MESOPOTAMIAN CAMPAIGN.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 June 1917, Page 6

MESOPOTAMIAN CAMPAIGN.

DIFFICULTIES OF THE ADVANCE. A VIVID ACCOUNT. So little information comes through nowadays concerning the actual conditions of the campaign in Mesopotamia that the reader will be j_rateful to have some quotations from ;i letter written by an officer serving with the main force. The writer is Lieutenant-Colonel Wall, C.M.G., 1.M.5., a brother of Professor. Arnold Wall, of Canterbury Col-j lego. Lieutenant-Colonel Wall has evid-1 e-ntly been on the Euphrates, but when the great advance on Kut and up the Tigris to Bagdad was commenced he joined the main column, and his latest letter gives a very vivid account of tne difficulties of the advance while the country was still under the influence of the rainy season. How long these conditions lasted one cannot say, but from now onwards dust rather than mud is likely to be the troublesome factor, and as a matter of fact dust storms and sand storms of considerable violence were reported when the- army was approaching Bagdad. L'.aitenant-Colonel Wall's story commences back in the days when the operations against Kur. were in progress. It seems a long while ago—events have been moving vcr,» rapidly—but actually it was only at the end of February tlia- the crossing of the Tigris was forced at the Shuinran Bend and the real advance on Bagdad began. "I had a three days' outing lately," Lieutenant-Colonel Wall writes, "and you will be interested to hear something of my experiences:. We travel out carrying a day's rations and ater. an emergency ration, which we may not cat except under the general's orders—if we are in a hole and starving. This Tation is a tin of bully beef, four cubes of Oxo and five dry <iiscuits- -very hard. Mr expensive 'store' teeth are useless, and the biscuits are really so hard that even soaking th'.-in in tea does not soueii them. We takt I'o'.h'i.g but what wo can hang on our tlarges, and the poor beasts are animated Christmas trees. We bivouac, and just now this is very trying for a man c£ my years This trine it rained hard all one and we had heavy showers another night. One gets to camp isually after darK, camp being merely i n expression, for of course r.her: are no camps laid out. We try and find a piece of high ground ground ant just doss dowr We live on what we carry most!;', sometimes entirely—bread till this is done, cheese biscuits and chocolate. Each man lays in a stock of comforts, v. hich we buy in the canteen. One chews one or otber when we- call a halt.

"We are up generally long before dawn, and are lined up ready to march when the first glimmers of light are evident in the east. With the temperature going down to 40deg. at night /ou may imagine it is 'parky.' Then ive travel all day, till one is so still md saddle-sore that one can hardly - ve. After the first day our small volie-s of .water are done, and we i '.-I' know when we shall get more. A

i-i-.ildy river revives the horses, but I? nearly all the water is very brackish •.mi a cup of tea (if one is lucky :iongh to get the chance of it) is I'-iiiast uitdrinkable. Each man carries : piece of firewood, in case we have is. chance of cooking a meal, otherwise no cooking is possible. The country ; bare —not a tree have I seen for .!:ree days coming up the river, not c-veii a date palm! Here and there is an attempt at rough grass, or a fewcoarse, heather-like, dwarfed shrubs are dotted about in sparse patches, and the rest is mud just now owing to the heavy rains." Mud, of course, was the dominating influence in the operations for the relief of Kut, and only the heroic labours of all ranks overcame the enormous difficulties of the advance this year,

"We were practically in bog for three days." Lieutenant-Colonel Wall continues. The guns got hopelessly bogged over and over again, and the horses sank half-way up to their ribs. They had to be unharnessed and led out with frantic struggles. Then a hundred men got ropes on and pulled the guns through. It was marvellous to see the whole column, British cavalry, Indian cavalry, transport, engineers' stores, wireless and signal stall's, and so on plunging about in mud so deep that sometimes the gun limbers were barely visible. All this sort of thing delays the column* horribly and is most exasperating for man and beast. I got so terribly weary that I could hardly carry on day after day. The weight of revolver' and cartridges, water bottle and food hag on my shoulders, the degree of saddle-soreness" and the terrible stillness that got worse and worse made one feel that one would gladly fall off 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 rare 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 Arabs, departed at some unknown date. This time we had no fighting, and it was just as well, for we had all we could do to get haltingly through the country and extricate ourselves from hogs. In many of these there were quicksands. It's a queer life, and how long I am able to stick it Heaven alone can say. To begin with, I'm a rotten horseman, and therefore get more saddle-sore than anyone else. If there is a bush (and one occasionally comes across a few tamarisks. I never know which side the blooming 'oss intends to go, and I don't always "guess right by any means.'' Bad ' as the mud was it could not smother the British sense of humour and events have proved that it was not enough to stop the big advance. Lieutenant-Colonel Wall passed over the old battlefield on the left bank of the Tigris below the Sanna-L-Yat position. There were still the empty cartridge cases in the trenches and dugouts from last year's fighting. There were hundreds of trenches to he crossed, and the column passed by the gun emplacements, with their piles of empty shell cases. ■ Shell craters were every'where. When camp was reached at last the guns were booming constantly. "Turkish aircraft often visit us," he says, "and it is very pretty from my tent here, looking across the Tigris, to see the effect of our anti-aircraft guns. One often sees the little white puffs of bursting shells, forming a regular constellation, before one sights the objective aimed at, and then the white putt's seem to frame the hostile aeroplane, .they burst so near and all around it." "It" is just delightful," he adds, "to be back in camp, clean-shaved, bathed and brushed, after our three days in the wilderness, with clothes never off, when

one got up in the morning and shook tone's self like a dog, 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."