Letters from Mesopotamia | Page 7

there in December. He was just back from a course at Mhow and had
been positively told by the Staff Officers there that his and most other
T. batteries were to be sent back to Europe in a month's time: and
moreover that a whole division of Ts. was going to the Persian Gulf
and another to E. Africa.
The air is full of such rumours. Here the Embarkation N.C.O. says
78,000 K's have already sailed to relieve us. But the mere number of
the rumours rather discredits them. And the fact of their using us for
drafts to P.G. seems to show they don't intend moving the units.
We left Bhusawal at midnight and arrived here at 9.15 without incident.
Bombay is its usual mild and steamy self, an unchanging 86°, which
seemed hot in November, but quite decently cool now.
This boat is, from the officers' point of view, far more attractive than
the "Ultonia." Being a B.I. boat it is properly equipped for the tropics
and has good 1st class accommodation. She is about 6,000 tons. The

men are, I'm afraid, rather crowded. There will be 1,000 on board when
complete. We pick up some at Karachi. We sail to-morrow morning. If
not too sea-sick I will write to Papa and post it at Karachi.
I am going out now to do a little shopping and get my hair cut, and I
shall post this in the town.
P.S.--The whole country is deliciously green now, not a brown patch
except the freshest ploughed pieces, and the rivers no longer beggarly
trickles in a waste of rubble, but pretty pastoral streams with luxuriant
banks.
* * * * *
"S.S. VARSOVA,"
August 21st,1915.
To N.B.
I don't know when I shall next get one of your letters. It will have to
follow me painfully round via Agra. And if I post this at Basra, it will
have to go back to Bombay before starting for England; though people
here are already talking of the time when we shall have finished the
Baghdad Railway and letters come by rail from England to Basra in
about 5 days.
Meanwhile as I have no letters of your's to answer and no news to
discuss, I will try and give you an account of myself and my fifty
veterans since I last wrote.
The fifty just form a platoon. You see, my retromotion goes on apace.
A Company Commander from August to April, a Company Second in
Command from May to August, and now a platoon Commander. I shall
find the stage of Sergeant harder still to live up to if it comes to that.
Twenty-five are from 'D' Double Company; but only seven of these are
from my own original lambs of 'F': because they wouldn't take anyone

under twenty-three, and as I have mentioned before, I think, very few
of 'F' have qualified for pensions. As it is, two of the seven gave false
ages. The other twenty-five are from a Portsmouth Company--townees
mostly, and to me less attractive than the village genius: but I daresay
we shall get on all right.
Our start wasn't altogether auspicious--in fact taking a draft across the
middle East is nearly as difficult to accomplish without loss as taking
luggage across Scotland. We had a very good send-off, and all
that--concert, dinner, band, crowd on the platform and all the moral
alcohol appropriate to such occasions. It was a week ago, to-day, when
we left Agra, and Agra climate was in its top form, 96° in the shade and
stuffy at that. So you can imagine that it was not only our spirits that
were ardent after a mile's march to the station in marching order at
noon. An hour after the train had started one of my lance-corporals
collapsed with heat-stroke. The first-aid treatment by the Eurasian M.O.
travelling with us was a most instructive object lesson. The great thing
is to be in time. We were summoned within ten minutes of the man's
being taken ill. His temperature was already 106°: the M.O. said that in
another half-hour it would have been 109° and in an hour he would
probably have been dead. We stripped him stark, laid him in the full
draught, and sponged him so as to produce constant evaporation: held
up the Punjab mail and got 22lbs. of ice to put under his head: and so
pulled him round in less than two hours. We had to leave him at Jhansi
though, and proceeded to Bombay forty-nine strong.
The ten-little-nigger-boy process continued at Bombay. We arrived on
board on Monday morning: and though orders were formally issued
that nobody was to leave the docks without a pass, no attempt was
made to prevent the men spending the day in the town,