r leading company had advanced by
rushes to a distance of a hundred and fifty yards beyond the Second
Median Wall. They were within three hundred yards of the main enemy
trenches. Battalion Head Quarters was at the wall, the 56th Rifles were
to the left, the two Sikh regiments a quarter of a mile to the rear.
Machine-gun sections were at the wall, supporting the forward
regiments. The 56th Brigade, R.F.A., had moved up, and were firing
close behind Wilson's new aid-post. Presently two more companies of
Leicestershires were sent beyond the wall, the third in response to a
message that the front line had suffered heavily and were short of
ammunition. Before the final assault, then, the Leicestershires' line,
from the east inland, was D, A, B, these three companies in this order.

But I am anticipating.

Wilson's A.P. was in a dwarf amphitheatre, and was filling up fast.
Bullets were zipping over from left and front. The enemy position
rested on river and railway, a half-dug position which some six
thousand men were frantically completing when we caught them. Away
beyond Tigris glittered the golden dome of Samarra mosque; Samarra town
and Samarra station, like Baghdad town and station, are on opposite
banks of the river. The station was railhead for this finished lower
line of eighty miles, and in it were the engines and rolling-stock
which had been steadily withdrawn before our advance. Beyond the mounds
the ground dropped and stretched, level but broken, swept by
machine-gun and rifle, torn with shell and shrapnel, away to Al-Ajik,
against Samarra town. Here the Turk resisted savagely. He was ranging
on the wall, which was an extremely unhealthy spot, particularly in its
gaps, and he enfiladed the mounds from the railway. We flung our
fifteen hundred bayonets and our maniple of cavalry at the position.
The one British regiment, the Leicestershires, went in three hundred
and thirty strong, and lost a hundred and twenty-eight men.

Dropping bullets took toll even before we left the mounds. As I came up
to join Wilson a man was carried past. It was Major Adams, acting
second-in-command of the 53rd Sikhs. He had gone ahead of his battalion
to the wall, where a bullet struck him in the forehead. He died within
fifteen minutes, and was unconscious as he went past me. No man in the
brigade was more beloved. He was always first to offer hospitality. It
was he who met our mess when they first reached Sumaikchah and invited
the