s M.C. for Sannaiyat was announced. We
celebrated this with grateful hymn far into night. Thursday brought the
Cherub's M.C., another very popular honour, and we sang again, and the
mules from their mess sang a chorus back, as before.

When as at dusk our Mess carouse,
With catches strong and brave,
The mules their tuneful hearts arouse,
And answer stave for stave.
'Dumb nature' breaks in festive noise,
Remembering in this East
The mystic bond which knits the joys
Of righteous man and beast.

Then pass the flowing bowl about--
Our stores have come to-day--
And let the youngest captain shout,
And let the asses bray.
The thorny trudge awhile forget,
And foeman's waiting host!
To-morrow bomb and bayonet--
To-night we keep the toast!

These light-hearted evenings seemed, even then, sacramental. We were
waiting while the Third Corps and the cavalry cleared the other bank of
the Tigris, level with us. On the 19th the river was bridged at
Sinijah, which made close touch between the two corps possible and
passage of men and guns. About the same time the cavalry captured
twelve hundred and fifty Turks on the Shat-el-Adhaim. Our wait was
necessary. But we knew the enemy was terribly entrenched less than six
miles away, and that our sternest fight since Sannaiyat was preparing.
'This will be a full-dress affair, with the corps artillery,' I was
told. Some of my comrades were under twenty; others, like Fowke and
Grant-Anderson, were men of ripe age and experience in many lands. But
all had aged in spirit. Hall, though his years were only nineteen, had
grown since Sannaiyat into a man, responsibility touching his old
gaiety with power. So we waited on this beach of conflict.

One evening stands out by its beauty and unconscious greatness. It
happened thus. Remember how young many were, and it is small wonder if
depression came at times. After the trying trench warfare before Kut
had come the rush to Baghdad, a period of strain and tremendous effort.
We had been fighting and marching continuously for many weeks, with
every discomfort and over a cursed monotonous plain, without even the
palliation of fairly regular mails. When men have been 'going over the
top' repeatedly, emerging always with comrades gone, the nerves give
way. We longed to be at that Istabulat position. Yet here we had to
wait while Cailley's Column fought level with us, and da