Staff Officers there that his and most other T.
batteries were to be sent back to Europe in a month's time: and
moreover that a whole division of Ts. was going to the Persian Gulf
and another to E. Africa.

The air is full of such rumours. Here the Embarkation N.C.O. says
78,000 K's have already sailed to relieve us. But the mere number of
the rumours rather discredits them. And the fact of their using us for
drafts to P.G. seems to show they don't intend moving the units.

We left Bhusawal at midnight and arrived here at 9.15 without
incident. Bombay is its usual mild and steamy self, an unchanging 86 deg.,
which seemed hot in November, but quite decently cool now.

This boat is, from the officers' point of view, far more attractive
than the "Ultonia." Being a B.I. boat it is properly equipped for the
tropics and has good 1st class accommodation. She is about 6,000 tons.
The men are, I'm afraid, rather crowded. There will be 1,000 on board
when complete. We pick up some at Karachi. We sail to-morrow morning.
If not too sea-sick I will write to Papa and post it at Karachi.

I am going out now to do a little shopping and get my hair cut, and I
shall post this in the town.

P.S.--The whole country is deliciously green now, not a brown patch
except the freshest ploughed pieces, and the rivers no longer beggarly
trickles in a waste of rubble, but pretty pastoral streams with
luxuriant banks.

* * * * *

"S.S. VARSOVA,"

_August 21st_,1915.

To N.B.

I don't know when I shall next get one of your letters. It will have
to follow me painfully round _via_ Agra. And if I post this at Basra,
it will have to go back to Bombay before starting for England; though
people here are already talking of the time when we shall have
finished the Baghdad Railway and letters come by rail from England to
Basra in about 5 days.

Meanwhile as I have no letters of your's to answer and no news to
discuss, I will try and give you an account of myself and my fifty
veterans since I last wrote.

The fifty just form a platoon. You see, my retromotion goes on apace.
A Company Commander from August to April, a Company Second in Command
from May to August, and now a platoon Commander. I shall find the
stage of Sergeant harder still to live up to if it comes to that.

Twenty-five are from 'D' Double Company; but only seven of these are
from my own original lambs of 'F': because they wouldn't take anyone
u