us on the
following Sunday. General X had stated it quite decisively, with an
elegant gesture of confidence. General Y had sworn it, banging the
table. General Z had mentioned it casually, a cigar between his teeth.
The Turks were hopelessly demoralised. They had no ammunition, no food,
and no heart. Hopes ran high, and everyone who came up from Ashar was
eagerly questioned. We woke one morning to hear a great noise of steam
sirens from the river, and for a time lay in blissful happiness, certain
it could only mean one thing. It was like the night we lay on the
Gallipoli sand some days after the landing, in the darkness, sipping our
first tot of rum. Our hearts were merry, for had we not just heard that
Achi Baba had fallen, that Bulgaria and Roumania had declared war on
Turkey, and that the crackle of musketry to the north-east was due to
certain Boers who were swarming up the heights overhanging the Kishlar
Rocks? She must be a woman of temperament, Rumour, for when she smiles
she is so charming; but when she frowns, who can be so ugly?

During this time considerable activity prevailed throughout the Basra
region. Near by, on Makina Plain, a vast flat expanse of bare earth
beyond the shadow of the palm plantations, a perpetual dust arose.
Transport columns, guns and troops were always on the move, and the
camps grew in size until the whole place was dotted with white canvas
and yellow matting huts. The skirling of the pipes, the beating of the
drums, the sound of the bugle and the tramp of feet continually came
from the road that ran along the bank opposite the hospital. Wagons
rumbled over the wooden bridge, and the deep note of the incoming
steamers reverberated over the groves. But a difficulty began to arise.
All these incoming troops that were concentrating on the plain were new
to the country. The heat was increasing rapidly. It had long passed the
limits of the most intense English summer, and the mercury was now
rising above 100 degrees in the shade. The sky was cloudless and
brassy. The floods each day left great areas of damp, steamy marsh when
the tidal river fell. Mosquitoes were beginning to fill the night with
their thin screaming. Small, almost impalpable, colourless insects,
whose bite is like a red hot wire and who can penetrate the meshes of an
ordinary mosquito net with ease, began to infest the place. These were
sand-flies. They are surely the most successfully maddening insect ever
designed by the