coming up the river, not even a date palm ! Here and there is an attempt at rough gras*, or a few coarse, heather-like, dwarfed shrubs are dotted about in sparse patches, and the rest is mud just now owing to the heavy rainp.” Mud, of coarse, was the dominating influence in the operations for the relief of Kut, and only the heroic l&bir-i of all ranks overcame the enormous difficulties of the advance this year, “We were practically in bag for three days,” Lientenant-Coioutl Wall continues. The guns got hopelessly boggsd over and over again, and the horses sand half-way up to their ribs. They had to be unharnessed and led out with frantic struggles. Then 100

men got ropa* on and pal'ed the gtm through, It was marvellous to see the whole column, British cavalry, Indian savalry, transport, ergineera’ store?, wireless and signal staffs and so oq plunging abon: in mud so deep that sometimes the gun limbers were barely visible.

AH this sort of thing delays the column horribly and rs rncs exasperating for man and beast. I got so terribly weary that I could hardly oarry on diy after dav. Tne weight of revolver acd cartridges, water bottle and food bag on my shoulders, the degtee of saddle-soreness and the terrible stiffness that got worse and worse made one feel that one would gladly fall eff sometimes, if a speedy sleep with no awakening were the climax.

“ It is strange to travel on day after day with not a single soul or an inhabitant anywhere, and only a tare trace of habitation. A name on the map often means, when we get there* a few walls two or three feet high* which represent the dwellings of some nomad Arebs, departed at some unknown date. This time we bad no fighting, and it waß just as well, for we had all we could do to get haltingly through the country and extricate ourselves from bogs. In many of these there were quicksands. It’s a queer life, and how long I am able to stick it Heaven alone can pay, To begin with I’m a rotten horseman, and therefore get more saddle-sere than anyone else. If there is a bash (and sne occasionally comes aerqss a few tamarisk) I never know which side the blooming ‘ oss intends to go, and I don’t always guess right by any means.” Bad as the mnd was it could not smother the British eeuse of humour, and events have proved that it was not enough to stop the big advance. Lieutenant Colonel Wall passed over the old battlefield en the left bank of the Tigris below the Sanna-i-Yat position. There were still the empty cartridge cases in the trenches and dug-outs from last year’s fighting. There were hundreds of trenches to be crossed, and the oolumn passed by the gun emplacements, with their piles of empty shell oases, Shell craters were everywhere. When camp was reaohea at last the gnns wera booming constantly. “ Turkish aircraft - often visit us,” he gays, “ and it ia very pretty from my tent here, looking across the Tigris, to see the effaefc of our anti-aircraft guns.^._^ One often sees the little whits puffs of bursting shells, forming a regular constellation, before one sights the objective aimed at and then the white puffs seem to frame the hostile aeroplane, the? burst so near aad all around it.” “It is r just delightful,” he adds, “to be back iooamp, cleanshaved, bathed acd brushed, after oar three days in the wildnerness, with clothes never off, when one got up in the morning and shook oob’s self like a deg, smoothed out the wrinkles from one’s overcoat, and rubbed one’s hand round one’s chin to note the rate of growth and tried to imagine without a glass how much like a tramp one must be.”