oubles of a tropical
climate. I lay between two men, both of whom had seen their last
sunset; one was Sergeant-Major Whatsize. Infinitely far off seemed
peace and the time, as Grant-Anderson expressed it,

When the Gurkhas cease from gurkhing, and the Sikhs are sick no
more.

At midnight came a roar, then a crashing. It was Johnny blowing up
Istabulat Station. At three o'clock we were aroused.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Anabasis_, Book ii.

[8] The Divisional Heads of Ordnance and Supply and Transport.

[9] 'The Battle that Won Samarrah,' by Brigadier-General A.G. Wauchope,
C.M.G., D.S.O.; _Blackwood's_, April, 1918.

[10] The Leicestershires' badge is a tiger, commemorating service in
India a century ago.

[11] Gun-shot.

IV

THE BATTLE FOR SAMARRA

Salute the sacred dead,
Who went and who return not.

J.R. LOWELL.

Day was welcome, for it brought movement, though movement harassed by
cold and then by heat and ever-increasing clouds of flies. We snatched
our mugs of tea, our bread and bacon. At 3.30 we moved off. We marched
behind the wall, then crossed the Dujail, and pushed towards the left
flank of the enemy's position. Vast clouds of white dust shut us close
from any knowledge as we climbed up a narrow pass. Fortunately the
light was hardly even dim yet.

We dropped into a plain, and saw the Hero's Way by which the others had
gone. Dead Gurkhas and Highlanders lay everywhere. I have always felt
that the sight of a dead Highlander touches even deeper springs of
pathos than the sight of any other corpse. Analysed, the feeling comes
to this, I think: in his kilt he seems so obviously a peasant, lying
murdered on the breast of the Universal Mother.

So we marvelled as we saw the way and the way's price--marvelled that
any could have survived to that stiff, towering redoubt, with its moat
of trenches and the trenches ringing its sides; and marvelled most of
all that any should have scaled its top, though for a moment only.
These trenches held abundant dead, Turks and our own. On the reverse
slope I came on rows of the enemy, huddled on their knees, their hands
lifted to shield their heads from the shrapnel which had killed them.
Below ran Dujail in its steep ditch; inland the plateau rose, against
which the 19th Brigade had surged.

For once the Turk's retreat had been precipitate. That master of
rearguard warfare had meant to stand here, to save railhead and al