red in the
main when the humidity of the air began to go up. A great many of the
new troops had no idea of the danger of the sun. The Tommy does not
estimate a situation very quickly. The attempt to change the main meal
of the day to an evening hour did not meet with success, and during the
afternoon the men would sit bucking away in their tents, and refuse to
adapt themselves to the idea of a siesta. Moreover, the Tommy is
obstinate by nature and does not like to give in. He goes on marching
in the sun, even though he feels bad, and the collapse is swift and
fatal.

At about five o'clock, with the temperature falling and the humidity of
the air increasing, a period of intense discomfort set in. Perspiration
was so profuse that clothes became wringing wet like bathing suits, even
if you were sitting still. A kind of air hunger ensued. The few birds in
the groves sat with their beaks wide open. It was then that the
ambulance wagons began to roll in with their burden of heat-stroke
cases, and continued until after sunset. It is a malady which, as I have
said, is dramatic and painful to witness....

A heat-stroke station was prepared at the water's edge containing a
couple of baths and an ice chest, and patients were put into the chill
water as soon as possible. They were slapped and punched and laved till
they began to turn blue and the temperature fell. Then they were put in
a blanket, if any collapse showed, or just left naked on a bed in the
open. Fear played a powerful part in the malady. It tended to produce it
and to cause relapses, and it was good practice to use direct
counter-suggestion whenever the patient was conscious, as well as brandy
and morphia. The worst of it was that many of those patients who
recovered over night died next afternoon as they lay in the suffocating
ward. What was possible with wet sheets and small pieces of ice was
done, but it was a wretched business, and those who were in Basra at
that time and saw those spectacles will never forget them; nor will they
forget the silent, impotent rage that filled the mind at the thought of
the giant-bodied, small-headed Colossus of war which makes a useless
sacrifice of men in ways such as these every day. But it had one useful
effect, perhaps. A really Zoroastrian reverence for the sun came after
seeing a case, and a man learnt to look on his pith helmet and spine pad
as his best friends.

V

MIRAGE

On the 28th of April, after a week o