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 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 reinforcements. 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 General Allenby's forces in Palestine by attacking the
enemy on all three of their Mesopotamian fronts. Accordingly, we were
ordered to march out after sunset one night, prepared to attack the enemy
position at daybreak. 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 stolidly on. It was late October, and althoug